Escape Claws

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 4, 2006

Denise Cullen

Denise Cullen develops a consuming passion for crustaceans in the Tweed Valley.

It's hardly World Wrestling Entertainment, but my two sons are entranced by the spectacle of a couple of mud crabs thrashing it out.

The Claw executes an arm wringer manoeuvre, as our guide explains that mud crabs are opportunistic cannibals. They have enough strength in their muscular pincers to crush the shells of mussels, pipis and other crabs - oh, and to amputate human fingers: "So be careful how you pick them up."

Proving the point, there is a clatter as one of the crabs loses a back leg to its opponent. The severed limb slides along the floor as the boat lurches on the tidal wash. One of the Chinese tourists on board jumps, squeals and drops her camera. "The good news for crabs is that if they lose a leg, they can just grow another," our guide adds cheerfully.

During the Tweed River's Catch-A-Crab tours, there are opportunities to pump for yabbies, and use them as bait when you throw out a line for flathead. Or feed the pelicans, with their bald heads and chopstick beaks, as they squabble over fish like nursing-home residents over the last soft centre.

However, the chance to haul up wire-mesh crab pots from the river's muddy depths, then truss and eat the bad-tempered occupants, is the highlight. Hence the chap who's swaggered to the front of the boat and is holding one of the trussed crabs triumphantly aloft, as though it were a moose's head. My sons seem disturbed by the undercurrent of barbarism. "Mummy, are we going to put the crabs back in the water now?"

No, the lady over there is going to throw them into a vat of boiling water, and then we're going to crack their shells open and eat them. "Yes, of course, darling."

They don't make the connection, or at least they don't mention it, when we are served a succulent crab platter, along with freshly shucked rock oysters from a local farm, for lunch. Instead, they become entranced by the mechanics of the crustacean's pincer. Hey, if you pull on the flesh, you can make it move! Better than tongs, or tweezers, you can even pick stuff up with it. Move over, Robopet!

The Catch-A-Crab tour takes place on the Terranora Inlet off the Tweed River, which snakes through lush green rainforest and pours itself into the Pacific Ocean just south of the border dividing the "twin towns" of Tweed Heads and Coolangatta.

About a half hour's drive north is the glitzy Gold Coast, while a couple of hours' drive south lies Byron Bay. With neighbours like that so close on the tourist map, the Tweed Valley in northern NSW has long struggled to forge an identity of its own.

However, in recent years, several agricultural attractions have emerged. These offer visitors a welcome change of pace from the theme parks and beaches and, for struggling local farmers (now pushing 58 years of age, on average), they provide an alternative source of income.

Rural tourism, though, has a gnarly reputation. In Down Under, US travel writer Bill Bryson highlighted rural tourism operators' predilection for tacky monuments: "Give [Australians] a bale of chicken wire, some fibreglass and a couple of pots of paint, and they will make you, say, an enormous pineapple, or strawberry, or lobster."

Fortunately there is more to rural tourism in the Tweed Valley than giant pieces of fruit. The most successful attractions blend experience with education. I mean, who'd have thought anyone could get two small boys to wolf down a dozen different types of fruit before bedtime?

Yet here they are at Tropical Fruit World, juice running down their chins, as they gorge themselves on chocolate pudding fruit (black sapote), ice-cream beans, custard apples, blood oranges, passionfruit, lychees, lady finger bananas and carambola (star fruit) during the aptly-named Miracle Fruit Show in the Magic Garden.

You can approach Tropical Fruit World via the Pacific Highway, which cuts a swathe through lush sugar cane plantations and past the smoke-belching Condong Sugar Mill (which itself offers tours during the July to November crushing season).

Alternatively, set off from Kingscliff, the upstart beach suburb renowned for its blossoming al fresco "Eat Street", and take the winding back roads, which are peppered with hand-painted signs flogging cheap backyard produce.

Either way, it's clear this is fantastically fertile farming territory. The rich volcanic soil, a henna red, comes courtesy of the World Heritage-listed Mount Warning, so named by Captain Cook to alert sailors to the reefs that lie offshore. Standing so far east on the coast, its peak is the first place on mainland Australia to be touched by the rising sun during the autumn and spring equinox.

Perched on the Duranbah ridge, with sweeping views across to the Mount Warning sentinel, Tropical Fruit World grows the largest range of tropical and rare fruit in the world, with more than 500 different varieties sprouting from the volcanic earth.

Its beginnings 30 years ago as a run-down small crop farm were more humble, however. The owner's fascination with avocados, long before they became fashionable, led to the property's original incarnation as Avocadoland. (In true rural tourism tradition, a giant and much- photographed avocado still marks the entrance to Tropical Fruit World.)

We arrive, we're told, just in time for a safari aboard the tractor train. This isn't as fortuitous as it sounds. Tractor train tours are as common as fruit bats here. Skilfully manoeuvring visitors from one attraction to another, they offer the only way to get around the property, so anyone nursing visions of romantic strolls through fragrant shady orchards needs to adjust their expectations. Tropical Fruit World remains a working farm and access to many parts of it is strictly controlled.

It's a rickety ride past themed gardens - Aztec, Amazon, South-East Asian - before we are deposited at Treasure Island, where kids swarm onto the flying fox and adventure playground. (Older children also get sufficient mileage out of the fact that what lies behind the "Lava Tree" tree sign is not another exotic species, but the toilets. Lava Tree. Geddit?)

Then it's onto a boat, pursued by some particularly aggressive geese, eager for the bread we're throwing to the koi, and through to the fauna park, where we feed horses, kangaroos and sheep. Many of the kangaroos seem overcome by a sense of ennui - when I notice the affected ones have overgrown joeys' limbs dangling from their pouches, we swap weary looks of maternal understanding.

Mooball is another area rich in rural heritage, with an economy that revolves around milkshakes blended at the Moo Moo Cafe. Driving into this tiny village is like entering an absurdly sunny still life, with contented black and white cows grazing on lush green hillsides. Just in case you didn't grasp the area's bovine significance, even the telegraph poles, rocks and sheds are painted black and white.

And though it lies too far south to be considered part of the Tweed Valley, Thursday Plantation, near Ballina, is also within easy reach.

The plantation pioneered the local tea tree industry and continues to run daily tours.

Farmstays and other offbeat places to rest your head lie within the heart of the Tweed Valley, but we opted for a self-contained suite at Calypso Plaza in Coolangatta. For families, this four-and-a-half-star resort's biggest appeal has to be the tropical lagoon with dual waterslides, along with a location that puts the family-friendly restaurant strips along Marine Parade and Griffith Street within easy walking distance.

We've managed to accumulate plenty of souvenirs by our final night. Various sauces and unguents from Tropical Fruit World, buckets overflowing with shells and sand on shoes and togs from the beach across the road. And then there's an odd smell, something that starts as the faintest rank odour at night but by morning becomes a more full-bodied, objectionable stench.

Family holidays are made of this, we tell ourselves, as we search the kids' shoes, the bin, the suitcase, the backpack. Finally we narrow the search to the Buzz Lightyear bag and excavate a pair of shorts. Hidden deep inside the pocket? The previous day's crab claw.

Destination Tweed Valley

WHAT TO DO

Catch-A-Crab Tours: phone (07) 5599 9972 or visit www.catchacrab.com.au. Rates ($90 adults and $54 children) include morning tea, lunch, fishing rods, bait and all equipment for other activities such as yabby pumping.

Tropical Fruit World: phone 6677 7222 or visit www.tropicalfruitworld.com.au. Park admission costs $32 for adults and $15 for children 4-13 years old (though one child is admitted free with each paying adult).

Condong Sugar Mill: phone 6670 1700 or visit www.nswsugar.com.au. Thursday Plantation: phone 1800 029 000 or visit www.tphealth.com. Tours run on weekdays.

For information on accommodation and activities, contact the Tweed Heads Visitor Information Centre, phone 1800 674 414.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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