The ABC made a beeline for Brookfarm last month, featuring an interview with Pam and Martin Brook on Landline, its program on rural life, focusing on the ‘sea-change’ angle.
If you live in Bangalow, you’ve already heard about Brookfarm products. You may eat the muesli for breakfast, or use their macadamia oil for cooking.
But it all began, as for so many of us, when the Brooks, then living in Melbourne, fell in love with the area on a holiday 20 years ago, and bought a 40-hectare farm at St Helena. For many years they remained in Melbourne, Pam a dentist and Martin a TV producer, while they worked out what they might do for a living when they actually moved.
The incentive came with a Council notice requiring they remove their weeds. To do that they planted more than 4,000 macadamias – to prevent weeds from growing. Next problem: what to do with the nuts? Rather than on-selling the nuts, the Brooks decided to value-add, experimenting for 18 months with a variety of products, from macadamia oil mayonnaise to muesli. The muesli hit the spot, and today the Brookfarm range is sold around the country, and exported to America and Europe. It’s even on international airlines’ breakfast trays.
Last year the Brooks opened a new factory in the Byron Industrial Estate, producing 14 tonnes of muesli a week and tripling their production. Their own orchard produces 40-60 tonnes p.a. of macadamia nuts. As that’s only 20 percent of their requirement, the rest is sourced from other growers.
As well as macadamia trees the Brooks have planted 30,000 rainforest and eucalypt trees and built a series of wetlands. In transition to organic status they use integrated pest management to replace pesticides and herbicides. This repair work has arrested soil erosion, restored a dry creek to life and created a haven for owls, pythons and koalas.
As for their success, Martin says: “I know it sounds a bit cliche but we could not have got to this point without the support of our local community.”
Christobel Munson
ABove: Pam and Martin Brook with the Silver Solfi award won in New York for their Macadamia Oil