Skip to main content

Nerada Tea


I remember that I forgot to post a story about the Nerada tea plantation on the Atherton Tableland.   I wondered how the tea was harvested.  The only image in my mind of tea harvesting was of women on the slopes of India hand picking the crop.  The neat hedge-like clip of these fields assured me this was not the case here.

The photo below of the video display shows how it's done.



The informational display says the best tea comes from the top shoots.  Hand pluckers can pick 40 or 50 kilos a day.  With shears a plucker can do about 150 kilos a day.  A Japanese developed hand shearer can do about 300 kilos a day per person but it is hard to control the depth of the cut. The machine above is Australian developed and can do 45 tonnes in a single shift, of tea as good as hand plucking.

Comments

  1. diane bNovember 23, 2013 at 7:23 AM

    That is interesting. I had never contemplated how tea is harvested here.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Listening to the stars

In the morning we went out to see the radio telescope 20 or so kms out of town.  On another wayfaring trip  we visited the radio telescope at Parkes  but this one is an array of dishes on a long track that can act like one big dish. 
3 comments
Read more

Royal Hotel - Ganman

And I wrap up this trip with the Royal Hotel at Ganman.
2 comments
Read more

Larras Lee

We passed through Bakers Swamp without noticing anything.  Then reached our last dot on the map for this trip - Larras Lee and saw this.  The roadside monument says: In Memory of  WILLIAM LEE  (1794 - 1870)  of "Larras Lake"  a pioneer of the sheep  and cattle industry  and first member for  Roxburgh under responsible  government (1856 - 1859).  This stone was erected  by his descendants.  --- 1938 --- This is a repost from a few days ago. Thinking I would use this for this week’s Taphophile Tragics post I dug a little further into William Lee’s story, it’s a very colonial Australian one. William was born of convict parents, living his childhood years around the Sydney region. In his early 20s he was issued with some government cattle, recommended as a suitable settler and granted 134 acres at Kelso near Bathurst. He was one of the first in the area and did well. A few years later he was granted a ram and an inc...
9 comments
Read more