Tea-towel: Nerada Tea

Tea-towel: Nerada Tea. The Cutten Brothers established a farm at Bingal Bay in 1882 and began the first tea planting in Australia in 1886. The farm was destroyed by a cyclone in 1918 but Indian born Dr Allan Maruff settled in Cairns in the early 1950s and, discovering the surviving trees and seedlings, purchased 320 acres in the Nerada Valley in 1958. By 1970 the estate was thriving and Dr Maruff utilised mechanical harvesting and formed a partnership with Burns-Philp to establish the first tea-processing factory in Australia. Collection of Glenn Cooke