Australian artisan cheese is produced in small dairies across the country. Slow Food Australia encourages consumers to support these makers and so help to extend rural communities and economies where these farming families and cheesemakers use their skills.
Tasmania
Bruny Island Cheese / Nick Haddow worked for a decade with specialist cheese makers in many countries before he and partner Leonie settled on Bruny Island in southern Tasmania in 2001 and began making cheese for themselves. The cheeses are very much the product of Nick’s travels and training throughout the great cheese producing regions of France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. They are the cheeses he loves to make and eat. Nick is a traditionalist, who recognises that great cheese was made for centuries before modern technology played a role. He believes passionately in the old way of making and maturing cheese. For him, cheese-making is a pursuit of integrity and flavour. Bruny Island cheese is made from both cow and goat milk. The animals are farmed in an environmentally sustainable way to produce the best milk possible. We believe profoundly that the milk is what makes the cheese and therefore the good treatment of animals and then their milk is paramount to us.
Western Australia
Cambray Sheep Cheese / The Wilde family owns Western Australia’s only sheep dairy in the heart of the jarrah forest to the west of Nannup. On a small, verdant, highly-productive 65-hectare farm, Bruce and Jane Wilde and their son Tom maintain a milking flock of ewes – a cross between the east friesland breed originating from the Dutch-German border and a number of other breeds to create an animal that is hardier than the pure east friesland. Jane makes the soft cheeses by hand using traditional french recipes: they are turned daily in a curing room with temperature and humidity control. The hard cheeses, made by Tom, are aged for at least 26 weeks before release. The Wildes also grow an orchard of citrus, stone fruit and avocados and about 60 varieties of heritage apple maintained on a chemical-free basis. The family was selected as a Western Australian participant in Terra Madre: world meeting of food communities in Turin, Italy, in October 2006 and again in 2008. There are only 12 sheep dairies in Australia. Sheep cheese is often described as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of cheeses, renowned for its unique flavour, subtlety and texture.