Jo Bangles is the director and co-founder with her wife of the Splatters Cheese Bar along Pakington Street, home of the famous cheese train. She spoke to Jena Carr about what she enjoyed most about working and living in Geelong.
What is your connection to Geelong?
I was born and bred in Geelong and am proud to grow up in the 3214 postal area.
What do you like about where you live?
I love everything about Geelong. It’s got absolutely everything I need, and it still feels like a school excursion when I head to Melbourne.
What, if anything, would you change about where you live?
I want to help change the perception of people thinking Geelong is a bogan city. There is so much rich diversity here that has changed our town for the better, and I’m proud of our town for it.
Where is your favourite place to spend time?
I have two happy places. One is at home with my wife and two dogs, and the other is at my business, Splatters Cheese Bar. I love it so much, and it doesn’t feel like work.
What is something people may not know about you?
I didn’t like cheese at all as a kid.
What drew you to working with Splatters Cheese Bar?
Splatters Cheese Bar was born out of COVID. I own a food truck that was booked out pre-COVID, selling cheese platters to festival heads. When COVID hit, we got stuck with hundreds of kilos of cheese ready for the next lot of events. Everything was cancelled within three days.
So we went out on our socials and asked, “who wants to buy a cheese platter?”. It became the busiest two years of my life. I realised the good folk of Geelong loved great quality cheese.
One beautiful thing that came from COVID was that people really wanted to support local small businesses. I hope that mindset sticks around.
Then the cheese train was born, and the rest is history. We’ve been open for over a year now, and the support we’ve had has been incredible.
-What do you like most about working at Splatters?
Meeting cheese lovers from all over the world! We’ve had people visit from all over the USA, Egypt, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, France, Columbia, Africa, China, Japan and New Zealand.
You name it, people all across the world have heard about us and changed their travel plans to include us in their trip to Oz. We embrace diversity and want to make sure EVERYONE is welcome at Splatters.
