Skybury is the limit
Words by Narelle Muller
Most people excel at just one profession in their entire life, if they’re lucky. For the MacLaughlin family of the Atherton Tablelands, it’s not a question of multi-tasking, so much as ‘multi-talenting’. The owners and founders of Skybury Coffee, a product well known and much loved throughout North Queensland, could rightly make ‘diversity’ their middle name. Something of a local legend, the tale of the young couple Ian and Marion MacLaughlin setting off on world adventures from Zimbabwe in the early ‘80s and ending up buying a farm near Mareeba, is one full of romance, risk and realisation. It may seem a far cry for two young people with no farming experience, but as their daughter Candy MacLaughlin, now general manager, explains, it all panned out fairly logically. The land itself reminded them of home, (coffee is widely grown in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe) and her dad, Ian, simply applied the practicality he possessed anyway, using skills and business acumen he’d acquired in the military. “They had always been great travellers and farming is definitely something you can learn,” Candy says, unassumingly. Ian and Marion raised their three children amid the lush beauty of the Tablelands. Two of the three still work in the family business, raising their own children and hopefully one day passing on the baton through the generations. Candy says her parents have always encouraged their offspring to follow their dreams. “I’ve left home and returned multiple times. Our family philosophy has always been that you bring more back to the business as you grow and learn.” Candy and her English husband, Paul Fagg, met in the UK and live on the farm with their three teenage children. Paul works for Skybury’s marketing company. Keeping it in the family, brother Mark, an agronomist and farm manager, also works and lives onsite with his wife Paige and their two children. While Skybury Coffee is relatively unknown outside of North Queensland (it does enjoy a large slice of the local market) a major part of the business involves exporting coffee to Europe and Japan.
148
FNQ FOOD