barenuts - ABOUT

The macadamia nut comes from a sub-tropical coastal rainforest tree that is native to eastern Australia. It is the only Australian native food plant that is produced and exported in any significant quantity, and ironically it took another country to realise its potential.

Australian aborigines collected and ate macadamia nuts probably for thousands of years. Commercialisation may have begun with the aboriginal tribes who used to collect nuts and sell or barter them. South of Brisbane, King Jacky of the Albert River Tribe collected the nuts and traded them, probably for tobacco and rum. They were known to aborigines by names such as gyndl, jindilli, boombera and kindal kindal
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Bopple (ship) at Eagle Street Wharf

At Mount Bauple (our local area), south of Maryborough in Queensland, where possibly the largest area of native trees grew, settlers from Tiaro would, in the late 1870s, hitch their drays and journey sixty kilometres to the mountain each winter. These nuts found a ready sale in Brisbane and Maryborough and were probably the first commercial sales by non-indigenous Australians. The macadamia remains very significant to the locals, many of whom still refer to it as the "Bauple" (pronounced "Bopple") Nut. There are very few remaining wild macadamia trees in Eastern Australia. Bauple Mountain has now been recognised for its cultural and scientific importance and is under the protection of Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (DERM).

The macadamia has been known colloquially by various other names including "Queensland Nut", "Maroochi Nut", "Mullimbimby Nut", “Australian Nut”, and “Bush Nut”.

In Australia there was a long period of backyard and cottage macadamia industry. Various obstacles restricted marketing and expansion of planting. One of those was the difficulty in cracking the shell. This was a major disadvantage in the eye of the consumer and many people were experimenting with cracker designs. Other problems related to tree variability. Grafting appeared so difficult that they were considered ungraftable.

As early as 1881 macadamia seeds had been sent to Hawaii and some of the important breakthroughs, such as successful nursery grafting and design and manufacture of suitable cracking and processing equipment th Macadamia Nuts- as Australian as the Koala bear

Macadamia Nuts- as Australian as the Koala bear

en occurred there, allowing significant industry establishment in Hawaii, particularly from the 1940s. This resulted in macadamias, despite their origins, becoming widely known as “Hawaiian Nuts”.

In 1962, the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd., one of Australia’s biggest and oldest public companies, (later to change its name to CSR Ltd.) decided to investigate the prospects for a large scale macadamia industry in Australia. Their efforts and investments resulted in new propagation techniques and standards, improvements in the ability to control the massive insect problems, and improvements in manufacturing which laid the basis for a new, modern factory. The techniques developed by CSR made possible the subsequent development of other commercial plantings and at last the industry in Australia was able to undergo significant expansion.