Of cakes and beef

"She'd be after Smithy - no doubt getting married soon," long timers quip.

Brides-to-be regularly turn up the saleyards looking for beef producer Greg Smith.

For 42 years, he has run a sideline enterprise making and decorating wedding cakes and all his business has come via word-of-mouth.

Generally, the word is, you find him at a cattle sale because, just like hand-making intricate little flowers and designing three-tier masterpieces, cattle are his love.

It's an unusual "marriage" but one that is working a treat for Greg.

He's now made 7594 wedding cakes, including nine in August so far - and is winning national awards for his self-taught skills.

Greg (pictured) has made the wedding cakes for many of the livestock agents to come through Lismore and Casino and it's also not unusual to hear an auctioneer, half way through selling, stop and say: "Good to see Smithy here again today. Does anybody need a wedding cake? Just see Smithy over there if you do".

With his wife Dorothy, Greg lives at Ballina, where he has a "cake room" that doubles as a shopfront for his business, Greg's Cakes. Their cattle are run on a property further north.

Ingredients arrive by semi-trailer - last year, Greg's Cakes used 999 kilograms of chocolate, 1.5 tonnes of icing and half a tonne of sugar.

Greg's grandfather was a baker, his mother a brilliant cake cook and his father also had a knack for the game.

One of eight kids, Greg grew up on a dairy farm at Rous Mill and tells the story of a pesty neighbour who set him on the path of a decorator.

"She annoyed the hell out of me bringing over her little icing flowers to show off to my mother, constantly praising herself up," he laughs.

"It took me three months to get the first rose right but it was so much better than what that neighbour did - once she saw mine, we never saw her again."

When he was just 10, Greg helped his father make a seven-tier cake for a cousin's wedding.

"Dad and I just did it for friends and relatives and never charged anything," he said.

"Mum was a great, old-fashioned cook - she could create a masterpiece out of a pound of butter and bit of flour.

"I think we wanted to impress her as much as anything.

"We'd milk the cows then make a cake or two."

When he was in his 20s, Greg took up work cutting cane and it wasn't until he was in his 30s he realised he could make a business out of the hobby.

"It's always been hard for me to see it as a business - running beef is the business - I call the cakes just something to do," he said.

Eight tiers is his largest cake and that was a 1.6 metre high affair.

Six years ago, a new trend started - divorce cakes.

"It does seem there are as many getting divorced these days as married so it makes sense I suppose," Greg said.

Usually it is the female half who is celebrating the divorce with a group of friends and wants a special cake for the occasion.

Mostly they are a heart split in two but the orders do come for much more passionate statements, such as certain parts of the male anatomy in various states of disarray.

Greg has now notched up 55 divorce cakes.

He also does monumental birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions and alongside the wedding cake count is just over 1000 of these.

For anybody turning 100, there is no charge.

Greg also volunteers graduation cakes for all the kids at his local special school and has done several dozen of those.

A thoroughly likeable bloke, it's not hard to believe he gets invites to many of the weddings he bakes for but he figures he's been to his own - that's enough.

For the past four years, Greg has entered the Bridal Industry cake decorating awards to collect a first, second and fourth at a national level against hundreds of other decorators.