This small, pretty town has become famous for two very different reasons, and both can be traced to

Scottish settlers. Alexander Cameron founded the township of ‘Panoola’ in 1850; and John Riddoch, a wool grower, planted the first Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon vines that would make the region world-famous. Town founder Cameron also had a niece called Mary, whom he invited to Penola to work as a governess. She met Penola’s priest, Father Julian Woods, and established a sisterhood caring for poor children and the first Josephite schoolhouse. The schoolhouse is now part of the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre, dedicated to the life and work of Australia’s first Catholic Saint.

FAST FACTS!

• The process to have Mary MacKillop beatified began in the 1920s and was completed in 1995. She became Australia’s first saint in 2010
• Riddoch’s magnificent estate Yallum Park is 8km outside town; the homestead is one of the best-preserved Victorian houses in Australia
• Petticoat Lane is where many of Penola’s poor lived; today it’s a quaint little thoroughfare containing original 19th-century dwellings and neat gardens
• Penola is connected with many Australian poets including John Shaw Neilson (born here in 1872) and Adam Lindsay Gordon who worked hereabouts as a mounted policeman
• The land around Penola is the traditional land of the Pinejunga people, allied to the Boandik