THE Else family have been commercial producers of cape gooseberries in the rich volcanic soils on the heights of Tallegalla above Rosewood for more than 80 years.

The fruit was in commercial production in South East Queensland from around the 1880s and into the turn of the century when over-production caused a glut in the market, and forced growers to plant higher value crops.

Cape gooseberries underwent a resurgence as a lucrative cash crop after World War I and the tangy, sweet berry remained a much sought-after commodity into the 1970s.

The first seeds were brought to Queensland by would-be settlers aboard sailing ships that had stopped to provision at the Cape of Good Hope; a South African province where cape gooseberries had been grown by the local farmers since the early 1800s.

Cape gooseberries will grow in most types of well drained soils and were carried along the world’s trade routes where it gained a variety of common names including Incan berries. That name alludes to the first known civilisation to cultivate the plant which was given the scientific name, Physallis peruvian, by Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s.

However, it is a native of the Andes mountains of Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Columbia.

And as was found by the settlers who arrived in Moreton Bay, it flourished in the Queensland climate and soon became a common plant in vegetable patches.

Tom Else is well acquainted with its history in South East Queensland as his family has been part of the Tallegalla community since his great grandmother opened the Farmers Inn in the late 1870s.

“When the brigalow scrubs were cleared they would set fire to the debris. After the first rain fell, the cape gooseberries would germinate,” he says in relating the history told to him by his father.

But how did the seeds arrive in the native bushland?

“Bird droppings,” says Tom. “Birds are why we have to harvest the berries as soon as they mature … we have to beat the birds to the berries.”

The multi-seeded cape gooseberry is one of the edible fruiting members of the Solanaceae family, which includes tomatoes, eggplants, capsicum and chillies.

Tom estimates that a kilogram of cape gooseberries would contain enough seed to plant out 20ha (50 acres).

“The seeds have a hard, waxy coat and germinate quickly after fires and smoke. Those freshly fired scrub soils would be bursting with young plants after the first rain.”

There are many stories of picnickers flocking to those areas from as far as Ipswich and Brisbane to feast on the berries and to bag some to sell to local fruiterers.

It’s a tradition that Tom’s father, Cecil, followed.

“He’d tell the story of going to Mt Flinders after a bushfire had gone through and picking a couple of chaff bags full of cape gooseberries.”

The ‘cape’ in the common name of the orange berries comes from the husk (flower calyx) that surrounds the berry. It’s opaque while the berry is young and as it matures the husk becomes translucent.

Cecil Else planted his first commercial crop of cape gooseberries at Tallegalla in 1944.

“We had about 10 acres (4ha) under cape gooseberries. There was a big market for them back then.

In the following decade, Tom and his elder brother Jack, left school to work on the 31ha (76 acre) family farm.

After buying the farm from their father, the brothers acquired more land and continued to grow cape gooseberries as well as tomatoes and other vegetable crops on their 55ha property in the heights above Rosewood.

“In a peak year, we’d harvest about 20 ton (18 tonne) from the 10 acres,” Tom says.

They sold some to the fresh markets but the biggest buyers were the jam factories.

“We sold to Gows but other growers sold to Masons and Cottees.”

Locally, the market was still worth harvesting the labour-intensive crop through to the 1970s.

Tom recalls the skills his new wife, Joyce Leonard, brought to the family enterprise when they wed in 1965.

“The first year we were married, Joyce shelled three ton of berries on her own,” he recalled.

In those days, the jam factories would only accept them if the berries were dehusked.

Of necessity, the whole family was involved in the harvest and the subsequent ‘shelling’ and so, following the pattern of the growing up years of their dad and uncle, Tom and Joyce’s three children laboured beside their parents.

But as other types of jams such as strawberry and plum became more popular and housewives who once had time to make preserves and jams in their kitchen increasingly became part of the workforce, the cape gooseberry fell into relative obscurity.