12 growers and producers bring good fortune to Timboon

A GROUP of 12 growers and producers is bringing good fortune to their southwest dairy-farming town. CAMILLE SMITH reports.

CAMILLE SMITH

7 min read

December 6, 2017 - 12:00AM

The Weekly Times

THERE is no better time to visit Timboon than the 12 days of Christmas.

The southwest Victorian town, 50km east of Warrnambool, is enjoying an agri-tourism boom, fuelled in part by the town’s 12 famous neighbours – the limestone Apostles off the coast.

While the natural wonder draws visitors to the region, another group of 12 deserves credit for Timboon’s gourmet resurgence. The 12 Apostles Food Artisans is a producer group making a difference in the town. Their biggest challenge is how to pull tourists the extra 30km off the well-worn coastal highway.

“Strength in numbers is what it’s all about,” says ice cream-maker Tim Marwood. Tim is president of the group, which includes 12 farmers and food producers within 35km of Timboon.

This month, the group’s strawberries, olive oil, cheeses, ice cream, chocolates, fudge, whisky, snails, beer, vegies and free-range beef are at their best, offering the group perfect opportunity to cater for tourists and boost the local economy.

Lynda and Peter Page make Dairylicious Farm Fudge.

Twice a year, the group publishes a map, the 12 Apostles Gourmet Trail, which includes locations, driving distances and short profiles of each of the members.

Group secretary and berry grower Heather Nicholls says the goal is to entice visitors “a little bit off the coast” to explore what they like to call the Great Ocean Road’s “hinterland”.

“The message is there is more to see here than just the rocks,” she says from her pick-your-own strawberry farm at Timboon.

“Before, there was just a bus. They (tourism companies) picked people up at the airport, shoved them up to the 12 Apostles, ran up and down that road, and back to the airport in Melbourne in a day.

“A lot of tourists now, because they are searching on Google, realise if they stay overnight they can do other things. Now they have the journey and they stop along the way.”

The gourmet trail map has been in existence for about seven years, and was initially published by the local tourism office.

In 2014, the 12 Apostles Food Artisans took ownership of the map, and started to evolve into a well-organised, producer-led network.

Tim Marwood from Timboon Fine Ice Cream.

Tim Marwood was integral to these developments.

Three generations of Tim’s family have milked cows at Timboon. He and his wife, Caroline Simmons, moved back to his family’s Timboon farm in 1995, swapping their Melbourne careers for country life.

“When we came back to the farm, I think we lasted about five years before we worked out that we – me and Dad – couldn’t agree on how the farm was going to be run,” Tim says. “We had different ideas about how to do things.”

The clash ended with a sweet resolution – Tim left the milking to his father, and he and Caroline started making ice cream with his family’s milk.

“We were inspired by Timboon Farmhouse Cheese,” says Tim, paying tribute to the local cheesery established 32 years ago by the late Hermann Schulz.

“We are food lovers and we thought there’s an opportunity to look at this abundance of great local fresh milk that surrounds us to make another dairy-associated product.”

Timboon Fine Ice Cream is stocked by 16 Melbourne and 37 regional retailers, while 17 ice cream shops sell it by the scoop.

Dawn Farms is their current milk supplier and during peak summer season the Marwoods buy about 600 litres a week, paying $0.50 a litre.

Back in 2014, Tim was also running the Timboon Railway Shed Distillery (now owned and operated by Josh Walker).

“When we designed that business (the distillery), in my head it needed to have a large number of elements,” says Tim, who founded the distillery in 2005. He expanded the whisky-making business to include a local produce shop and restaurant.

“If people took a day trip to us, there needed to be something in that shop for everyone in the car, because we are off the beaten track,” he says. “We were stocking local producers’ products anyway, and the visitor information centre was giving out a rough gourmet route map. I thought surely we can improve on this, consolidate the operators and make an organisation of it.”

Since then, the 12 Apostles Food Artisans has become a strong producers’ support network, complete with resource sharing, cross marketing and a yearly Tmboon Artisan Festival in November. Maps are distributed by all the members, as well as other tourism groups.

“Sure, it’s about sharing customers – but it’s more than that,” Tim says. “It’s also a moral support mechanism.”

Kylie Trebble runs a permaculture garden and kitchen called the Place of Wonder.

The members get together monthly to talk about business issues and support one another.

“When you go to a meeting with the group, if you bring up a challenge, everyone else will appreciate where you are at. It doesn’t matter the maturity of your business,” Tim says.

Vice president and dairy farmer Simon Schulz agrees the peer support is vital.

“There is a lot of non-competitive advice given from each producer,” he says. “In a sense we are not competing at all. It really is a hub of information on value-adding.”

The first annual Timboon Artisan Festival was held last November and the group members were blown away by visitor support.

Olive growers Alex and Margaret McDonald, who have been members of the Food Artisans since its inception, say they expected the event to attract about 500 people. Instead, it pulled 1700 visitors.

“We had a terrific day. Everybody did,” Alex says. “We sold out of everything we had.”

And being featured on the taste trail map has also been a boon to their business.

“We started having bus-loads come,” Margaret says. “We are on our third bus in a month. It certainly gets people into the area.”

Tim Marwood has more plans in the pipeline for the group and the town. Last year he built a flagship ice creamery in Timboon, which will soon house his factory and run workshops about the udder-to-cone process of making ice cream.

“The greatest pleasure for me is to see the dynamics of this town change into a bustling, vibrant township,” Tim says.

“We have seen three new cafes, a homewares shop and a hardware open. We couldn’t get a carpark over last Christmas and some of the locals will hate me saying that. But for me, that’s success.”

Simon Schultz from Schultz organic dairy.

THE DAIRY FARMER

SIMON SCHULZ

“I reckon the change in Timboon has happened organically,” says Simon Schulz, who runs Schulz Organic Dairy at Timboon.

It was his grandfather Hermann’s Timboon Cheesery business, opened in 1986, that has been partly responsible for the region’s gourmet renaissance.

“The successes he had gave the likes of Tim Marwood and others ideas,” Simon says. “It showed them that it can be done in this area, and they have taken that and grown it and made it better than he did.”

Simon still sells products under his late-grandfather’s Timboon Cheesery brand, but his main label is Schulz Organic Dairy. Visitors to the dairy can buy milk, cream, yoghurt, cheese and quark, all made with milk from the Schulz family’s herd of 480 Friesean and Jersey cows, which graze 414 hectares of organic pasture at Timboon.

Schulz Organic Dairy employs 40 people and its products are sold nationwide through independent retailers, to restaurants, and at farmers’ markets throughout Victoria.

Recently, Simon has focused on the sustainability of his business and his products, selling milk in returnable glass bottles at farmers’ markets and delivering to cafes and restaurants using refillable 15-litre stainless steel pails.

Simon has also expanded in-house distribution, employing drivers to take his products to Melbourne customers.

“We are naturally so lucky to be close to the Great Ocean Road,” Simon says. “But we are also hindered by distance. We are 2½ hours from Melbourne.

“But since the Food Artisans group arrived, the traffic through the area has certainly increased … and now there is a great treechange happening.”

Heather Nicholls from Berry World, in her pick-your-own paddock.

THE BERRY GROWER

HEATHER NICHOLLS

West Australian Heather Nicholls says as soon as she and her husband, Geoff, stepped foot in Timboon, she knew it was the place they would spend their retirement.

The Nicholls moved to the town seven years ago, and bought the 19-hectare pick-your-own Berry World farm in 2014.

While Geoff still works full time for an oil and gas company, Heather and her daughter, Carissa, run the berry operation.

Between them, the women spend about 140 hours a week tending 1.5 hectares of berries. In the past three years, they have added an on-farm cafe and launched a range of gourmet jams and spreads.

They have one hectare devoted to albion, gaviota, juliet, chandler and melba strawberries. Juliet and melba start bearing fruit in October, with albion the most prolific, from November to April.

About half of Berry World’s strawberries are for pick-your-own sales, with the rest sold through local retailers and to fellow Food Artisans members, such as the Sow and Piglets brewery, which is using Heather’s berries in a new stout. The collaboration is a perfect example of how the group fosters positive change.

“They approached the artisans to become a member, which then begins that awesome relationship with the other members,” Heather says. “It just works.”