Australians have a history of being black tea drinkers and following their mostly British heritage, but that is rapidly changing.

We were known for drinking a classic style of black tea called “Billy Tea’” and this was well known in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. It was almost always consumed with milk and sugar.

By world standards we don’t rate that high in consumption, approximately number 55, even being beaten by New Zealand.

Even though we are still mainly black tea consumers this is now changing with the growing interest in green teas, oolongs and other more interesting handcrafted teas from different countries around the world.

Instead of the traditional black mid-grown pekoe style teas of Sri Lanka and full bodied Assams from India, people are now discovering Darjeelings, Keemuns, Himalayan black teas and are moving away from the classic fannings in a tea bag. For convenience pyramid style tea bags are becoming more and more popular and so are full leaves.

As far as production goes there is a lot more interest in growing tea in Australia, some for the commercial market, but more and more some small niche growers are popping up.

Let us do a whirlwind tour around the tea plantations of Australia beginning in Northern Queensland.

We have the beautiful Daintree Tea Company which is located on the Cubbagudta Plantation, situated in the heart of the Daintree wilderness and rainforest area in North Queensland. This was established in 1978 and is a family owned tea company.

We have Nerada Plantation which is Australia’s largest tea grower located in sunny Queensland. Here there are more than 1,000 acres of tea planted on the Cairns Highlands delivering 6 million kilograms of fresh tea leaves to the Nerada Tea processing factory every year. The processing factory at Glen Allyn turns these tea leaves into 1.5 million kilos of black tea and ships them to the Nerada Tea packing factory in Brisbane.

Next we head off to Nucifora Estate which is located in the wet tropics of far north Queensland near Innisfail and in the rich agricultural district of Palmerston. This plantation is approximately 15 years old and uses no pesticides. The plantation covers over 150 acres and produces black tea.

The 150 acres is divided into 3 sections so harvesting is a continuous process. Every 21 days each bush has only the top 2 leaves and the bud picked so harvesting is always fresh

Now one of our favorites, the award winning Arakai Estate, which is located in Bellthorpe in Queensland which originally began as a timber plantation along with growing avocados. They wanted a complimentary crop so after doing the initial research and testing, it turned out Bellthorpe was ideally suited to growing Camellia sinensis and these conditions could create a high quality tea.  Good elevation, rainfall, and fertile soils with the correct acidity were all part of the package. Over 3 years they planted out 1Ha with 12,500 tea plants that included 6 different Japanese green tea varieties.  The plantation now has over 5km of hedges that are meticulously maintained to allow for machine harvesting of the freshest tips.

The unique thing about Arakai teas is that they are of the highest quality and processed using Taiwanese methods, they also produce different flushes of green and black teas.

Next we move down to northern New South Wales to Murwillumbah and Madura Tea to a paradise environment which comprises in part 250,000 tea bushes, nestled in a region of pristine rainforests, streams and rivers.

This plantation produces premium black teas which are often blended with teas from Sri Lanka and India to produce the Madura range of teas.

Madura offer estate tours and even have facilities to hold special events

There is a big change of environment when we travel into Victoria and arrive at Two Rivers and The Alpine Tea Co. Both of these plantations produce Sencha style teas for ITOEN, a large Japanese company, as well as their own range of teas.

Two Rivers Green Tea is a family tea farm north east of Melbourne in the Acheron Valley at the junction of the Acheron and Goulburn Rivers. This plantation is located at the same latitude as the main tea growing area of Japan and enjoys four distinct seasons per year.

In this area the fertile river flats offer beautifully drained soil with a plentiful water supply which provides an ideal growing environment for the Camellia sinensis plant. 170,000 tea plants were planted in 2001 to create the plantation that is there today.

The three main varieties of Camellia sinensis grown in these regions are Sayamakaori Tea which is the earliest of our varieties to shoot and easily recognisable by the deepest of green leaf colour. Next is Yabukita which is the most widely grown variety in Japan and Okuhikaori Tea which is bred from Yabukita and the last of the maturing variety.

Across the mountain we have Alpine Tea Company, located in the beautiful Kiewa valley in southern Victoria approximately 30 kilometres from Falls Creek which is a well-known ski resort.

In this area the Yabukita varietal grows well and so the two types of tea produced here are Japanese Sencha style and a roasted Hojicha style.

The fresh leaf is processed in Wangarratta where the first step involves steaming. The tea is then rolled and dried over a couple of hours to produce the high grade classic style Sencha of Japan

Lastly we will venture down to one of the world’s most southern tea plantations called Dry Ideas. This plantation is the oldest commercial grower and processor of Japanese tea varietals in Australia and is located in the Huon region in Tasmania which is also famous for its beautiful timber. There are no pesticides used and solar panels are used in the irrigation and drying of the teas. The property is owned by Dr Gordon Brown and his wife Jane who have a wealth of knowledge in agriculture.

Overall you can see we are not sleeping when it comes to tea in Australia.