It’s early on a Saturday morning and the quaint Ashton Post Office Cafe is already teeming with customers. It’s a little off the beaten track (Google Maps bypasses the Adelaide Hills town, taking traffic to Forest Range and beyond, away from Main Lobethal Road) but word of mouth travels far. There’s a gentle breeze coming up the main street, rustling the lineup of sunflowers bordering the road.
Cyclists, day-trippers, locals and city slickers are grabbing lattes and cookies. Some roll up in Ugg boots. That’s exactly the relaxed vibe owner Tanya Schroeder is going for. “I had one guy who used to come in his dressing gown all the time,” Schroeder tells Broadsheet with a chuckle. “But he’d always bring his Keep Cup.”
For two years, Schroeder has sold coffee and baked treats seven days a week from the multi-purpose post office (and the only cafe in town). The sweets bring people from far and away. Later Gator founder Chloe Mattner makes the vegan brownies on display, and former Peel St chef Hannah Jeffery bakes the burnt butter chocolate chip cookies.
“You can’t run a post office on its own, it has to have another use [to make money], and I really like the local part of it,” Schroeder says. “The winemakers coming up and chatting to the other winemakers about what’s happening with their wine … It’s a different conversation to what you’d get in the city. People are talking about their cows or their goats going missing and I get lost dogs here all the time. The dogs turn up here because it’s the only shop in town.”
Now expansion is on the cards. Schroeder is in the process of converting her 1870-era stone house next door – formerly the Ashton General Store, which was known as Mrs Lovibond’s Emporium until 1941 – into a bakery.
Under the plans, Schroeder will use the enormous 3.5 by 4.5-metre wood-fired Scotch oven inside her house to bake sourdough bread, pies, pasties, sausage rolls and other traditional bakery fare. There’ll also be “hearty” soups and toasties made with Adelaide Hills produce. The rooms of the house will become cosy, eclectic spots for customers to hang out (think long tables, vintage couches, reused furniture and roaring fires) plus a gallery and gift shop. Schroeder will move out and into another residence.
Covid has held up plans slightly but Schroeder hopes to be open by November. She’s also on the hunt for a specialised sourdough baker to man the oven.
“I was never planning on opening a bakery, I was planning on opening a cafe but the house has this enormous Scotch oven,” Schroeder says. “The flue was closed over and rusted in. I got it repaired and gave it a clean out. It’s huge, and it takes two weeks to heat up and once it’s on you don’t turn it off. The only ones left like it are at the Apex Bakery in Tanunda and in the town of Farina.”
Schroeder learned about sourdough baking after reading about the late Victorian baker John Reid, who owned and ran Redbeard Bakery in Trentham. She calls him the “godfather of sourdough” and credits him with inspiring this bakery.
Once the bakery is open, Schroeder will rent her existing shop to a like-minded local creative – “someone who is not going to do a cafe,” she flags – to complement the bakery and provide a two-in-one destination for visitors.
It’s all part of her wider plan to put – and keep – Ashton on the map. She’s even lovingly taken over neighbours’ gardens to help beautify the town. “I love the town and the people in it are really supportive,” she says. “I think people were crying out for this and they had waited for something like this for so long.”
Ashton Post Office Cafe is open daily from 8am to 3pm at 257 Lobethal Road, Ashton. Schroeder hopes to open the bakery by the end of the year.
