Our Adventure
Our Tasmanian Olive Oil Adventure
A Journey Rooted in Dreams, Resilience, and Tasmanian Olive Oil.
Flinders Island Olive Oil is the embodiment of dreams—dreams born from the vision of Jude and Mary-Anne, two passionate souls who traded city life in Melbourne for the rugged beauty of Flinders Island, Tasmania. Both women were Flinders Island holiday devotees since the late 1970s when they spent summers reading, resting, swimming in pristine waters, and enjoying the flavours of fresh Flinder’s Island produce. They were part of a group that purchased land together to set up a semi-permanent space for them to frequent. While there, another piece of land went up for sale, which they purchased with Mary-Anne's sister and dreamt of maybe living full-time on Flinder’s Island, Tasmania.
Why Tasmanian Olive Oil?
Jude, Mary-Anne and her sister Brenda pondered what they could do with the land they had purchased. They wanted something that kept them physically active and spoke of the land they fell in love with. First, they contemplated livestock, and although they did eat meat, they didn’t like the thought of sending it to slaughter after raising and caring for it. Jude researched horticulture crops for people looking for small farm activities, and olives were one of those that surfaced. The more she considered olives, the more she realised the surrounding landscape and native foliage reminded her of olives and olive groves described by the famous author L Durrell, when writing about his time in Corfu in My family and Other Animals.. Mary-Anne and Brenda accepted the challenge and so together Flinders Island Olives was formed.
New Beginnings
“You can start new journeys at any age, we started the Olive Grove when I was 50”, Jude.
In 2001, Jude and Mary-Anne decided to make their stay permanent and fulfill a dream of producing olive oil from the beautiful, rugged land that is Flinders Island.
Established in 2002, “Ours is the only certified organic olive grove on Flinders Island”, tucked behind the windswept sand dunes of Killiecrankie on the island’s northeast tip. The olive trees, thriving in this pristine environment, reflect the island’s untamed spirit and the clean, pollution-free air carried by the Roaring 40s winds.
They learned as they went, acquiring new skills out of necessity. First, they built fences, planted the olive trees, fertilised them, irrigated the land, and pruned them carefully. Eventually, the olive trees produced enough olives to pick and they learned how to prepare and process them organically, turning the olives into liquid Tasmanian olive oil. Finally, they learned bottling and labelling skills.
Our Tasmanian Olive Oil journey continues.
Today, Flinder’s Island Olives produces more olive oil than the Furneaux Islands can use. They have refined their craft, winning awards internationally in blind taste competitions against intergenerational European olive oil producers and bringing home golds to remote Flinder’s Island, Tasmania.
With Thanks
Mary-Anne Roberts, Co-Founder of Flinders Island Olives, Olive grower, party lover, and woman of passion for our place and community, passed away on November 28, 2016. She will always be remembered and is with us in our thoughts every step of the way.
Of course, none of this could be possible without the kindness and generosity of our Flinder’s Island community and the volunteers who help us tend to our olive grove, who which we would like to thank.
If you would like to be part of our Flinder’s Island story, you are welcome to join us in April during the picking season.