3 minute read
Farming down the line
The innovative Roberts-Thomson family are planting for the next generation.
The thousands of tourists who make their way to Table Cape on Tasmania’s fertile North-West Coast from September to October are rewarded by rows of spectacular, multicoloured tulips with a majestic lighthouse backdrop and uninterrupted ocean views to the horizon.
Since the mid-1980s, the farmgate of Van Diemen Quality Bulbs has opened to the public for one month a year and has become a tourism venture that is now a major drawcard for the North-West Coast.
The family behind the farm – the Roberts-Thomsons – have called the property home since Paul’s grandfather took ownership in 1910.
Now, Paul and his wife Bronwen, along with their son Dave and daughter Meredith – the fourth generation of Roberts-Thomsons – oversee a diverse farming business, of which flowering tulips play only a tiny part. All four are University of Tasmania alumni. Paul has a Bachelor of Agricultural Science with Honours (1976); Bronwen has a Bachelor of Arts (1974); Meredith completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in 2002; while Dave has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2004), and a Graduate Certificate in Business (2014). “I’m one of the people who did a science degree and then went farming,” Paul said.
“I was brought up with sheep, cattle, and cropping. Our specialist enterprise was stud sheep and we changed from sheep to tulips in the 1980s.
“It’s not hard to look around a place like Table Cape and think the future must be in horticulture.”
Paul explained the idea of tulips came from the late Professor George Wade, a respected plant pathologist who established the School of Agricultural Science at the University of Tasmania in 1962. His 19-year leadership largely shaped the school as it is today: the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA).
“We started growing bulbs and the natural progression was to grow flowers. With flowers, a lot of your operation must be done today. Tomorrow won’t do. For us, it wasn’t sustainable,” Paul said.
Leaving cut flowers behind, the Roberts-Thomsons concentrated on selling bulbs to home gardeners.
“You put tulips on top of Table Cape, people want to come and have a look. Once you start engaging on a tourism basis, the mail order flows naturally,” Paul said.
Aerial view of Van Diemen Quality Bulbs at Table Cape. Photo: Dale Triffet
While the mail order side of the business ticked along nicely, it was Dave’s return to the farm that saw a change.
“When Dave came back on the farm a decade ago, he brought a whole new impetus, and it grew,” Paul said.
Dave said he had tried hard not to be a farmer for over a decade. “But our business offered such an array of different things, so I had artistic outlets, but also I was very interested in science.
“It is such a varied business, and the combination of the soil, the climate and our specific location, the work that mum and dad had already done around bulbs and tourism, and the mail order, provided opportunities for me to fit in and do things that I was interested in.” Meredith is also part of the business and oversees much of the bulb mail orders.
“There are three key parts to the business,’ Dave explained. “General farming (wheat, barley, poppies, peas), then we grow bulbs for wholesale … and the third part is the retail business: tourism and, importantly, mail-order bulbs.”
The Roberts-Thomsons have experienced an unprecedented boom in sales since the pandemic. And the farm’s 15 staff (including the family) will continue to meet the growing demand as more bulbs are shipped every day.
“Dave is an artist, Bron is an artist, Meredith and I are scientists,” Paul said. “We have a lot of good staff here and we can do stuff. And we have a lot of fun at it.”
Catherine Gale-Stanton
Paul Roberts-Thomson, left, and son Dave on their farm at Table Cape. Photo: Peter W. Allen
