AFTER 30 years in the big-city pressure cooker, Lyn and Andrew Jamieson are learning how to enjoy life in a singularly enjoyable way.

Ten years ago the couple bought their 40ha property near Fish Creek, in South Gippsland, their first step toward realising a dream that is now Golden Creek Olives.

    AT A GLANCE
  • Who: Lyn and Andrew Jamieson
  • What: olives
  • Why: a steep learning curve
  • Where: Fish Creek
  • Report: ANDREW MOLE

In the early days, everything was a disaster. The best-laid plans for long weekends were forever being shelved as the latest crisis, which had unfolded in their absence, had to be confronted.

"Yet when we made the move full time, those disasters simply became incidents," Lyn said.

"You just have to learn to go with the flow."

Visit Golden Creek Olives today and you would be forgiven for thinking the Jamiesons had been running their enterprise forever.

In addition to looking after 900 olive trees and planting 3500 natives so far, they also custom process for groves from as far afield as Bairnsdale, boosting throughput from their own three tonnes to about 16 tonnes. They also custom prune.

Spare land is used for cattle agistment and they have a cozy partnership with a local dairy farmer swapping sludgy olive by-product as a feed supplement for practical advice and the loan of equipment.

They were quick to establish the processing business after importing an Olio Mio 60kg processor nine years ago.

The equipment can process up to 100kg of olives an hour. The smallest batch of fruit the Jamiesons process is 40kg and the largest is one tonne, as boutique as the business can get.

As devotees of extra-virgin olive oil, they must produce an unrefined product with a free fatty acid content of less than 1 per cent, no organoleptic faults and processed below 30C.

The Jamieson's content is about 0.3 per cent FFA and they work between 26C and 28C, which improves extraction.

Despite their run of early "disasters", the Jamiesons - as you would expect from their backgrounds: Andrew in medicine and Lyn in information technology - came into farming with their eyes and ears wide open.

They fell for the area while pursuing their passion for sailboarding at Shallow Inlet, near Wilson's Promontory.

"We saw the place in a July, it was all green rolling hills and looked spectacular," Lyn said.

"When we took over in October, we had rolling golden hills and quickly discovered the farm was known locally as ragwort flats," she said.

"So we certainly learnt a lot in that first year."

Apart from a couple of neglected old trees, the Jamiesons were the first olive growers in the district. There are now five other growers.

The cycle at Golden Creek moves in harmony with the seasons.

The couple pick and process the olives from April to the end of July, and then prune from July until October.

Pruning the trees ruthlessly ensures they are at a working height for handpicking and also encourages tree health and fruiting.

Prunings are chipped and used as mulch under younger trees, but nothing is used from other properties. There is no use of harsh chemicals, although trees are given boron and minerals to nourish them.

Disease has not been an issue, but the occasional case of scale is controlled using white oil as an adjunct to the predatory native wasp.

"We are determined to minimise our chemical and environmental footprint," Lyn said.

She confessed to using chemicals in the early days as a one-off to hammer blackberries in addition to ripping and burning.

Then it was in with the olives.

They went for a spread of Italian, Spanish and Greek varieties using rootstock from Modern Olives in Lara.

"They all have such different characteristics," Lyn said.

"Our Italians are leccino, frantoio, pendolino and coratina, the Spanish are arbequina and picual and we have koroneiki from Greece.

"From our three tonnes we will extract between 450 and 500 litres of oil. It does not sound a lot but we are not looking to grow that much bigger, we are very definitely focused on the boutique business.

"As well as selling from the farm and farmer markets, we also supply restaurants and outlets in the region and one in Melbourne."

By coming to Fish Creek knowing their farming neighbours had "been there, done that" Lyn and Andrew were more than happy to tap into the local resource bank, learning the corners that could be cut, and the ones that should never be tinkered with.

The end result is a business which Lyn describes as "sustainable" - with the odd bit of surgery thrown in.

"We came here to make something, and I think we have. We have invested a lot financially, but also emotionally and socially, and it is all paying off," Lyn said.

"This is a great community, and you will always fit in as long as you support the local football team.

"We are also involved with Landcare, the local choir, tree planting through the catchment authority and the local bird observers, although time has been hard to find for that lately."

The large telescopes scattered around their home are also a giveaway to the Jamieson's passion for astronomy.

But while their eyes might be on the stars, Lyn said their feet were firmly on the ground.

"Nobody said we couldn't do it, so we did."

Lyn will will speak of her experiences at a Nurture the Land, Nourish the People: Food Farming and Health 2010 forum in Warragul on Monday.

  • For details, phone Jenny O'Sullivan on (03) 5663 2386 or Sue Webster 0402 267 802.