About Us

The property consists of a commercial Tahitian Lime Orchard with 950 trees. These trees bear fruit all year round producing over 38 000kg of limes a year.

The orchard supplies local resorts and restaurants including Voyages Dunk, Bedarra and Lizard Islands. The bulk of the crop is sent to the Melbourne Markets where the demand for Bingil Bay Limes is strong due to the consistent good quality.

The orchard also has contact with the Brisbane and Sydney markets.

The owners, Georgie and Rowan Hinchley and their young family operate the farm, along with permanent and seasonal staff.

Paddock to Plate- Our week

Picking starts 6.30am Monday morning before the heat of the day sets in. We usually have four pickers to cover two orchards, which takes four to five days to pick. The packing shed starts up at lunchtime on Monday and fruit goes into the cold room before the day ends.

The Limes are put through a washing and waxing process then onto a grading table where they are sorted for size and grade. Fruit for Market is packed into trays that hold anything from 50-65 limes depending on size. Second grade fruit is packed into bulk boxes and fruit not reaching the grade is turned into juice for bars and restaurants. This process continues for the remainder of the week until the packing shed is cleared of the week’s pickings, usually on Friday.

We load up with pallets of limes to take to the truck Depot in Tully where they are freighted by truck to Melbourne. They arrive in the wholesale market about 1am Monday morning ready for buyers to come into market at 2am.

Trade is finished by about 6am and the limes make their way across Melbourne to the restaurants, bars and fruit and veggie shops. They are then sold to you the customer to enjoy.

The weekends are spent mowing the orchards, checking irrigation and pest levels and taking action as required. Sometimes we even steal a few hours to go to the beach!