Strawberry industry full of proud families

JOHN Boronio’s father arrived from Italy in 1923 and cut cane in North Queensland before buying land near Stanthorpe, growing fruit and vegetables and providing the launch pad for one Queensland’s most impressive strawberry farms – Eastern Colour.

Jon Carmichael earned his stripes growing strawberries on the Sunshine Coast on the family-owned farm. A decade ago he became a pioneer, taking commercially grown strawberries to Stanthorpe and turning the Granite Belt into Queensland’s primary supplier of summer strawberries.

Jon employed as managers former Zimbabweans Ash and Brendon Hoyle, who help produce the Ashbern Farm crops at Stanthorpe and Sunshine Coast.

East of Stanthorpe, McMahon Brothers Organic Farm began life in 1925 after Clyde McMahon came home from the Great War, suffering the horrific impacts of chlorine and mustard gas attacks.

Clyde began clearing land after buying it in the Soldiers Settlement Scheme with wife Ellen but was too ill to handle much of the hard labour farming needed and became a schoolteacher.

But the farm flourished through four generations to emerge in the Year 2000 as one of a handful of organic strawberry growers in the state and is perfectly poised to exploit the global organic trend.

They are just a sample of the

aristocrats of the strawberry trade – the growers who have woven themselves into our agrarian history, drawing life out of the soil and transforming it into the economic power that is still a key driver of this state.

And if there’s one thing they agree on, it’s that strawberries can break your heart.

“One good hailstorm can wipe you out,” he says.

“And when planting can cost more than $50,000 a hectare, that’s a big financial hit to take.”

To Brendon Hoyle, the strawberry represents a second chance at the farming life.

Brought up in farming in Zimbabwe, Brendon took his own lease on a farm in his home country after he left school.

But in the early 2000s Brendon was walked off that farm by representatives of the Zimbabwean Government who had begun reclamation of farms.

With two kids Benjamin, 7, and Airanne, 5, the couple enjoy the farming life, and may even see it carried on by their kids.

“The kids love the tractors and helping out in the packing shed,” he said.

Photo: Nigel Hallett GREEN THUMB: Jon Carmichael, who cut his teeth in strawberry production on the Sunshine Coast, used his agricultural skills to help kick off strawberry production in Stanthorpe a few years ago.