Discover Tarkine Pepperberry Co
Our Heritage
Way back when the Dutch sailed the high seas, Van Diemens Land – the first name for Tasmania -
was a cold misty lump of an island creating between it and the Australian mainland the body of water known as Bass Strait. In its struggle with the English for power and prestige, the Netherlands was desperate to find riches on the other side of the globe. They overlooked Tasmania in favour of the burgeoning
Dutch East Indies, little realising the flavourful potential of this small island below the Great Southern Land...
In the late 1950's, a sturdy young Dutchman left his homeland and sailed for the Antipodes. After some adventures in New Zealand and armed with nothing more than a battered old suitcase and an entrepreneurial spirit, Jos Danen set his sights on Australia. It was here that he knuckled down and really made a go of it, successfully mastering trades as many and varied as pastry chef, bricklayer, plumber, pest controller, and soccer referee.
Eventually he invested in a patch of wilderness in the Tarkine – the home of the Tasmanian native mountain Pepperberry. He gave much encouragement and moral support to his granddaughter, and provided sound business acumen for the eventual development of the Tarkine Pepperberry Co based in Waratah, western Tasmania.
Who We Are Today
In the spirit of our enterprising Opa, we continue to guide this native bush spice trade onwards. As with any journey, there have been tough times and calm harbours, storms and sunshine,
many friendly faces and words of encouragement along the way.
We are now sailing successfully, ever seeking to make our corner of the world a better place. We engage local harvesters and network with photographers, a retired horticulturalist, an IT specialist, a bush chef and product researchers to help support the Tasmanian economy and to improve our range of products so we can provide better customer satisfaction.
We work hard here at Tarkine Pepperberry Co to maintain a high standard of quality and to provide an ethical, sustainable,
and flavourful range of gourmet Tasmanian native mountain Pepperberry products. These can be used for a wide variety of sweet and savoury applications, as an ingredient in gin/whiskey/craft beer/kombucha distillation, in cheese-making, and also skincare products.
Our Philosophy
Our vision remains as firm as ever - supplying our customers with this beautiful native bush spice of the highest quality. We value sustainable agricultural methods, which is evident in the biodiversity of wildlife and plant species found here. We maintain organic principles, and earth-friendly processing techniques
and packaging options are primary concerns. We use home-compostable packaging for the majority of our products and are in the process of transitioning to 100% reusable or home-compostable packaging.
Our pepperberries are harvested from 100% private property, allowing us to provide quality assurance, which we believe is more difficult to achieve with wild harvested berries from Crown land, public reserves, forestry coupes, or roadside verges.
Our processing setup is a combination of hand-operated and solar-powered equipment. We are 100% off-grid. Our air dryer is powered by the sun and heated with timber sourced from our property's dedicated renewable wood forest, which provides firewood, construction timber and a nursery for young
pepperberry trees, as well as being a habitat for possums, kookaburras, fairy wrens, an extensive variety of fungi and so much more. Our trees receive only natural, organic inputs such as homemade compost, poultry manure, liquid seaweed
and worm farm tea.
We do not harvest all of the crop from each tree, but rather leave plenty of berries for the currawongs, green rosellas and other fauna for which this tree is a food source. Native wildlife such as quolls, wallabies, wombats and tassie devils abound on our carefully-managed property, with possums, bandicoots and birds of all kinds flourishing on our landscape, ensuring biodiversity and a peaceful balance of nature. Platypus thrive in the nearby pristine waterways.
Wildflowers bloom in early summer, and the meadows around the Pepperberry trees abound with small birds, native bees, numerous insects, and Honeybees. An area of native silvergrass (poa) provides habitat for the rare ground parrot. Utilising our green thumb tendencies, we have an ongoing propagation
program of endemic plant species such as Tasmanian waratah, teatree, green bottlebrush, mountain currant, banksia, various eucalypti and of course Pepperberries for planting out around the property.
We strive for a truly sustainable agriculture which shows that farming can be done in an earth-friendly manner.
A Final Note
We would like to thank you for taking the time to read our story.
The native Tasmanian mountain Pepperberry industry in general has had some rough beginnings, but with more scientific research, improved raw product sourcing techniques, collaboration with universities and chefs to develop
medicinal and culinary uses, and an ever-increasing awareness of just how special this bush spice really is, means
that the future looks bright. We would love to share this with you!
We wish to thank our Opa and Nanna for their strength and shining example, our family for their support and our friends for their belief in us; special thanks to Judi, Brad, Neri, Holly, Mae, Ron, Ed, Mr. Te, Corina and Deb.