THERE is a green rush to plant avocados all over Australia, with forecast prices remaining high and demand seemingly insatiable.
But there is a special intensity atop the Comboyne Plateau, perched between the Manning and Hastings Rivers, where more than 24,000 are trees emerging from the steep slopes of the north-facing escarpment, doubling the number first planted in the mid-1980s.
The Comboyne is a special plateau, a middle-earth-like uprising which produces a variety of fine food. There is excellent dairy country here, created on red soil that used to grow rainforest. Potatoes used to be a staple commodity but no longer.
The switch to avocados makes sense for the Comboyne, with its cooler micro-climate bringing on harvest later in the year - after August and through Christmas.
The handy harvesting window fits between northern NSW, which is picking now, and New Zealand - Western Australia which comes in after Christmas.
As a result Comboyne fruit claims higher market prices simply because there is less fruit around.
Of course Comboyne growers like former World Bank agronomist Ernst Tideman is convinced the cool climate product tastes better and suffers less pest pressure. He notes that 80 percent of his harvest goes to market labelled premium.
There is even talk of creating a Comboyne brand.
The real energy in this location is coming from Georgie and Dave Ryan, whose father and father-in-law Gordon Burch kick-started the current increase in plantations in the plateau.
The Ryans, geologists formerly employed in Western Australias mining boom, are now pouring an incredible amount of energy into the dining boom and the familys 13,000 tree orchard, 5500 recently planted, using the slope and its aspect to their distinct advantage.
We dont plant without terraces, says their neighbour Mr Tideman, referring to the practice of sculpting a slope to accommodate trees and level laneways for picking.
The very wet years of 2006-07 highlighted the real need for drainage after one third of the plateaus annual three metres of rain fell in less than a week, causing 1600 of Mr Tidemans trees to shed their fruit from acute phytopthora.
These days all new trees are planted on terraces, or at least mounds.
Mulch, from Remondis organic resource recovery operation at Telegraph Point, is also being used to bring a greater population of microbacteria into the root zone, which are used to fight the dreaded phytopthora, alongside regular injections of phosphonic acid.
