So after my judging and eating hijinks in Port Douglas where’s a girl to go but south, literally in search of some of the Tablelands most well known producers including two coffee plantations, a distillery, a Swiss Italian restaurant, a coffee museum, cheesemakers and a rain forest retreat. Come along with me for a ride Dear Reader, but do have a cup of coffee ready for this is a long story (and the coffee will help with the coffee cravings, trust me!).

Skybury Coffee Planation

I always thought that one would have to travel overseas to see a coffee plantation but apparently I was so very wrong. We are at Skybury Coffee Plantation, Australia’s first and largest coffee plantation in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland which is about 1.5 hours drive from Port Douglas. We have just enough time to have a coffee (and a very good one just as one would expect) before we get onto a bus to take a tour of the coffee plantation. Curious coffee connoisseurs can take a 45 minute tours which depart two to three times a day and cost $25 a person.

John our guide first drives us for a drive through the farm that also grows papaya and lady finger bananas as well as coffee beans. When a banana flower appears on a banana tree, they wrap it in a sack and allow it to grow bananas for a period of 16 weeks. There is a mother and a child or a sucker tree which is the smaller one and a banana tree can only produce one lot of bananas in its lifetime. After that they need to cut it down and they will grow the bananas off the child or sucker tree. Who knew right?

We are next onto where the coffee bean trees are growing. Coffee is a tropical plant and here they only grow arabica beans (as opposed to the robusta which is an inferior bean used in less expensive coffees). This arabica coffee bean comes in both red and yellow and is best grown at altitudes of 500-1500  metres high (it is 525 metres here). Did you know that coffee trees are said to produce the best beans between the ages of 5-10 years and these trees are currently even years old. They are thirsty trees indeed requiring 1 litre of water a day each.

A coffee cherry

Inside a coffee cherry-two beans

We pluck one of the cherries and they are a rubied red and resemble small, hard berries. There is a thinnish but firm outer layer, like a thick grape skin and inside is a very, very sweet, thin juicy layer which is similar to a longan or lychee. Inside this is the actual coffee bean which is pale yellow in colour and covered in a slippery membrane called a mucosa.

To pick the beans they use an automated picker from Brazil which is very similar to an olive harvesting machine. Fibreglass rods rotate through the trees and the cherries fall off and harvesting takes about two months in total. Per hectare they get about 1 tonne of wet cherries which are then dried out and lose 75% of their weight to make 250kg of beans. They then lose another 17% in the final drying process to remove as much moisture as possible as moisture can cause mold.

They sort these first through water and the premium beans float to the top. Most of their beans are exported overseas to markets such as London, Paris, Berlin and even Italy and they export a special bean to Japan called a peaberry as it is a whole bean rather than two halves and the Japanese like it because it has a sweeter taste.

The coffee roasting machine

These are then stored in a 40 tonne storage tank and can be kept for years there or shipped out straight away as green beans. At Skybury they also roast on site using a coffee roaster and the beans get roasted twice and they take out the beans just before they reach 212C for a medium roast whereas they have an extra minute or two in the dark roast. They have three trays of coffee which you can use a spoon to taste and to do so you suck or aspirate it over your tongue (like wine or olive oil).

It’s lunch time and having missed breakfast I’m starving! There is a cafe style menu available with a caesar salad with a twist, instead of offering it plain with bacon or with chicken, there is the option for salt and pepper squid so I take that up along with a papaya shake and a slice of bannoffee pie.

Creme de Papaya shake $7.50

The drinks are not cheap but the papaya shake is delicious without that really strong papaya aroma that divides people. There’s just the right amount of creaminess. I rarely have more than a sip of a milkshake as they can be meals in themselves but I find myself drinking half of this.

Lime crush $7.50

The lime crush using their Mexican limes with a distinctive orange skin is refreshing. The limes aren’t sold commercially because their skins are hard to keep clean and they have too many pips but they taste just like regular Tahitian limes.

Salt and pepper squid caesar salad $17.50

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“Why does it say “0″ under the temperature gauge?” I ask Mr NQN as we take the drive from Sydney to Canberra one Friday afternoon-the one that happens to see a breakdown and an accident so we’re a tad late.

“That’s because it is zero degrees outside” he says grimly, gritting his teeth. Even though we are in the warmth of the car I pull my scarf tightly around me in anticipation of alighting the vehicle. We arrive in Canberra cold, tired and hungry. Luckily our first destination is Italian and Sons. It’s not often that you can walk into a city restaurant nowadays and get a table at 9:30pm. So when we walk into Italian and Sons in Canberra and get a table and turn around to see another couple doing the same thing we’re pleasantly surprised.

In fact things are downright happening at Italian and Sons. An easel at the front of the restaurant holds people’s coats and we walk past tables and tables of people laughing and eating. We walk past the bar which also serves as a salumeria with several types of cured sausages hanging up and a cured ham leg ready to slice. People are thronging about, sitting at tables-a family of seven sits elbow to elbow picking up pieces of pizza and forkfuls of pasta while tables of two and four lean in and talk animatedly to each other.

Service is warm and old school-they help you on and off with your coat and hang it on the back of your chair for you. The back of the restaurant faces the open kitchen where the large wood fired oven churns out pizzas and dishes that would make your heart melt in this weather. I know what we want-you see I had been scouting out the menu in the car and knew exactly what I wanted. The only change we made was to order the special for the night the beef cheeks in chianti as our waiter told us that that was as close to their signature dish as it gets when it is available.

Complimentary rosemary and garlic bread

We are absolutely starving. I like to eat early at 6pm so eating at 9:45pm was not bodeing well for me yet I refused to stop and eat fast food when I knew that this was waiting for me. So when our waiter presents us with some deliriously good rosemary bread I dive right in. It’s a pillowy soft bread with a light crust to it from the oven and generously seasoned with rosemary and salt (a little too much of the salt on one slice). I save my second slice to have with the rest of the food knowing that Italian food always has such delicious, moppable sauces and I am a sauce fiend.

Carpaccio of wagyu ‘bresaola’, fiore di capra and roasted grapes $15

We’re not kept waiting long as this carpaccio of cured wagyu breseola is lovely, thinly sliced and served with a delicate goat’s cheese from Italy and roasted grapes and rocket. The roasted grapes are halfway between a grape and a sultana still retaining that plump juiciness and it complements the breseola, goats cheese and peppery rocket well as well as giving it moisture.

Chilli and garlic yamba prawns and eggplant caponata $22

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