Planting The Seed
Australia’s indigenous inhabitants
had very good reasons for being nomadic. One was ‘Kindal
Kindal’, an imposing tree with shiny dark green leaves
and sweet-smelling blossoms that grew on the eastern strip
of the Great Dividing Range. The Aborigines would congregate
wherever the tree grew, to feast on its edible nuts which
first had to be removed from hard, woody shells.
They regarded the nuts not only as a delicacy with rich nutritional
value, but a source of valuable medical and cosmetic properties.
 In
the 1850s, botanist Ferdinand von Mueller and Walter Hill,
then director of the Botanical Gardens of Brisbane, Australia,
discovered two species of these trees growing in the Queensland
rainforests. They named the smooth-shelled macadamia Macadamia
integrifolia and the rough-shelled species - which also produces
an edible nut - Macadamia tetraphylla. The genus Macadamia
acknowledged a prominent scientist of the time, Dr John McAdam.
Macadamias, then, had both a tradition and a name, but their
commercial potential was neglected to such a degree that the
first commercial plantations were established in Hawaii from
seeds sent from Australia.
Australia left it until the second half of the 20th Century
to recognise the value of the macadamia as a horticultural
industry ... and by this time much of the world market knew
the product as ‘Hawaiian nuts’. But enthusiasm
and confidence were such that it lost little time making up
lost ground. Today, Australia enjoys its standing as the world’s
top producer, proving to the world that its own nut, grown
in its natural habitat, is superior to anything else in the
world.
 Pacific Plantations is a key player on both the domestic
and international stage. It has been involved in the macadamia
nut industry since the mid-1970s and is now one of the world’s
biggest processors. Pacific Plantations is Australia’s
largest privately-owned macadamia plantation and processing
plant.
 Located
in the heart of the north-eastern New South Wales’ fertile
volcanic strip, Pacific Plantations produces a substantial
proportion of Australia’s macadamia crop. Reliable rainfall
is an important factor in growing healthy macadamia trees.
Even before the MacRae’s original plantation produced
its first crop, their nursery was producing seedlings for
other growers who found their enthusiasm infectious. Today,
their processing plant handles the harvests not only of their
own farms, but of other growers.
Pacific Plantations prides itself on the scope of its operations
- propagating its own seedlings, managing the plantations,
and harvesting and processing the crop through to a packaged
product. Its total control over all stages ensures an unmatched
level of quality and consistency.
The Pacific Plantations nursery produces more than 30,000
grafted trees each year of superior cultivators which produce
a high quality kernel.
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