Paulette Whitney grows proper pinkeye potatoes.

Pinkeye potatoes, writes PAULETTE WHITNEY, just aren’t the real deal unless they’re grown in South Arm.

It’s time to plant potatoes and I’m committing sacrilege. There’s no problem with the rows of dainty, French pink fir apples, knobbly kipflers or stalwart King Edwards. Those are all free from the shackles of Tasmanian tradition. My sacrilege is this: I am, against all that

I know to be right and proper, seeding a row of pinkeye.

Any true Tasmanian – that is, my mum – will tell you that the only proper pinkeye potato comes from where she grew up: South Arm. A little peninsula near the mouth of the River Derwent where the soil is black and sandy, and the proximity of the sea protects the land from frosts, meaning the earliest of early potatoes are at their peak from October until just before Christmas.

In the garden of Mum’s childhood, my chook-farming grandad grew pinkeye, the sandiness of the soil meaning he could pull the whole plant with barely the need for a fork, shake off the loose earth and fill a box with little potatoes – the proper size for a pinkeye being around that of a ping-pong ball, certainly never as large as a tennis ball.

The tiny chats he plucked from the roots of each plant were a delicacy.

Mum tells a tale of racing for an Ansett flight in the 1960s – a time when poor mainlanders could only buy generic “potatoes”, lacking the Tasmanian sophistication of having named, seasonal spuds – with a precious half-case of pinkeye for her Aunty Violie in Melbourne. She was too late to stow them in the hold, so she had to board with the grubby box tucked under her arm, sullying her attempt to look like a city girl as she blushingly found her seat.

The first thing you notice about a pinkeye is the fine-grained, grey South Arm dirt. If the sand is still damp, you’re on a freshly dug winner. Rinsed under the tap, the skin slips off like tissue paper, revealing those lurid violet-pink eyes. The only correct way to cook a pinkeye is to boil it. Chips, roasting and gnocchi are all as sacrilegious as my attempts to grow them here on the mountainside. In fact, the distinction between the pinkeye and other potatoes is so vast that on many Tasmanian tables you’ll find bowls of boiled, buttery pinkeye alongside trays of roast potatoes, the two being considered utterly different classes of vegetable. There’s a sweetness to the pinkeye you’ll not find in other potatoes. And the texture, oh! I’ve often heard other potatoes described as buttery, but none hold a candle to the butteriness of the handsome pinkeye – its pale- gold, fine-textured flesh is firm yet magnificently tender.

Later, as an adult transplanted to the suburbs, Mum would look for the sign outside the corner shop announcing “Fresh South Arm Pinkeye”. When it appeared, she’d slam on the brakes and we’d instantly know what was for dinner. Always boiled with mint, and topped with butter and salt, they were a treat. That first bowl of the season was our signal to hop in the station wagon and drive south to a place by the highway where the farmer parked his ute and sold them by the half-case. Proper seasonal food demands to be gorged, and gorge we did, but never changing the pattern of mint, salt and butter.

There are many impostors

– I’m guilty myself, as you now know – because anyone can plant pinkeye seed spuds and dig a tasty crop. You can even plant them late to extend the season or, heaven forbid, store them in a dark, airy place. But here in the hills my pinkeyes’ flesh is too yellow, the skin too firm. The flavour is good, but not quite right. Planted late in the season, they suffer a loss of flavour, and storage is a disaster.

I’ve inherited my mum’s eyes and, although I have that row of my own, I’ll be looking out for those blackboards and heading to that black sandy peninsula in October hoping to buy a case of memories from the earth-stained hands that grew them.

“If the sand on the pinkeye is still slightly damp, you’ll know you’re onto a freshly dug winner.”