Cliff and his wife, Betty, have been creating their sinfully-superb tropical fruit ice creams for almost ten years now. You'll find them and the red cart they sell from any market day, right where you enter the getting-more-famous-every-year Kuranda Markets just north of Cairns, North Queensland.
"We're getting very famous, too," says Cliff, "both overseas and locally." No wonder when busload after busload of tourists choke the footpath outside the cart every day.
Betty makes the ice creams – all pure local cream and milk (although some of the ice creams are made with soya milk) flavoured with tropical fruits, honey, eggs and cane sugar - a taste-defying 32 different flavours. Some are seasonal as they use fresh fruit whenever possible, so you can sometimes find exotic offerings such as avocado, black sapote, jackfruit, soursop or mango.
Too many for one cone. I settle for a dish that allows me three types – macadamia, coffee & walnut and ginger. And the nip of rum and raisin, of course.
So why ice creams, I asked Cliff? He doesn't look like a career-ice creamer, to me.
"I was too young to retire from the sea," was his simple reply, and I could see it too in his weather-beaten face. "It was Betty's idea." So now wife, Betty, churns out litres of this icy heaven-in-a-cone every week, and Cliff deals it out, along with cheeky comments to some, sage advice to others, or a tasting spoon to lure in the indecisive.
Situated squarely in the tropics, Kuranda gets pretty hot and steamy – much of the time. It's also smack-bang in some of the lushest, richest country in Australia. What better marriage could you have, then, than ice cream and tropical fruit? What better mix than Betty making it and Cliff selling it? What better way to 'not-retire'?
The recently compiled Taste of the Tropical Tablelands brochure lists the Timmins cart as No 40. This useful guide is crammed with many other important places to see and enjoy in the area.
Number 39 is the Kuranda Trading Post Restaurant and internet cafe. Here, owner Ian Pike has designed the menu around local produce, so it's the place to buy locally grown coffees, teas, honeys and other items too.
The Village Herb Farm (number 17 on the guide) is more a commercial venture, but the owners, Steve and Sandy Thomson welcome visitors and will allow them to look through the nursery and to buy potted or hydroponic cut herbs. Of course these herbs are seasonal, but you can usually find around thirty-five or more types there.
While the Timmins may have the corner on ice cream up here, Jim Mealing is another important identity in the town. Twenty years ago the Mealings used to run the Honey House in Kuranda (Taste of the Tropical Tablelands brochure, no. 20) then they sold it and moved away.
Like bees to the honey pot, something made them return a couple of years ago, so there they are, back in their old shop with twenty different varieties of very local honeys. The tourists can't get enough of the rainforest, sarsaparilla, macadamia, avocado, mango and sugar-cane honeys. Some even linger on the shady veranda for the house specialty - pumpkin scones with honey and cream.
If you thought this was some sleepy little back-woodsy kinda town, better think again. Kuranda has moved into the big league of tourism. Every day tourists pile off the buses and hit the town hard. One of the major attractions is another of Jim Mealing's projects, possibly the most famous market in north Queensland, with over a hundred stallholders.
Now this is a regular market – clothes, souvenirs, knick-knacks, art – but you can't get away from local food in this lush area, and there are still plenty of jams, chutneys, tropical smoothies and superb local tropical fruit in season.
So whether you make this a day trip from Cairns, or zip off the highway for a quick look as you head north, Kuranda will keep you more than satisfied. Just go easy on those rum and raisin ice creams.
And say 'Hi' to Cliff for me!
Story by Sally Hammond
4WD
