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Australia has many beautiful flavours, and they’re not just in the restaurants and food stores. They’re dangling from vines, hanging on trees and hiding in rock pools. Go direct to the source and you can pick, pluck and catch your own food for the most intense and satisfying taste sensations.
Many Australian food growers and tourism operators throw open their paddocks and ponds to visitors on a seasonal basis, offering a chance to experience their produce in the freshest possible way.
Berries, apples, chestnuts, stone fruit, avocadoes, oysters, trout and marron are among the varied foods you can harvest. You can even blend your own wine, or bake your own mud crab in camp fire coals. Boutique hotels and lodges set near dams full of trout will often cook your catch for you.
When the origin of food is important, harvesting your own food gives you direct access to the growers and to the environment in which they work. It’s also a sure way to minimise the food miles travelled from bush (or stream or ocean) to plate. Often the produce has travelled just paces, keeping its environmental impact low.
As well as fresh, flavoursome and eco-friendly advantages, harvesting is a chance to reconnect with the source of food. For children, it’s an exercise in learning where things come from. For adults, it’s a chance to get out of the supermarket and discover the optimum ways to pick, catch and prepare food.
Harvesting is also an economic eating option. Stocking up on fruit and nuts or eating a fresh catch of seafood was never cheaper – or more fun.
Some Food Facts
Australia produces a wide variety of fruit, nuts and vegetables. The largest crops include oranges, apples, bananas, potatoes, carrots and tomatoes.
Climate variations in Australia allow for production of a wide range of foods all year round. Mangoes, pineapples and bananas grow in the tropical north, while in the cooler southern areas, berries, oranges and apples thrive. Seafood ranges from barramundi to trout, oysters, abalone and freshwater crustaceans.
Blueberries are said to be packed with nutrition. They are high in anti-oxidants and Vitamin C, and they aid digestion, circulation and cholesterol. Australian blueberries are exported to Japan, the United Kingdom, Europe, South East Asia and Canada.
Strawberries grow all year round in every state of Australia, mostly in coastal areas. Traditionally a summer fruit harvested between October and May, they also grow in sub-tropical climates in Western Australia and Queensland throughout the Australian winter.
Marron is a type of freshwater crayfish with sweet flesh that’s considered luxury eating. Marron were once endemic to the South West of Western Australia but have since been introduced to other parts of Australia.
A 2007 study found that the average trolley of food in Australia has travelled over 70,000 kilometres from producer to consumer. Smallgoods and chocolate added significantly to the food miles travelled. A shift towards locally produced food saves on energy costs associated with food production.
Harvest Experiences
Berries have a long growing season, and often come with the bonus of value-added products – like ice cream, cakes and fruit-based wines and liqueurs. Pick strawberries by the tub full around Australia, from Beerenberg Strawberry Farm in South Australia to Turners Beach Berry Patch in Tasmania to Freshpict in Albany, Western Australia.
Get all the benefits of blueberries at Eden Gate Blueberries in Torbay Western Australia or Clyde River Berry Farm, near Ulladulla in New South Wales. The latter also has youngberries, boysenberries, blackberries, raspberries and marionberries. Raspberries and blackcurrants are ripe for the nimble fingered at Lowanville Farm, Red Hill, Victoria.
You can buy the world famous Penfolds wines ready made – or try your hand at your own blend of Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre at the Barossa Valley headquarters in South Australia. Your efforts, which come at the end of a winery tour, are decanted into a personalised bottle.
At Producers in McLaren Vale, you’re invited to get hands on in the kitchen with whatever is underway. It could be soft cheese, olive oil, wine, verjuice or preserves. Lunch afterwards is where further sweetness lies.
Both trout and marron reside in the ponds and lakes at King Trout Restaurant and Marron Farm in Pemberton, Western Australia. If you bring your catch to the restaurant, they’ll make a meal of it for you.
The Coffin Bay Explorer in South Australia is a boat tour visiting some of Australia’s most pristine water, including that which houses the famous Coffin Bay oysters. Experience the fresh, briny flavours of oysters straight from the sea.
Searching for mud crabs in the mangroves around Cape Leveque in Western Australia’s north is a fun but messy business. Eating them straight from the coals, cooked by the Mudnun tour guide, is a sweet reward.
Groote Eylandt in Arnhem Land has some of the country’s best blue water fishing. You can also go spear fishing with an indigenous fishing tour. Make your own spear and cook your catch on the beach barbecue.
Variety is the key at many fruit farms. Bilpin in New South Wales is famous for apples, but at Bilpin Springs Orchard there are also peaches, nectarines, apricots and nashi pears. In Young, Bit o' Heaven Cherry Orchard has cherries, plums and grapes. Berries, stone fruit and value added treats such as fruit liqueur are part of the offerings at Sorrel Fruit Farm in Tasmania.
Fishing for crayfish (or lobster) is rewarding and entertaining on a Pedro’s Crayfishing Tour on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, after which crays and abalone are cooked for you on the beach. For a more genteel approach, combine a luxury stay at the Henry Jones Hotel in Hobart, Tasmania with a hunting expedition. Set right on the water, the hotel offers a Kayak and Crayfish experience that lets you paddle up to the fish punts selling crayfish, and return to the hotel’s chef with your ‘catch’.
Catch the smaller freshwater crayfish – the yabby – at The Gourmet Yabby Farm in Yellingbo, Victoria. Barbecue facilities are on site. At Nippers café near Albany, Western Australia, see your lunch swimming before it turns up on the plate.
Pick your own chestnuts and roast them over coals at Fontanini’s Fruit and Nut farm in Manjimup, Western Australia. Nuts are also ripe for picking at Kookootonga Walnut and Chestnut Farm in Mount Irvine, New South Wales. Get honey and olives into the bargain at Aintree, Almonds & Apiary in Bearii, Victoria.