The pizzas are good at Hometown in Bright. They’re maybe not the best you’ve ever had in your life, but they’re a solid 8 out of 10, maybe 8.5, with charred, spongy crusts and interesting toppings.

The meatballs at Hometown are also very good. The stracciatella is delicious.

But still, that’s not what’s to love about Hometown. It’s the cosy interior, the big wooden tables, the bench space to throw your coats and beanies, the just-dark-enough lighting. It’s the staff who pitch their service perfectly, friendly but also just getting the job done.

There’s a moment for my family as we sit in one of those booths in Hometown and scrape up the meatball sauce with wads of wood-fired bread and we say to each other: come on. Why can’t we have just one place like Hometown in our own hometown? Why do they have to hog all the good stuff in Victoria?

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Bright is up in Victoria’s alpine region, the nearest jumping-off point to the Falls Creek and Mt Hotham ski resorts, as well as Mt Buffalo and Alpine National Park. The town has a population of only 2600, though with Beechworth, King Valley and other local bases around here, it has 30,000 beds for tourists, so it’s maybe not your average sleepy little hamlet.

Still, I live in a regional city in NSW of almost 200,000 people, and there are very few venues that could hold a candle to Hometown. Certainly not within a 20-minute drive of my house, which doesn’t seem fair at all.

I also grew up in multiple country towns in Queensland, so I know a thing or two about these places. I know I didn’t try sushi until I was in my 20s because that wasn’t a thing you could ever hope to be served in Gladstone back in the day. I drank my first cappuccino when I moved to Brisbane to go to university because few Italian migrants ever set up shop in central Queensland.

So I do feel qualified to judge the greatness of a regional town in Australia. I can clock pretty quickly if this is a place I want to spend more time in, if it has charm and genuine attractiveness, or if I need to just grab a sausage roll from the servo and move on.

And Victoria? Victoria has the best country towns.

I have some theories about why, which I will share later in this story, but for now, let’s just consider the riches. I grew up in Gladstone and Bundaberg, with a stint in Mackay. I live in Gosford. Victoria, meanwhile, has Daylesford and Castlemaine, Kyneton and Red Hill. It has Beechworth and Ballarat, Rutherglen and Bright. It has Bendigo and Port Fairy, Woodend and Torquay.

And it has all these towns smooshed into just 3 per cent of Australia’s landmass, meaning you as a visitor or even a local can very easily visit one of these places or many in a short holiday and enjoy all they have to offer: the bushranger history, the rugged coastline, the wineries, the art galleries, the classic rolling landscapes, the boutique hotels, the restaurants, the cafes, the bars.

Country towns in the rest of Australia just don’t have all this stuff. I mean, some do, and no doubt you’ll come back to me saying, “yeah but what about Orange, what about Hahndorf, what about Maleny or Byron or Margaret River?”

And you’re absolutely right, those towns are great. But they’re the exceptions that prove the rule because Victoria is lousy with these places; it’s chock-full of them, and to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t seem fair.

Part of the reason for this, which you have probably understood by now, is that closeness, which is rare in this wide brown land. Many of the great country towns of Victoria are not exactly remote outposts. You can drive to Melbourne in an hour and a half from Kyneton, or Castlemaine, or Ballarat, or Portarlington, Mount Eliza, Healesville or Heathcote, to name a few.

That makes it far easier for these towns not just to attract tourists with money, but also to attract the people needed to run cultural institutions like restaurants, art galleries, boutique shops or even tourist attractions because they don’t have to be out of touch with the city.

Orange in NSW is almost four hours from Sydney; Batemans Bay is the same. So there’s a distinct advantage there for Victoria.

There are also 21 wine regions wedged into this small corner of Australia (NSW, with three times the space, has 16), which obviously helps Victoria’s regional wine bars and restaurants. Have you ever seen a wine region in an ugly location?

This isn’t supposed to be a criticism of other states, all of which have plenty of excellent reasons to visit. I could even recommend central Queensland: Google’s AI bot tells me that Gladstone is now “a dynamic coastal hub”, which seems difficult to believe for a town whose only two nightclubs used to be called Willys and Hooters, but hey, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

But sometimes you just have to acknowledge greatness, and Victoria’s country towns have it. The pizzas are good, too.