A low grey sky hangs over a grove of bare English oaks, fallen leaves of dull brass thick underfoot, when I catch up with Tim Terry and his daughter Anna on a mid-winter morning at The Truffle Farm outside Deloraine in Tasmania’s central north. It’s here on the family property – a strip of rich farming land wedged between the Great Western Tiers and the coast – that Australia’s first black truffle was grown and harvested on a June day in 1999.

“It was the first time in my life – and the last time – I saw my father smoking a cigar,” recalls Anna, who was five that day. “It’s seared onto my brain.” From a few tiny truffles valued at $3000 per kilo, a lucrative industry has grown. After Terry’s triumph, truffle ventures quickly sprang up across Tasmania and the southern forests region of Western Australia, which enjoyed its first harvest in 2003. Australia is now a not-insignificant truffle exporting country, with a $4.82 million slice of global trade.