Kathy and I purchased our 20 acres in Gooramadda ( North East Victoria, Australia) in 1993. Initially just as a place to live when commuting daily to and from our 8 to 5 jobs.
In those days I was working as an engineer in the food industry and Kathy was gainfully employed as a draftsperson, both spending all day indoors, in meetings and behind the computer....in our book-of-life not a good way to use the hours that life had handed to us.

Initially we decided that we should only do table olives, as everyone else was planting trees for olive oil...and..table olives, being a bit more difficult to process and being confident of our ability to make things happen, we embarked in September 1998 with the planting our first lot of 500 trees.
A year later in 1999 we planted the second lot of 500 trees, again aiming at the table fruit market.

Our first harvest in 2000 produced 60 kilo's, it all fitted on the back of the ATV.
The small amount of olives was excellent to get the table olive process developed, ready for upscaling when the factory would be ready.
The in the year 2000, the main factory got built.
A big job, not only the construction of the building but we also needed three phase power, water storage and hot and cold water reticulation, sinks, waste water disposal and so it goes on..and on...and on..

Our harvest in 2001 produced a grand total of 1050 kg of olives, a big improvement from the 60 Kg in previous year.
Most of this was converted into table fruit but we discovered that by end of the harvesting season there were still olives on the trees, not ripe enough for black table fruit.
Kathy decided to bring a couple of hundred kilo to the olive press in Wagga Wagga and she came home with our first Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Magic oil, full of flavour...
We figured that this would be a common activity in the years to come and the decision was made, on the spot, to get our own olive press, from Italy, in order to deal with the olives unsuitable or unwanted for table fruit.

Having done a bit of study in the different extraction methods we decided to concentrate on The Best method to extract optimum quality olive oil and not the most efficient and lowest labour cost method, more about this in the chapter about olive oil extraction.

In October 2001 Kathy and I decided to build a purpose tasting and sales outlet, just below the factory, with good views over the Murray Valley and the olive groves.

The may/june 2002 harvest produced a total of 3100 kg of olives.
By now we had acquired one hundred 200 liter vessels for fermentation of olives, ready to start processing olives.

In march 2003 we opened The Olivery, a purpose build olive and olive oil tasting room.

Now we were selling Table Olives and Extra Virgin Olive Oil...and our customers love the product
We now manufacture and sell not only table olives and extra virgin olive oil but also Kathy makes an excellent Tapenade and I make olive oil soap, skin cream,and lip balm.

Our visitors can now relax in the shade on the deck of the OLIVERY and soak in the olive grove atmosphere, nibble on olives, dip bread in olive oil and DUKKAH and have a sip of our "GOORAMADDA Grove" wine while overlooking the Murray Valley.

Well, we did not stop after most of the infrastructure was established, there was a need to put Gooramadda Olives on the map and into the public eye, and the best way to do this is, we found, was to achieve recognition in the industry.

That was the start of many, many Medals and Awards and our last harvest (2011) was over 24,000 kg of olives.