2022 - The Knight Travels: 06/29/22

18 (feel like 16) - 24 deg C, a lovely calm start to the day, with clouds and winds increasing to blowy and overcast

After breakfast we all hopped into the Ranger and visited the Jaques Australian Coffee Plantation owned and operated by three generations of Jaques. They originated in Tanzania, and when they were kicked off their farm, they found Mareeba to be the ideal climate for coffee growing in Australia (it is now the coffee-growing capital of Australia). After procuring the land, preparing it, and planting out 100,000 trees, and Jaques Brothers Coffee was borne. Coffee trees take about 5 years to reach a height a crop size allowable for commercial harvest. Traditionally, coffee is always handpicked, however, with the shortage of workers in Australia, the brothers had to come up with an expedient solution. After buying a cherry picker from New Zealand, however, it was not up to the task of removing enough of the fruit from the trees. They engaged an engineer and draftsman from Cairns and the Coffee Shuttle One was designed (it is still in operation on the farm today - see yellow machine in pics below). This was in 1985. With the trees in full production, Coffee Shuttle One fully operational, with only processing and roasting facilities to manufacture, the economic crisis "we had to have" hit, The banks foreclosed, and the Jaques' walked away again, with just the shirts on their backs.

Through hard work and sheer determination, they were able to buy another block on the Eastern side of Mareeba, where the current plantation thrives alongside the spring-fed Emerald Creek. After another five years of hard graft, the trees were again ready for harvest, and all the processing and roasting equipment was in place, a fruit fly was found in North Queensland, and the DPI, in their infinite wisdom decided to use the coffee trees as traps to lure the flies, and then they would spray them. Unfortunately, the chemicals and concentrations used killed all 50,000 trees.

Not to be deterred, the family came back for a third time, and it is third time lucky for them. They currently have 85,000 trees, and are doing quite nicely. They also won a long court case (together with other growers) against the DPI, which enabled them to grow their business into a Café and licensed restaurant, on site roastery, and gift shop. They also run tours with coffee liqueur tasting. We had an informative hour with Linda learning all about the coffee berry and the process to get it from a berry to a bean and roasted just right. Nothing is wasted in the coffee process. The berry skin is dried and used to make a non-caffeinated, high in anti-oxidant tea, and the other husks are dried out and used as mulch. The plantation also has 470 solar panels, producing up to 1 Mw of power per day to offset the entire operation. If you want to read more about Jaques Coffee, just Google it.

After purchasing some coffee liqueur, coffee pods (also bio-sustainable), and some dried red berry skin we jumped back into the Ranger for a visit to Mt Uncle Distillery where they make a number of different flavoured gins called Mt Uncle's Botanic Australis Gin. $15 gets you a taste of four of them, and Wendy chose the Northern Gem, Ooray Plum, Bushfire Smoked, and a SexyCat Marshmallow Liqueur. The only one that was not to her palate was the Bushfire Smoked gin, in fact, it was quite awful! She walked away with a bottle of the Ooray Plum gin, that at 31% alc/vol, is quite low compared to others. If she ever needs another boutique bottle, she will order the Northern Gem online, as it had a lovely lemon myrtle nose and after taste.

Back home for lunch and an LLD. Afterwards, Greg started the pack up process outside, went for a short ride around the park, showered and got 'spruced up' for our Wednesday night outing to the pub. We ate at the Ant Hill Pub and the meals were large and very nice.