Jonathon Trewartha

My family and friends all knew me as a mining engineer looking for a meaningful entrepreneurial pursuit. Some years ago Maggie Beer, the celebrated South Australian chef, commented on how strange it was that no-one grew capers in Australia.  A couple of research trips abroad to the Mediterranean countries known for capers and lots of reading later, I decided it was worth making an attempt to develop a new Australian industry replacing imported capers with a high quality Australian product.

The Australian Caper Company was developed to investigate the opportunities for an Australian Caper Industry to replace our current imported capers.

Tracking down the plant stock was the first challenge and it became clear that we would need to propagate our own plants if we were to get the project off the ground. The few years have been spent tracking down varieties, comparing them and propagating them.

We suspected that the Mannum area on the banks of the Murray River in South Australia with it’s long, hot, dry sunny days, low rainfall and reasonably well drained soils would be perfect for our trial site. Also, Mannum is not too far from where my parents live in the Adelaide Hills, a good thing as I was a single man when I started this project and because I was based in Western Australia it was their enthusiasm, wisdom and hard work that got this venture off the ground.

Living alongside the Murray River my interest in water and salinity issues was piqued and I grew more certain that the hardy caper bush, with it’s deep root system, might be the perfect crop for Australia’s saline and drought ridden areas. We began to trial some plants on high saline water and to our delight they have done very well indeed.

The Rural Industries Research and Development Council have been very supportive of our work and have given us a grant to trial varieties to establish optimum water and fertilizing levels and to experiment with different growing techniques.

I believe that there is a market for locally grown quality capers replacing the import market and in time becoming a quality export in its own right. Adding to the enjoyment of eating capers grown locally is the knowledge that, as a desert plant requiring very little of Australia’s precious water and growing in the poorest soils, when you eat Australian grown capers you are eating the fruit of a plant that is environmentally sustainable and that has the potential to rehabilitate land so degraded by salinity that it can sustain no other crop.
To ensure the capers distinctive, piquant mustard flavour, raw capers are cured in their own juices and are then repackaged in salt that can be rinsed off or used for added seasoning in cooking. “Australian capers have a very intense taste, firmer and fresher than their imported counterpart and, because they are grown according to organic principles, they avoid the high toxic residues that imported capers have been known to carry”.

In addition they contain a high level of antioxidants making them an exceptionally healthy addition to a meal. Hippocrates was among the ancient doctors who recognised the therapeutic properties of the caper and recommended them as a treatment for pneumonia, pleurisy and fistulas. The caper was also known as an aphrodisiac and caper cream was popular as a cosmetic to help our ancestors remain young, keeping the skin a healthy color and wrinkle free!

Jonathon among caper plants