Wine & Food

Famed for its vast World Heritage wilderness and plethora of eco experiences, Tasmania has been building itself a reputation as an in-demand food exporter. For the 12 months to August 2005 Tasmanian exports hit an all-time high of $2.67 billion. The island state’s food stocks are rising along with the long-cherished experiences tourists habitually find in ancient wilds.

One of the contributors to this growth, Tasmanian Quality Foods Pty Ltd (TQF), markets a range of premium seafoods, including oysters and smoked salmon. It produced a staggering 784 per cent increase in export volume for the financial year ending 2005 (Australia reports from 1 July until 30 June).

For most businesses it’s a Peter Pan result that not even the wildest optimist would countenance. TQF Managing Director Peter Shelley presided over the dream-like figure, much of it derived from exports to Japan. ‘We produce the best oysters in the world,’ says Shelley. ‘No question. If we didn’t the Japanese would be buying them from someone else.’ He wears silver fish cufflinks on his shirt. There are fish motifs on his ties. He’s a big man. There’s a lot of fish everywhere about Shelley it seems.

With around 40 years’ experience in the fresh food business Shelley, 63, and a partner began TQF in 2001. ‘We started off with two people.’ TQF now employs 70 people, has just built a new processing plant by Hobart’s airport and has clients in mainland Australia. ‘[But] exports have become increasingly important to us,’ notes Shelley. Shelley’s son, now involved in the business, has just returned from Hong Kong and Macau.

TQF’s first frozen oyster export was worth around A$100,000. Oyster and salmon exports are now worth A$12 million. ‘Revenue, volume of exports, not profit,’ points out Shelley ebulliently.

‘There’s nothing else like it on the market.’ Shelley claims of his TGF oysters, which are cryogenically frozen. Adds Shelley, ‘Cryogenic freezing works quickly. It’s by far and away the closest you will get to fresh.’

Nurture no doubt helps with TQF’s export success but nature has given much of the produce out of Tasmania a substantial fillip.

Tasmania’s temperate climate and an abundance of clean, fresh water help produce seafoods as well as vegetables, fruits, and meats with a rich and strong taste. Blooming produce is fuelled by air streams travelling over cleansing oceans stretching beyond Tasmania to South America, Antarctica and Africa. Between Tassie and these great continents there is little else. The air in north-west Tasmania is, reportedly, amongst the cleanest recorded in any populated place.

As an island Tasmania is afforded natural cachet. It is quarantined from many forms of pollution and from a number of pests and diseases that affect plants and animals in other regions. The state is free of the pervasive Mediterranean fruit fly. There is a moratorium on the use of gene technology in the commercial production of food, crops and livestock. The use of hormone growth promoters is banned in the cattle industry.

Being way south of the equator has some considerable benefits too and Tassie’s temperate climate produces crops for out-of-season supply to the Northern Hemisphere. ‘Tasmania’s climatic conditions provide us with reliability, strong flavours and good shelf life,’ says Webster Fresh’s Nigel Carey. Webster Fresh is one of the largest vegetable exporters in Tasmania and in 2005 produced, among other vegetables, 50,000 tonnes of onions. Ninety per cent was exported to key markets in Europe and Japan. ‘We have unique and favourable climatic conditions. Tasmania’s position enables us to offer full flavour products for a counter-seasonal window. We couldn’t do it from anywhere else in Australia,’ says Carey.

Tasmania’s major Asian food markets are Singapore (fruits, cheeses and seafoods – including around A$11.6 million worth of abalone each year), China (seafoods including abalone and lobsters), Taiwan (fruits including apples and cherries), and Hong Kong (vegetables, fruits, chocolates and seafoods). The fresh food climate has changed considerably from when Tasmania once exported only apples. Old habits linger though and many Australians still refer to Tasmania as the apple isle. Around 20 per cent of the world’s wild abalone catch is taken in Tasmanian waters and live exports to Asia of this sought after delicacy totaled A$64 million last financial year.

Tasmania’s fresh produce, however, doesn’t just have to be found on the shelves of supermarkets or specialty delicatessens. Travel to Tasmania and, doubtless, you will find yourself feasting your way around the state – Tasmania is Australia’s gourmet island.

John Borthwick, one of Australia’s most regarded travel writers described Tasmania as an antipodean Provence – a place where history and cuisine collide in the best of ways. ‘Eastern Tasmania may well be a chain of nineteenth-century towns and pristine bays, but any day’s journey there can quickly become a trencherman’s tour – of chocolate truffles, cheeses, Atlantic salmon and delicious oysters the size of small saucers. And wherever you may have reached by evening – from bistros and small town restaurants – the day’s deeds usually end up reflected in a good local Chablis or Merlot’, wrote Borthwick.

Not surprisingly, Tasmania’s east coast has one of the most popular touring routes in the state. The Freycinet Peninsula, named by French explorers, is one of the highlights. Sprinkled about the east’s natural wonders, including isolated Wineglass Bay, are convict ruins and fishing villages: from Triabunna and Maria Island to penguin rookeries and cool climate wineries, Tassie’s east fuses diversity within an intriguingly compact touring route.

Discovery, however, has a habit of working an appetite and right along this route farm gates offer stone fruits, berries, smoked trout, honey and cheeses. All can seem fresher than an Antarctic breeze. Feast on the pristine surrounds but be sure to leave plenty of room for the good food.

(A version of this article was published in The Edge, Singapore 13 March 2006)