The coffee industry has not always been a cup of kindness for the Jacques family.
Just when I was thinking I might be lost in the Atherton Tablelands of northern Queensland, I came across a driveway lined with termite mounds as high as a letterbox. Success! I round the bend to enter, at last, Jacques Coffee Plantation.
The story of this coffee operation is an amazing one of courage, determination and stickability. While living in their native Africa, both Linda and Nat Jacques had almost fatal accidents. In Linda's case, a bus crashed into her Mini in Kenya leaving her unconscious with a crushed pelvis. Nat lost his footing while climbing Tanzania's Mt Meru and tumbled thousands of metres before coming to rest in the treetops - incredibly in one piece.
After these near-death experiences and tired of Africa's political instability, the pair upped sticks and moved to Australia.
After reading about coffee being grown in Queensland's far north the Jacques bought a property. They worked hard through the 1980s to create a good business but then the recession hit. Heavily mortgaged, with $800,000 of coffee on 100,000 trees, the banks foreclosed and called off the harvest. Everything was sold and the family, which by then included two sons, had to start from scratch again. In 1990 they borrowed more money and planted on their present 72ha site - waiting five years for the 50,000 trees to mature. Then disaster struck again when papaya fruitfly in the area led to a compulsory mass spraying that contaminated the crops and killed the trees.
Most of us would probably have called it quits but the Jacques stoically borrowed again, planted 25,000 trees in clean fields, and have managed to recover and make a living.
Jumping on the bean-machine wagon for a "hillbilly's" trip around the plantation, I had to admire their tenacity. Coffee-bean processing has grown to be a huge market; one with a dollar value second only to oil.
Though there are dozens of bean varieties, the plants fall into two main classes: arabica, first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula; and robusta, which contains about twice the amount of caffeine as arabica.
Coffee is great to cook with. While it's most commonly used in desserts, it also makes excellent barbecue sauces and meat glazes. Look for freshly roasted beans with no oil spots, store in a rubber-sealed glass jar in a cool area and enjoy being part of the worldwide consumption of 40 million cups a day.
