WHAT wears glasses and loves bananas? If your answer was a Minion, you’re not wrong but you’re also not right.
Former Bremer High student, bespeckled banana farmer, Bill O’Sullivan, can’t get enough of the long yellow fruit.
Mr O’Sullivan, 62, grew up in Ipswich, and after a few twists and turns along the way, found himself growing fruit and vegetables in Kerry eight years ago.
“We grow bananas for our customers, and for ourselves of course,” said Mr O’Sullivan.
“We are very motivated when it comes to people growing more of their own produce.
“Sure, we have our own and its certified organic…but we want people to grow their own healthy food too.”
Banana plantations are not a common sight in the Scenic Rim and Fassifern. Farming plays a huge role in the way the region’s residents use their land, but banana plantations specifically, are not something you commonly find.
“The region did grow a fair bit of bananas once upon a time,” he said,“the Kerry valley, in fact, actually most of the Scenic Rim, could grow anything. I’m sure they could grow bananas in Boonah if they wanted to.”
Speaking of the region’s fertile land, he said once banana plants had been established, they did quite well.
“We don’t get a lot of frost, so that helps,” he said. “Bananas are one of Australia’s biggest fruit crops. We grow five varieties of banana, but our main crop is lady fingers.”
He said the farm currently had about 160 banana plants or clumps and they were at the point where they were harvesting 200 to 300 bunches of bananas a year.
“It’s not a lot, but it’s a fair bit I suppose. It’s nothing compared to a commercial grower but for ourselves and regular customers, we do alright,” he said.
He said Tullamore Farm currently had five main banana customers. “They want fresh, they want local and bananas that haven’t been stored for 18-months,” he said.
Mr O’Sullivan has owned his farm since 2014. He said the land was completely bare eight years ago, so he decided to use the land to grow crops.
“There was nothing there when we first started, nothing,” he said.
“And right now we have over 500 fruit trees and vines. We have five good sized gardens and produce a lot of vegetables.”
Mr O’Sullivan loves his fruit and vegetables, that’s clear. His passion, however, runs even deeper than the soil his crops grow in. He sees a bigger, clearer picture and when you talk to him, you feel his enthusiasm shine as he speaks.
“We’ve built an education centre so that we can teach people. We are in a reasonable financial position where we don’t have to desperately make money,” he said.
“We grow a lot of things that aren’t typical to the region, for us it’s about teaching people to be self-sufficient by growing all of their food themselves.”
Learning from a farmer how to grow your own crops and visiting a farm to enjoy its bounty, are not the same thing.
Mr O’Sullivan wants to make that very clear, he is not interested in agritourism.
“I’ve had a few people, in fact I’ve had a couple substantial tourism award winners tell me I should be going into events and competing as tourism operator. That’s not what we are. We are educators, not tourism operators.”
Mr O’Sullivan is firm about where he and his business stands. He has a tourism background and said he spent a lot of time working with tourism operators on the Gold Coast.
“I only stopped doing that about four years ago. Now, we run farm tours – but they are tours for people wanting to do what we are doing, which is to become more self sustainable,” he said empathically.
“They are not people just coming for a day of country fun, they come here to learn something, so they can go back with ideas and motivation.
“Some people visit on advice of a friend, who has said ‘you’ve got to go and spend some time at this Tullamore Farm, that guy O’Sullivan is a bit of a lunatic, but gosh he knows his stuff and he’s a bit of fun’.”
He said he wanted people to have a good time because then they are more likely to be educated, go home and do something themselves.
“We are the least healthy we’ve been in history,” he said.
“At the turn of the last century, only about one in 30 people got cancer, today it’s way more than that.”
He said as a child he developed asthma and an inhaler was kept at the principal’s office in a cabinet for him to use if needed. There weren’t many other students needing to do the same.
“That was at Bremer High in Ipswich, imagine today if that happened, he’d need four cabinets,” he said.
“Our health system has never been worse, and the reason is because we eat so much processed rubbish.
“We want to teach people that food is medicine, and the best medicine you can take is the food you grow yourself.”
Another reason to grow your own crops was the financial reward. Mr O’Sullivan said being able to grow your own food, like bananas and other fruits and vegetables – made a big difference to a family’s budget.
“When people come to us and taste our bananas they go ‘wow, what have you done to this?’,” he said.
“The organic way we grow our bananas has them noticing right away they taste different to the ones found in major supermarkets.”
Make a trip to Tullamore Farm in Kerry to learn how to grow your own food and as Mr O’Sullivan said, ‘your body will thank you for it later’.
