Primary Industry
Issue No. 2 - September/October 2001
dry prospects
by Ian Henderson
Rural correspondent Ian Henderson profiles the dried fruit industry in South Australia as it seeks a revival
In the 1880s, an entrepreneur named George Chaffey arrived in Australia. George and his brother William had established a successful “irrigation colony” in California, and George had been invited by future Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin to examine the possibility of establishing a similar operation on the River Murray.
In 1887 the Chaffey brothers founded the irrigation towns of Mildura in Victoria and Renmark in South Australia. The Chaffeys developed the first irrigated fruit properties on the Bookmark plains surrounding Renmark, giving birth to a dried fruit industry for which there was a ready market in the British Empire.
Auspicious beginnings they may have been for an industry more than 110 years old, but the dried fruit industry in South Australia is no longer what it used to be. Indeed it cries out for a recovery, being but a shadow of what it was as little as 10 years ago, however producers and marketers are confident of the industry’s potential to be revived.
Dried fruit production is limited to less than 700 growers in South Australia, most of them on irrigated properties in the Riverland but also many of them in the Barossa Valley. Such is the nature of the industry that these days dried fruit is no longer the mainstay for any of these growers. Most, according to Renmark grower Phil Sims, have perhaps two or three acres devoted to dried fruit production with the main part of their properties given over to fresh fruit and wine grapes. From a production high of about 90,000 tonnes in 1990-91 (of which about 50,000 tonnes were exported), perhaps only 2000 tonnes are likely to be produced this season. Ask Phil Sims the question why and you’ll get an unequivocal, one-word answer.
“Turkey,” he says. Phil, one of two grower members on the South Australian Dried Fruits Board, belie...
