On the caffeine trail

I read there were coffee plantations in the vicinity so we took a trip up into inland area to the west of the Great Dividing Range which serves as a backdrop to the coastal run between Port Douglas and Cairns.

Jaques Coffee Plantation is near Mareeba in the Atherton Tableland. Here we were met by Linda Jaques, who owns the plantation with her husband Nat. I think if anyone deserves a medal for persistence in the face of adversity, it should surely go to these two.

Linda, was born in Zanzibar and brought up on tea estates in the Highlands of Kenya. Nat is from Tanzania where he was brought up on the family coffee plantation on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro. The pair left Tanzania because of the political instability there and the high security risks. They left with the equivalent of $2000 minus the value of their personal possession, their life savings frozen by the Tanzania Government with a promise of releasing $1000 a year.  To date no money has been forthcoming and would be worthless now due to massive inflation.

They moved to Australia where they discovered coffee had been grown on the Atherton Tablelands at the turn of the 19th century. In 1979 they leased 80 hectares of virgin land west of Mareeba from the Government and created the first commercial coffee plantation in Australia in the 1980s. But with the 1986 recession and soaring interest rates, the business went into liquidation. There was a magnificent 80 tonne crop on the trees but the banks would not allow the Jaques to harvest the coffee - so they lost everything.

In 1990 they bought a block of land at Emerald Creek and started again.

After five years and a beautiful flowering indicating a 20 tonne crop they were dealt a second blow. The Department of Primary Industries decided that as there was an outbreak of papaya fruit fly in the region all coffee plantations must be sprayed. Linda said papaya fruit fly does not affect coffee and as they did not use any insecticides or fungicides on the coffee trees they informed the DPI they did not want the plantation sprayed.

Despite their protests, the spraying went ahead and 50,000 coffee trees poisoned and destroyed. Their dreams shattered once again, they might have been excused for throwing in the towel. But these gutsy people started again and now have 25,000 healthy producing Arabica coffee trees.

The day we arrived, the coffee harvest was just beginning and we were in time to see Nat drive the coffee harvester he designed himself down the rows of trees (above). The ripe coffee “cherries” as they are called, are shaken from the trees and collected. Nat will repeat his harvesting runs several times as more cherries reach ripeness.

Linda gave us a couple of cherries to taste. We squeezed out the beans – usually two per fruit – and tasted the sweet pulp. The beans themselves are quite pale with no hint of the power within that comes from processing, roasting and brewing.

Linda drove us around the plantation showing us where the various stages of coffee bean processing were carried out - the wet factory (top left) where the cherries go into siphon tanks (top right) where defective ones float. The pulper removes the flesh from the coffee beans. The mucilage left behind is fermented in fermentation tanks (above left), and discarded. After the beans are dried, the thin parchment round the beans is removed in the huller (bottom right).

The final flavour of the coffee depends on the roasting. Linda led us through the tropical garden to the café where we put the coffee to the test.

Beautiful. I wanted more, so I came away with a large bag of Espresso roast beans and a bottle of coffee liqueur, a recent addition to their product list.

Their website features an online store, reassuring for those of us who have acquired a taste for Jaques coffee.

The Jaques are a flying family and more adventurous visitors can try a microlight flight over the plantation and surrounding area.

Something to watch out for are the fascinating anthills (below) which dot the tablelands .

Better informed about coffee we meandered back to Port Douglas. Time once more to address the issue of where our next meal was coming from. There’s no shortage of good seafood in these parts so we chose 2fish restaurant. The friendly waitress talked us into sharing a coral trout taster – a trio of exquisite little creations whipped up by the chef.

While The Spouse went for red claw yabby linguini, I had to try the bay bugs, king prawns and yabbies which came with roast pumpkin, almond and apple salad, green chutney and a coconut dressing. I was presented with a formidable tower of crustaceans Above right). It was a labour-intensive meal but I savoured every mouthful. A pile of empty crustacean shells and a well-used finger bowl say it all. But there was a wee spot for a shared dessert. I wasn’t surprised to learn this restaurant was named the best seafood restaurant for Far North Queensland last year.

Next – we visit Great Barrier Reef >>