Image credit: Willabrand Australia
Fig orchard Willabrand Australia has been amongst the many fruit producers hit by stringent PIRSA quarantine restrictions from the early 2025 fruit fly outbreak in metropolitan Adelaide. During the week, owner Willa Wauchope posted a video calling for help as his business had not received compensation despite having its operations shut down and countless healthy crops going to waste.
The Willabrand property is located just within the red zone, just metres away from being able to sell their fruit commercially. Currently, the fruit is only able to be consumed on site without treatment, so the owners have had to get creative.
Consequently, Willabrand has unveiled a creative solution allowing visitors to pay a flat rate of $20 to pick and eat as many figs as they like while they’re on the Lower Hermitage property. Under the one umbrella, the owners operate Willabrand Australia, Glen Ewin Estate, and Pot & Still spirits on the same property.
Willabrand is open this weekend on Saturday and Sunday from 11am for the new experience. On Sunday afternoon, the property will hold another one of its Sunday Sessions which has been steadily growing in popularity. There will be wood-fired oven pizzas, live DJs, and cocktails using Pot & Still spirits starting from 4pm.
From the Willabrand figs, the property makes a range of fig spirit products under the label Pot & Still. This includes fig gin, fig apertif, and the newest addition, fig amaro. Willa was proud to say that all of the Pot & Still products are now award winning.
“It’s fantastic to welcome people back,” Willa said. “At the end of the day, we do this whole thing because we want to share the property, we want people to have fruit at a fair price – we only charge $15/kilo compared to say $40-$60 at a fruit and veg shop.”
“We’ve never sprayed the trees with anything in 35 years that we’ve been on the property. It’s safe to pick straight from the tree.”
Willa says he wants people to experience top-tier fruit at peak ripeness. “Welcoming people back means that they can get perfect fruit again. They can eat a few different varieties that they didn’t know existed. With the pick-to-eat we can still offer that to a degree. It does not commercially make up for the losses, but what it does do is keep our community of people connected.”
The quarantine restrictions from an early 2025 metropolitan fruit fly outbreak has absolutely devastated local producers. “On the first day we announced we were going to open pick your own,” Willa said. “Ten minutes after we announced it we got a phone call from PIRSA saying we wouldn’t be able to go ahead with it. There was no communication prior to that.”
The period has been a major challenge for the fig brand, with the entirety of the usual pick-your-own revenue vanishing. Without the usual fruit picking, the property is now also a whole lot more susceptible to bird issues and other significant ongoing impacts.
To get through the period of quarantine, Willabrand is also trialling a heat-treatment for the figs so that customers are able to take them home to make their own jams and syrups. “We’ve seen a lot of people reaching out saying: We’d love to come and do a jam day. A lot of people buy the figs because they take them home and make jam,” Willa said.
“We still want to connect people to the property and to give them a similar experience,” Willa said. “By doing this we’re still giving people a picking experience – it’s just the regulations at the moment are that it has to stay on the property.”
A bit of inventiveness and community spirit means that the fig season is still alive – and just because you have to eat all the fruit on-site won’t stop an entire community from delighting in a feast of perfect figs.
You can support Willabrand during the fruit fly crisis by purchasing Pot & Still products at the Lower Hermitage property, and getting along to pick-to-eat and their Sunday Sessions, on again this weekend. The property will also be open next Monday, March 10th, for the long weekend.
Willabrand Australia Pick-To-Eat
Where: Range Rd N, Lower Hermitage SA 5131
When: Saturdays and Sundays from 11am, Sunday Sessions from 4pm.
For more information, click here.
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