July 7, 2010
THREE young Brits have brought the authentic tastes of their homeland to Australian tables, writes SARAH HUDSON
“For a couple of naive Pommy blokes in the middle of nowhere we’ve certainly made waves,” says James Arrowsmith, with a broad Lancashire accent.
“When I think back to when we first started I think, ‘gorblimey’.”
Making waves is most certainly an understatement when it comes to James, his business partner, chef Peter Tonge, and their company Pacdon Park, which specialises in gourmet traditional British pork products.
Based out of a converted dairy on a 1000ha pig, beef and sheep farm at Bunnaloo in southern NSW, the 20-something lads have, since 2008, made a range of pork pies, sausages, black pudding, haggis and smallgoods that have earned them industry plaudits and represent a remarkable story of success and hard work.
Pacdon Park is the brainchild of James, who has learnt the ropes of the business from the ground up, even converting the dairy himself, making the pie machine, learning pig butchery from a DVD, seeking seed investors, and schooling himself in smallgoods with the help of Peter.
“I was massively naive and green,” he says. “But I’m pleased as punch that I have made as many mistakes as I have because I have learnt so much from them.
“Before I started I’d never even made a sausage. But we are Brits who have grown up with this food since we were knee high to a tick … and now the best chefs in Melbourne want our stuff.
“When it’s your own business and you’re working for yourself you get a certain urgency or calling about what you do.”
That calling started back in 2002 when, back home in the UK, James put his business studies degree on hold for a gap year in Australia.
Short of funds, he decided to stay at Pacdon Park property at Bunnaloo, owned by his godfather Anthony Haworth.
“I came for one week but stayed six months. I just enjoyed it so much - I loved the lifestyle,” James says.
“Everything was just so much bigger. In the UK, we get such little portions, but here the steaks were huge and we went to a vineyard and came back with two boxes of grapes rather than a little stem.
“I come from a hilly, dry-stone wall area and here there’s huge gums and dead-straight roads and flat areas. It’s big-sky country.”
James learnt the ropes of the farm, right down to welding, and driving tractors.
But it was the pigs he developed a soft spot for.
He returned to the UK to take up his business studies but each European summer returned to Bunnaloo and Pacdon Park, each time chatting with his godfather about his growing desire to use his pigs to make products.
“We talked about pork pies because it’s the little things you miss when you are over here. And being a Pom I wasn’t used to Australian sausages.
“They’re generally pork in the UK not lamb or beef.
“I talked to a lot of ex-pats as well and it really hit me that people here didn’t understand pork pies.”
In 2006, he brought his mate Peter Tonge to our shores and together they set a mad program of developing Pacdon Park products using the property’s pigs and local ingredients.
With just a few pennies to their name, James raised $100,000, learnt on Google how to make a pork-pie machine, grabbed a copy of British food doyen Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s DVD on pig butchery and sourced traditional old recipes.
James admits initially Aussies had to be educated about eating a cold pie, which they make using their own pastry from rendered lard and which includes coarsely-ground pork shoulder.
“Brits are about warm beers and cold pies and people don’t understand that here,” he says.
The business’s ascendancy last year earned them a NSW marketing award and now the duo can’t keep up with demand, particularly for their black pudding, which uses, among other ingredients, double cream, suet, spices and, of course, blood.
“It’s our most asked-for item, the most in demand,” James says. “It’s because you can’t get good black pudding in Australia. It’s too vinegary and mass-produced.”
Pacdon Park’s range of five British-inspired sausages include Lincolnshire, plain or sage, Somerset, which contains apple and cider, and a Yorkshire leek variety.
They also make gammon, black bacon and gala pie, which is baked in bread tins to give it a loaf appearance and contains a seam of hard-boiled egg.
Their dedication and success has clearly been hard won. Last Christmas, James says he worked 48 hours straight to keep up with demand.
“Believe me, over Christmas if you’d told me I’d be doing this in two years I would have said ‘no thank you’,” he says.
Each week he travels to Melbourne for farmers’ markets and says they have just opened a shop in Moama, 60km south.
While James admits he does miss a “good spell of drizzle”, British TV and English country pubs, “I’m creating everything I miss from home”.
“I love my job and I’m proud of my product and I never thought we’d have achieved so much,” he says. “Even though it’s been hard to make a quid, it’s a great lifestyle.”
Read the artical and see the photos @ http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2010/07/07/205621_country-living.html
