Bunya nuts have become quite the obsession for Tamborine Mountain Distillery owner Gordon Chalmers.
Since the Jurassic-looking giant, spiky balls began falling from the sky with a thud on to his distillery carpark he began madly researching and experimenting with ways to use them.
Staff report that he can be found still up at 2am with headphones in his ears listening to podcasts while separating the nuts and out during the day with a helmet on his head collecting them.
Every three years the ancient trees deliver a bumper harvest and this year on the mountain it seems to have been particularly huge.
With the bumper crop calling, Gordan began frantically researching and after hours of work he has created the first ever cream liqueur made from non-dairy milk.
But it’s a painstaking process: collecting the cones, weighing up to nine kilograms and removing around 80 nuts from each one, dehydrating them, cracking open the shell and prising out the nut then grinding it to a fine powder.
The result is heavenly and Gordon believes it is a world-first.
He is keen to share the bounty with locals and is inviting them to drop off their cones for a taste of the final liqueur in line with their contribution.
“This isn’t about transactions. It’s about celebrating a rare season, a remarkable tree and a flavour that belongs right here,” said office manager Camille Holmes.
“Our hope is to capture this moment in liquid form, something to open later and remember this season by.”
Leeton Lee a Thungutti, Bundjalung and Mualgal man and senior fire practitioner with Bunya Peoples Aboriginal Corporation said some of the trees on the mountain are hundreds of years old.
“It was a big food source used for trade along southeast Queensland by First Nations people,” he explained.
“There were rules around ownership of trees, and the biggest thing was a gathering during the bumper crop years with marriages, ceremony and “politics” as well as a time to share and celebrate.”
He also stressed that the nuts are a large food source for many animals and encouraged people not to over harvest by always leaving at least half behind.
One tree can produce well over 40 cones.
