On Sunday after lunch, we stopped at Tinaberries, a strawberry farm that I had read about and added to our list of places to visit while in Bundaberg. Unfortunately, strawberry season in the area is from August to October, so while we’d be missing the pick-your-own opportunity, we’d still have access to their beautiful grounds, as well as their special fresh fruit ice cream.
The Tinaberries property is definitely one that would be inviting to families and anyone who is looking for a quiet, open outdoor space to relax and breathe in fresh air. They have a huge lawn that has plenty of shady cover provided by huge, blankety trees, along with beautiful flowers everywhere, marked by handwritten chalk signs with cute messages like, “If you are not a bee, please stay out of the garden.” The owners provide big picnic blankets for you to borrow and enjoy their lawn. They also have a number of play structures for little ones to play and run around. And given they grow their own strawberries (and presumably their own passion fruit), they allow you ample tastings of jams and butters made with their own fruit. We tried their strawberry and blackberry jams, which had far more fruit than sugar in them, along with a hint of lemon to even out the sweetness — these were delicious. We especially loved their passion fruit butter, which had a rich passion fruit pulp complete with passion fruit seeds, sugar, egg yolks, and butter. We ended up buying a jar of this to take home for Chris’s parents, along with their “lamington chocolate” macadamias, which were macadamia nuts covered in milk chocolate and shredded dried coconut.
If that was not enough, I especially enjoyed their fresh, churned to order soft serve ice cream. On Sunday, they had two flavors, strawberry and passion fruit, so we got both flavors in kiddie cup sizes. I’m not sure if it’s the Australian dairy that made these ice creams so delicious, but the creaminess and milkiness of the ice creams really stood out in my mind among the fruit ice creams we’ve had. They had plenty of passion fruit and strawberry to scream that they were extremely fruit forward, but it didn’t overshadow how creamy and rich the dairy in the ice creams were. Both the creaminess and the fruitiness stood out and did not outshine the other.
Food in Australia just tastes better overall than in the U.S. Animals have more space to roam around, get exercise, and eat what they are supposed to eat. Produce gets the TLC and nutrients they need to be more tasty and nutrient dense. From a food/eating perspective, I’m not sure why you would ever leave Australia to come to the U.S.; it’s like a downgrade in a million ways.