SWISS FARMERS INVASION

It’s Sunday 15th January, 08.30am at Melbourne Avenue, Forrest, Canberra. A large coach with Victorian number plates stops outside the Embassy of Switzerland, and some 20 Swiss visitors tumble out, waving digital and video cameras. They look, then take pictures of the elegant stone building on the hill, the embassy representing a greeting from home here in Australia. The same scene is repeated for seven Sundays in a row throughout January and February.

These visitors were members of the Swiss Association for Agricultural Equipment (Schweiz. Verband für Landtechnik) and they were on a 2 week tour downunder. Organised by the association and in collaboration with Imholz Spezialreisen in Zürich as well as Sydney based inbound tour operator APTC, these tours gave the participants the occasion to enjoy some of the famous sights in Victoria, ACT and NSW, as well to get to know Australian farmers, their properties and their activities during specific technical visits. Each group was accompanied by a Swiss tour escort. A Swiss German speaking local guide waited for them on arrival at Melbourne airport and stayed with them till their departure from Sydney. A total of some 120 eager Swiss farmers with partners booked the highly interesting tour. Three groups were in the good hands of ex SACCI General Manager Anne Held.


“The itinerary has been specifically designed to give the Swiss visitors the opportunity to actually meet and stay with Australian farmers. But we also found some immigrant Swiss farmers who established themselves here several years ago and this proved an excellent opportunity for our visitors to discuss farming in their own language’ explained Anne. Part of the program was a two night farm stay with farmers in Hamilton, Victoria, and one overnight on farms near Holbrook. The whole group got split up into smaller groups of 3 or 4 persons, and each little group was welcomed on a different farm. These stays had been organised by Farm Tourism Australia, and proved to be the highlight of the tour. It is really very special and rewarding for overseas visitors to stay on a property in the country instead of a hotel, eat with the family, drive around the paddocks in a ute, gaze at herds of some 25’000 sheep or 1’000 heads of cattle. Trying to comprehend the size of one individual farm which could be some 2’000 hectares or more also proved quite a challenge for the farmers from a small and mountainous country like Switzerland. Experiencing the effects of the ongoing drought was another shocking discovery.

The tours started in style with a city tour of Melbourne, followed by lunch at a winery in the Yarra Valley and then a visit to Henkell winery, which belongs to a SACCI member. The jetlag was forgotten when the manager Andreas Lehmann (originally from the Bernese Oberland) took the group on a walk through the vineyards, the air filled with the sounds of bell birds. With much enthusiasm, the Henkell wines were tasted and the connoisseurs tried to impress each other with their comments on bouquet, taste and colour.

The Swiss connection continued with a visit to Hans Vogel’s farm down in Lavers Hill on the Great Ocean Road. Hans is an immigrant from the canton of Lucerne who built himself a beautiful farm where 300 cows get milked twice a day in a rotary milk carrousel. The next day, the farm of Jürg and Gerda Hobi with 600 cows was visited in Heywood, near Hamilton, Victoria. The visitors from Switzerland especially appreciated the opportunity to speak to their hosts in their own language and it usually became quite difficult to get them back on the coach for the continuation of the itinerary. The other visits included a tour of a thoroughbred race horse stud, then a 3 day stay in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area where wheat silos, a rice and a cotton farm, one of the largest cotton gins in Australia, a station where wagyu cattle is raised for live export to Japan, orange and peach plantations and a potato farm with two crops a year were shown. In true Aussie style, there were sheep shearing demonstrations, complete with yapping kelpies and the shearer in the blue singlet.

Left: Andreas Lehmann (Henkell Vineyard & Anne Held)

A scary drive along a curvy dirt road then took the farmer group to Avalanche Station high in the hills outside Queanbyan for a BBQ with spectacular views and a sheep shearing demonstration next to a swimming pool. After an overnight in Canberra, the group admired Parliament House and the Captain Cook water fountain which is copied from the famous Jet d’Eau in Geneva and for which Swiss company Sulzer provided the know-how.

From the nation’s capital, the group then stopped in lovely Berrima where ‘grill your own steak’ got everybody quite flustered and intrigued and brought out unknown barbequing talents especially among the Swiss men. A 3 day stay in Sydney was an appropriate finish to the unforgettable trip. And even here, the agricultural interests were considered: on the way to the Blue Mountains, a farm with hydroponic salad and a large mushroom farm were visited. But Sydney Harbour and the city, Bondi Beach and the Opera House were not left out of course.

The 2007 tours proved to be so successful that the Swiss Association for Agricultural Equipment decided to add three more trips in January and February 2008.
 

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