The Strangest Thing You Can Do Before Breakfast
A paddock. A dog. Something extraordinary buried in the ground.
It’s 6am. It’s four degrees. You’re standing in a paddock outside Canberra in gumboots you borrowed from the farmhouse, following a dog with more enthusiasm than anyone should have at this hour, while she presses her nose into freezing soil like it owes her something.
You are truffle hunting. And somehow, improbably, it is one of the best things you’ve ever done.
Black Perigord truffles, the variety grown around Canberra can fetch up to $3,000 per kilogram. The dogs that find them are, technically, priceless.
The Canberra region has quietly become one of Australia’s most significant truffle-producing areas. Under oak and hazelnut trees, in cold clay soil that suits the fungus perfectly, black truffles grow hidden through winter – detectable only by trained dogs whose entire personality is structured around finding them. At farms like Beltana, just outside the city, you can join the hunt: part education, part treasure hunt, part excuse to be outdoors in the cold before being rewarded with something exceptional.
There’s a specific joy in watching the dog locate a truffle. She slows. She circles. She digs with complete conviction. And there it is; dark, knobbly, the size of a golf ball pulled from the earth and held up like evidence.
It smells like the earth decided to get fancy about it.
The Lunch That Follows Is the Real Point
The truffle hunt is the morning. What it unlocks is the rest of the day.
Because once you’ve watched fresh truffle shaved over a dish in front of you, something shifts. You’re not just eating. You’re eating something that took months to grow underground, was found by a dog, and is now disappearing rapidly into your pasta. It commands a kind of attention that most meals don’t.
And then Canberra takes over. The city has restaurants that take the region’s produce seriously, bars that pour well, a food culture that feels less like it’s trying to impress you and more like it genuinely enjoys itself. The afternoon has a habit of becoming the evening without anyone noticing the transition.
Truffles must be consumed within 7 to 10 days of harvest. Urgency is built into the experience. Consider that your excuse.
A Weekend Worth Staying For
Ovolo Canberra is in NewActon — right at the intersection of Canberra’s creative, dining, and cultural energy — and a short drive from the farms that make the region worth coming to in the first place.
With The Overstay, two nights gets you F&B credit from $50 and Apero Hour every evening. Three nights, and a bottle of Moet Brut Imperial arrives in your room – because after a morning in a paddock at dawn and a lunch like that, you’ve absolutely earned it.
Truffle season runs through winter. The cold is part of the charm. The dog definitely is.
Book The Overstay at Ovolo Canberra — ovolohotels.com