The Story of the Old Scale Room

Long before Silver Wattles existed, Warragul was dairy country through and through, and this produce store on Queen Street weighed the district’s cream cans before the co-op truck collected them each morning.

The scale itself stood by the front counter until the 1970s, when the produce trade moved out to bigger sheds on the edge of town and the building sat mostly empty for a decade.

A local family bought it in the early 2010s, kept the pressed-tin ceiling and the wide cream-can doorway, and slowly turned the weighing room into what it is today.

The pressed-tin ceiling is original, as is the wide doorway built to let a cream can through sideways; both still carry a few dents nobody’s bothered to fix.

Everything on the felt is new — six tables, house chips and a set of house rules written the year the doors reopened as a card room rather than a produce store.

The kitchen is smaller than the old produce store’s back room, but it runs on the same idea: use what the district grows, change the menu with the season, keep it short.