Australian Geographic

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This cool-climate region of WA produces the bulk of Australia’s truffles; to celebrate, locals and visitors alike gather to sample this delicacy at the annual Truffle Kerfuffle festival.

- STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH­Y BY ELSPETH CALLENDER

Manjimup, WA

FONTY’S POOL IS glassy on the morning people roll in and park beside the potato paddock and walk to the truffle hunter’s breakfast. Some of the campers are still in their canvas palaces sleeping off the fire and feast of opening night. Chefs stand on the lawn in the sunshine, sipping coffee and breathing vapour. Inside the marketplac­e tent, local stallholde­rs setting up for the weekend agree that Truffle Kerfuffle is a great hook for luring people to Manjimup.

The Noongar people were originally attracted to this place by an edible reed they call manjin. The soil of the state’s cool-climate region also supports karri trees (see AG 110), which grow to more than 80m and enticed Scottish-born timber-getter Thomas Muir to settle here in 1856. Since 2010 this winter truffle festival has drawn a crowd to the modest commercial centre of Western Australia’s Southern Forests.

Suitable for growing everything from apples, apricots, asparagus and avocados, to persimmons, potatoes, pumpkins and Pinot Noir grapes, the climate and soils of Manjimup are also ideal for the native European truffle species Tuber melanospor­um.

The first oak and hazelnut roots were successful­ly inoculated here in the 1990s and the region now produces more than 80 per cent of Australia’s black truffles. But this is just one example of the produce grown around Manjimup and available at the festival.And the stories of this town – you barely need to dig – go far deeper than local fungus cultivatio­n.

“We want people to come to this area, know where their food is from, how it’s handled,” says Tony Fontanini. His grandfathe­r and great-uncle emigrated from Tuscany just after 1900, and were followed by many others from Croatia, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Russia and elsewhere. Fontanini’s fruit and nut farm and the adjoining Fonty’s Pool, where every Manji girl and boy learnt to swim, are local institutio­ns.

By mid-morning Saturday, Lucinda Giblett of Stellar Violets is on stage in amplified conversati­on with West Australian chefs Aaron Carr of Vasse Felix and Paul Iskov of Fervor, about pop-up restaurant­s, rural communitie­s and foraging. Rodney Dunn of Tasmania’s Agrarian Kitchen cooks something truffle-infused in the chef ’s cabin, wine tasting is underway in another shed and, on the lawn, the truffle dogs are impatient to demonstrat­e their sniffing prowess. Waterside, a

musician performs an acoustic set near the open-air bar.

In a tent named Stories of the Southern Forests, locals interview locals. Muir descendant John Jenkins talks about a time when winters were colder and wetter, the red dirt roads were more corrugated and everyone walked to school. “And a lot of us are still here on the same property,” he says.

Next up, Nicole Giblett recounts how her grandfathe­r and great-uncle sailed, as teenagers, from England to Fremantle in 1927 as part of a post-World War I group settlement scheme. They built their first house from corrugated iron scraps, hessian sacks and hand-hewn karri boards. Today, Newton Brothers Orchards annually harvest up to 6 million kilograms of apples. “If you’re interested in regional stories,” she says into the microphone, “this is about as good as it gets.”

In addition to the usual hunts at local trufferies, satellite events now extend the festival well beyond Fonty’s. Over the weekend, Foragers Field Kitchen in Pemberton hosts two seasonal truffle dinners. In the organic corner of Newton Orchards’ Valley View property, where the seeds of Stellar Violets arts and cultural centre have been sown, Fervor serves lunch in one of Lucinda Giblett’s train carriages.

The food, Lucinda explains to me, was primarily sourced locally, with Paul bringing along some native ingredient­s. “We featured local truffles, Bravo apples from the family orchards in one dessert, my cousin Cal caught the marron from the dam in the valley below my place, from our garden we dug spuds, cut cabbage that got charred on the open fire, and we also provided flowers and leaves.”

People arrive at Fonty’s dressed up on Saturday evening for a $230/head truffle degustatio­n with matched wines. While that’s at the higher end of the offerings for the weekend, there is also free music, cooking demonstrat­ions, truffle dog shows and kids cooking workshops.You need a general festival ticket to attend these events, but on Sunday festival entry is free for kids and concession-holders.

Barossa-born Sophie Zalokar, of Foragers and Food of the Southern Forests, takes to the stage with other chefs to discuss connecting the end user with the farmer and community rebuilding as part of Sunday morning’s program. Sophie tells me she feels the festival now seems to be getting the community aspect right.

Festival president Jeremy Beissel, whose family owns Fonty’s and donates the space every year, says, “It’s the local community that drives the festival. It only works on the budget it has because of all the volunteers.” Jeremy, along with local truffle pioneer Al Blakers and truffle-grower and dog-handler Gavin Booth, hatched the idea in Al’s shed in 2009. Gavin said they felt confident a high-end product like truffle could increase productivi­ty in the area.

As the festival winds down on Sunday afternoon, I meet Carlo Pessotto promoting a gourmet offshoot of the family business in the marketplac­e alongside his three-year-old, who’s nibbling a raw Dutch cream spud. He smiles at her and shrugs at me. “That’s what you get from a potato-grower’s daughter. My grandfathe­r used to feed me potatoes.”

Multi-generation­al family far ms such as the Pessottos’ are typical in Manjimup. Hardship is also commonplac­e with ongoing market fluctuatio­ns and industry crashes, but no matter what’s closed down “we’ve never sunk”, the stayers agree.

“The land provides everything we’ve got,” says Tony Fontanini. And the truffle festival – a statement of the town’s intention and capacity to adapt, reinvent and survive – is “really good for Manjimup”.

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 ??  ?? Jamie Musgrave (top), working with Fervor restaurant, harvests tree-ripened Granny Smith apples in Newton’s organic orchard. Truffle dog demonstrat­ions held in ‘Fonty’s log chop arena’ are a crowdpulle­r and -pleaser (above). They are part of a wide...
Jamie Musgrave (top), working with Fervor restaurant, harvests tree-ripened Granny Smith apples in Newton’s organic orchard. Truffle dog demonstrat­ions held in ‘Fonty’s log chop arena’ are a crowdpulle­r and -pleaser (above). They are part of a wide...
 ??  ?? Saturday’s harvest banquet lunch (above) in the festival restaurant at Fonty’s Pool.
Saturday’s harvest banquet lunch (above) in the festival restaurant at Fonty’s Pool.

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