In its own small way

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This was published 13 years ago

In its own small way

Fruits of labour ... the atmosphere is friendly.

Fruits of labour ... the atmosphere is friendly.

Tricia Welsh finds a town full with crisp fruit and other golden produce.

'There's gold in them thar hills,'' might have been the catch-cry when the precious metal was discovered in 1852 around the village of Stanley in the state's north-east.

Today, another type of precious gold is being produced - saffron, or Crocus sativus. Seven years ago, Michael and Annette Nuck took over the farming of saffron, which they hand-harvest each autumn from mid-April to the end of May to produce Stanley Saffron.

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It's a back-breaking job as the flowers shoot up to just a few centimetres high. They have to be picked, taken inside, dried, weighed and packaged within 24 hours. ''They come up so fast, we pick three to four times a day,'' Michael says. ''We have got to grab the flowers before they open - before the bees and birds get on to them.''

This year the Nucks yielded just 300 grams of saffron for the whole season. However, one season they packaged just less than two kilograms - which at $80,000 a kilo for good-quality saffron isn't bad for six weeks' work.

Stanley Saffron is sold in lots of five grams to 10 grams, mainly to local restaurants, a few Melbourne chefs who appreciate the difference between the dried and fresh product and in 300-millilitre vials through local gourmet outlets and the Stanley Pub.

The town was once a bustling commercial centre, a flourishing goldfield with daily coaches to nearby Beechworth, Yackandandah and Melbourne. There were shops, a courthouse with lock-up, an athenaeum, a post office and seven hotels.

Stanley was originally known as Snake Valley, and then a little later as Upper Nine Mile. A greeting sign at the entrance of the town declares that the small settlement was gazetted as Stanley in 1861, when it supported 4000 people in three ''suburbs'' - Little Scotland, Little Ireland and a Chinese village.

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Today it has a spread-out population of about 700 people.

You can count the businesses that operate in town on two hands: the pub, the post office and Rob Sinclair's apple shed; Dave Clark is the Stanley blacksmith, forging items in his back garden shed; Ed Tyrie runs meditation classes; Eunice Eiseman hand-crafts original collectable Stanley Bears from her home; Genevieve Milham recently opened PlaneTrees Lodge for B&B accommodation on the site of the town's former timber mill; and historic Bloomfield Walnut Grove has accommodation in the original 1860s homestead.

There is no police station, no petrol station, no general store, no mobile coverage and the post office operates only four hours a day. However, post masters Leonie Williams and Neil Higgins plan to open The Stanley Provender in the original general store that first opened its doors in 1852 - even before the town was established.

For years, Stanley has been synonymous with crisp apples, juicy pears, mixed berries and delicious walnuts.

Orchards still edge the meandering roads in and out of town, although today there are only five orchardists, their numbers having halved in recent years. You can pick your own blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, red and black currants and American brambleberries in season at High Grove Chestnut & Berry Farm. You can also buy seasonal apples, apricots, berries, walnuts and chestnuts from the family-operated farm shop at Snowline Fruits. Maggie Mackenzie and Steven van den Bergh produce Jim Jam products from their home kitchen and will sell through their new farm-gate shop that is due to open in November.

On October 16-17, the town will come together to stage the inaugural Stanley Plateau Music Carnivale. With local artists, musicians, dancers, street performers and farmers' and artisans' markets, it will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of Stanley township.

See www.beechworthonline.com.au and plateauevents.wordpress.com.

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