CONSUMER demand for avocado has soared over the past two decades so why have the number of growers tapered off on Mount Tamborine?
Tim Baker owns a large property on the mountain and once grew hundreds of avocado trees alongside his father.
He said property prices and subdivision of larger lots has all but decimated the area’s avocado orchards.
Mr Baker has been out of the avocado game for some time now but said he ‘saw the writing on the wall’ as far back as 1989.
“We had a good irrigation system, we had cool rooms, a big packing shed and all the gear ... we did alright, but someone came along and offered us around $700,000 [for the land], I got a third of that and moved on,” he said.
“Dad originally had 51 hectares and ran a dairy on it, he subdivided a lot of that in the ‘60s early ‘70s but kept 12 hectares for cattle and sheep and planted some avocados on the land.
“We originally had around 1,000 avocado trees and were big on rhubarb too.
“Large blocks of avocado trees were planted on Tamborine Mountain in the ‘70s and ‘80s ... the primary purpose for the land was dairy but people planted the trees too.”
Mr Baker cultivated avocado trees on the property until selling up in 1989.                                                                                                                                                                        “We did alright, we’d pack and sell a couple thousand cases of avocados a year if we had a good crop and then sometimes when the season wasn’t right, we’d get less but that’s just the nature of farming.”
He said despite a promising start, the bottom fell out of the avocado market as soon as property prices began going up.
“There isn’t really a serious avocado farm up here now, most of them have sold out,” he said.
“There are still a few people growing them on the mountain, and I’ve seen the odd honesty stall out the front of a property but I don’t think anyone is making money out of avocados anymore ... the land’s just too dear.
“There are two hectare blocks around here and they want $800,000 to a million dollars for them, you’ve got to sell an awful lot of avocados to get that sort of money back.
“Everybody wants a house and blocks of land are being divvied up, it’s a sign of the times and it’s not just happening on Tamborine Mountain, it’s happening everywhere.”
He said there was a time when avocados did well on the mountain and the trend to grow these trees came from dairy farmers who sold up and got into small crops instead.
“Alec Kidd and Charlie Eden, they too did well with it back in the day,” he said.
“Alec is of course, well passed away now but at the time there were quite a few properties that had around three to four hundred trees.”
He said as avocado popularity soared thanks to millennials and their penchant for menu offerings of ‘smashed avo on toast’, growers started planting trees in areas where land was cheaper and gave Mount Tamborine a wide berth.
“Avocado trees are being planted in their thousands in Austinville and up towards Bundaberg, growers are looking for cheaper dirt.
“I love living here but I’ve seen a lot of change to Mount Tamborine over the years.”

GRANDIOSE BEGININGS