Eight tables along a line that used to move
Peaches came down this belt for sixty-one years. The belt is still bolted to the floor, the tables are set out along it, and the kitchen cooks whatever the valley picked that week. Chips count points; no money is played for, here or anywhere else.
- 12pmLine starts
- 8Tables
- 18+Entry
- 3 a dayShifts
A cannery that closed and stayed put
The last batch went through in 2009 and the building sat closed for eleven years with the machinery still in it. We bought the shell, sold the sorter and the steam retort for scrap, and kept the belt.
The tin on the shelving is genuine: unfilled cans from the final run, still stacked the way the packers left them. Nobody had the heart to move them and they now make up most of the west wall.
The kitchen went in where the boiler was, which is the only corner of the building with the drainage for it. Everything else went around that decision.
Eight tables
Set along the belt, chips that score points and nothing else.
A valley kitchen
Stone fruit, dairy and pastry, most of it grown inside an hour of here.
Four on shift
Two cooking, two on the floor, and no manager's office anywhere.
What the valley picked this week
Peaches, nectarines and apricots run from December; pears take over in autumn and carry us most of the way to winter. What is not being cooked is being bottled in the back room for the months when nothing is ripe.
Dairy comes from a factory twenty minutes west, which means the butter is better than the pastry deserves and we have stopped apologising for how much of it we use.
Cider is the drink here — four taps of it, pressed within the valley — plus two beers, a short wine list and a shelf of bottled juice from the same orchards.
Pies
Savoury at noon, fruit from four, all rolled that morning.
Preserves
Whatever we bottled last season, opened when the fresh runs out.
On tap
Four ciders from valley fruit, changed as the picking changes.
The old cannery on Wyndham Street
The floor
245 Wyndham Street, Shepparton VIC 3630
Phone and email
+61 3 5821 6690 · office@tabledomeo.com
Shifts
Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm – 10pm
Eight lines pinned by the dock door
- Everyone on this floor is 18 or over, whether they are eating, drinking or playing. ID may be asked for.
- Chips belong to the house, keep score for a shift and are worth precisely nothing when it ends.
- Nothing is wagered on any hand. Money passing between players ends the game and, repeated, the day.
- There are no gaming machines in this building, and no online room, app or account either.
- The belt is decoration and is not to be sat on, stood on or climbed over.
- Names for a booked table go on the shift list in pencil and come off it at close.
- Keep the volume down on the day shift; the night shift can look after itself.
- The bar stops serving anyone who has had enough, and we will call you a car instead.
Shifts through the week
Eight tables, run in shifts
Play here is social: five hundred, canasta, crib and a rummy table that has outlasted three of our staff. No hand carries a stake and nothing is paid out at the end of any of them.
Chips are ours and they keep score for a shift. They are not for sale, cannot be cashed and go back in the tray when the shift ends.
Five tables are open to whoever turns up. Three take bookings, which is what the shift list on the wall is for — names in pencil, rubbed out at close.
Day shift
Noon to four — slow, bright, half the tables, good for learning.
Changeover
Twenty minutes at four, when the kitchen changes the board.
Night shift
Half past four to ten — all eight tables, all the noise.
Six things worth clearing up
Does the conveyor still run?
It has not turned since 2009 and it never will again — the motor went for scrap years before we bought the place. It is bolted down, cleaned weekly and used as a very long shelf.
Can I play from home?
There is nothing to play on. No app, no account, no online room — this website tells you the shift times and the address, and every hand is dealt on Wyndham Street.
Is any money played for?
Not a dollar. Chips score points across a shift, they cannot be bought or redeemed, and no game here has a pot, an entry fee or a prize.
Do you have pokies?
No gaming machines at all. There is no gaming room, no machine licence and no intention of seeking one.
Why call them shifts?
Because the building ran on them for sixty-one years and the habit stuck. A shift is just a block of the day with a changeover at each end.
Can I bring the kids for lunch?
Sorry, no. The licence covers the whole floor, so the whole floor is over-18s, lunch included.
The floor, the belt and the tin
Sixty-one years this floor never once stopped for anybody to sit down at it. About time somebody did.
Get your name on the shift list
Ring us from ten in the morning. Tell us the day, the shift and how many are coming, and it goes on the wall in pencil.
+61 3 5821 6690
Phone the floor