OLIVE-oil soaps and skin creams are bringing rewards for an inventive Gunbower woman. GENEVIEVE BARLOW reports
Hardly a day goes by in Judy Steele's life when a great pot of liquid is not boiling away on her kitchen stove.
The olive oil soap and skin-cream maker has been cooking up her life's passion for five years, adding this, trying that, all in the name of improving her beautiful all-natural products.
Inspired by the discovery of the sandy loamy rises on northern Victoria's Gunbower Creek, Judy and her husband Andy planted about 2000 olive trees when they bought their eight-hectare farm eight years ago.
They'd previously farmed cattle and sheep on King Island, had lived at Hamilton and Echuca in Victoria and had read a lot about the olive industry before they decided to join it.
At the time, the olive industry, gingered by predictions of growing demand for oil, was picking up steam, yet the Steeles weren't so sure that producing oil in a market soon to be inundated with large-scale oil producers was wise.
Like the dairy industry around them, the olive-oil industry appeared set to be about volume rather than on-farm value-adding. Besides, their acreage was limited.
Mildura foodie Stefano de Pieri set Judy thinking about this.
"He came to address the Cohuna Progress Association and said he could see that the surrounding country was the most magnificent dairying country in the world but he couldn't see anyone making cheeses and yoghurts," Judy says.
"We thought about that. We have the most amazing olive oil.
"We are so blessed with such a green country and the air is so clear and our climate is very suitable for olives.
"It's very much like the olive growing areas in Italy."
It was at another seminar on the legal requirements of producing edible products that Judy had her "a-ha" moment.
Almost without thinking, when asked what she planned to do with her oil, Judy responded "I'm going to make soap".
And so she did. Five years from her first trial run, she has created a range of olive oil beauty products in her kitchen from oil squeezed from olives grown less than 100 metres from their back door.
Called Gunbower Creek, the Steeles' home-based business markets their all-natural products under the Olieve label.
They make a liquid soap, a cake soap, lip balm, body scrub and body butter. The products sell into shops across Melbourne, as well as as well stores in nearby Echuca.
"There are others doing this but we haven't found anyone making these products as naturally as we do," Judy says.
Testament to this are two huge blocks of beeswax Judy sources from near Coleraine, in southwest Victoria and keeps in her kitchen.
She uses beeswax in the lip balm and body butter, adding the cold-pressed olive oil, distilled oils for fragrance and, for the body butter, some coconut oil.
"We don't use any leather enhancers, chemicals or preservatives and we under-saponify our soaps, which leaves some oil to act as an emollient," she says.
"If you don't have that oily feel in a skin cream, it's probably because it has alcohol in it and alcohol will dry your skin."
Judy loves making things.
She established the Rouseabout knit label while on King Island, but sold that in 1992 before the family moved to the mainland to educate their children, Sarah and Hal.
When they moved to their farm on the Gunbower Creek, 40km west of Echuca, they pulled down the old house and rebuilt another in the same restful design. It has wide verandas, is two storeys, and is made from thermodynamic polystyrene brick, with polished aggregate-stone flooring with inbuilt heating.
It's a peaceful place, with the surrounding irrigated dairy country offering reprieve from the drier country beyond.
Recently two baby kangaroos, Brat and Baby, have become adoptees, choosing the veranda, and Judy's specially provided mattresses, for their night beds.
Mulga wattles line the property frontage along a quiet road that leaves the Murray Valley Highway and winds around past the old Wesleyan Church and school that was the heart of a place called Patho.
For Judy, who's never worn a skerrick of make-up in her life, it's the perfect place to create her dream.
And she knows her products are appreciated. "I have one mum in Echuca who says the body butter is the only thing that stops her son's eczema," she says.
She and Andy fit their passion for farming and nature around shiftwork at a nearby dairy factory.
But Judy's heart is set on making soaps and creams. "I'd just love to do it full-time," she says.
