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When Brendan Collins took over the management of his parent’s farm in the picturesque town of Bellthorpe, never in his wildest dreams did he imagine he’d end up producing Australia’s best tea.
BRENDAN, KRISTIE AND BABY LACHLAN
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escribing the last 10 years as a serendipitous experience, Brendan Collins reminisces on how it all started. After trying his hand at IT and environmental science at university, he discovered he wanted a more practical career. In 2007 he returned home from a trip overseas to find that his parents, Darryl and Lorraine Collins required a new manager at their forestry farm in Bellthorpe. Although he didn’t finish his degree in environmental science, it had sparked an interest in planting and growing trees. “I jumped at the chance to come up here and look after the place,” Brendan says, adding that working on the property was the education he hoped to get out of the degree. “It wasn’t exactly a hugely productive property then, a lot of trees had been planted but the nature of growing forestry is very long term. We had planted a little block of avocados, so my role in coming up here was either expanding on what we were already doing or finding something new that we could do to fill in that short term goal.”
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Brendan says the whole farm has always been a bit of an experiment. They trialled different types of produce, from ginger to garlic, but it wasn't until he stumbled on tea that he realised he was onto something. “My mother and sister have always been very big tea drinkers and so it was a good idea to be able to keep them in supply at least,” he laughs. Brendan quickly discovered there weren’t too many tea farmers in Australia, which had its pros and cons. He knew they could fill a gap in the market, but they were also going in completely blind. Not one to back away from a challenge, Brendan decided to give it a go.
“It was something new, and it was something novel. And we really had the ability to do everything ourselves here on the property,” he says. After planting their first crop, Brendan and Darryl headed to China to purchase machinery, where they were almost laughed out of the country. “We found out that we were doing everything the wrong way,” he explains, “We already had tea in the ground, which was a totally different type of tea to what they would use. And then we were turning it into a product that it had never been turned into before, so there were a few heads shaking around the table.” profilemag.com.au