Hello, I’m Cindy Bunt!

Hiya! I’ve been described as being the passionate wearer of many hats!

I’ve just opened a Cafe and Nursery in Penola in the much loved, heritage listed Cobb & Co building and wow! I’m blown away by the beautiful region and support and custom that we’ve already received. Talk about a steep learning curve. It’s been about 8 years since I had my last cafe in my home town of Apsley (well, just out of town) called Amber Ridge and this was a beautiful farm shop, nursery and cafe. When that ended 2018, I moved to Compton, near Mount Gambier and after a rest and reset, started a cooking and gardening school from our home property. Then I learnt how to paint and so I started sharing what I knew about painting. Which is a bit insane and wonderful and I’m very passionate about helping people that have never painted before to learn that it’s a skill and can be picked up at any age as this is what happened to me. Fast forward 5 years later and the cooking, gardening and art school had also added a direct to person nursery where we grew all of our own plants from scratch…. what a journey….. so much fun!

And then, well it out grew the site, our home, and things started to feel like it would be great if it was all in one place and in a location that would allow the business to flourish and join in with other businesses around it.

We saw the Cobb and Co property in Penola was for sale and it was love at first sight. This place had everything I could possibly need to run my retail nursery and classes from this building. There was no thought of a cafe. But as we started to make the space our own, I couldn’t help but see the potential and feel the welcoming warmth of this building to be able to host more than that.

Within 2 weeks of buying the property, my head was spinning with sentences like, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was scones and coffee in this building?'“ Or maybe a bowl of nourishing soup and crusty bread? And then that turned into a full on cafe . I enlisted my sister (oh yes she’s the big guns!) and my mum who’s the soup legend, a friend and even my beautiful niece and away we went.

We’ve since employed more staff and have now learnt new methods to create beautiful home made food, all of our favourite things to put on our menu. This town and region simply takes my breath away with it’s generosity and that wonderful vibe of if you do well, we all do well and I’m so looking forward to adding to this region.

I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it feels to help people discover the joy of cooking from scratch. Food that you’ve just plucked off a tree, or dug up and turn into something delicious and simple. It is the BEST!

I hope I can help you to make something from scratch or grow something in your garden. Feel free to leave a comment or follow me on social media as I absolutely love connecting with like minded people.

xx Cindy