Whitsunday Gold Coffee

Whitsunday Gold Coffee began in the early 1990s, when founders Peter and Nikki bought a former sugar cane farm in the Whitsunday hinterland and set out to convert it to coffee -- an unusual bet in a region better known for cane and cattle. The pair traveled to the United States and Hawaii to study coffee-growing methods, reasoning that the Whitsundays sit at roughly the same latitude as Hawaii's own coffee country. Peter bought a planting implement from the Wilcox family in Bowen, sourced seed stock, built greenhouses, and raised the tube stock that would eventually become the plantation. The project stalled when Peter was diagnosed with motor neuron disease; he died in March 2010, before it was finished. In March 2017, Cyclone Debbie tore through the region and badly damaged what had been built, but rather than abandon the farm, Nikki chose to rebuild and expand it with the help of Rick Shelley. What stands today, just north of Proserpine on the Bruce Highway, is one of Australia's largest coffee plantations -- some 140,000 Arabica trees alongside a cafe, gift shop, small animal park, and bird aviary -- grown from a decision to finish what she and her husband had started.