They may be a long way from the tropics, but hidden in Queanbeyan is a company that's all about coconut oil, and helping poor communities along the way.
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Niulife, pronounced 'new life', was started by husband and wife team Dan and Maureen Etherington.
The two originally met at university in South Africa and lived around the world, before settling in Canberra with their three sons in 1972 when Dan was offered a job at the ANU.
At the university, Dan taught agricultural development economics, a field that included a lot of international travel.
"On one of my visits I went to Sri Lanka, and this was in 1976, and I was blown away by the wide variety of products that you got from coconut, and I was equally shocked by the poverty of people involved when they specialised at all in coconut," said Dan.
After learning more about coconuts and the production process, Dan set about inventing a system to make the extraction of oil easier.
"There was no thought of forming a business," said Maureen.
"Dan was about to retire and he had this hobby ... We had no business experience whatsoever - I was a school teacher originally and Dan was a teacher at the university. So we hadn't been in a family that did business, we didn't know how business worked, it didn't strike us that there was business material in this at all."
After tinkering a bit more with Dan's invention and doing trials in Fiji, the Etheringtons started Niulife, with a mission to help coconut farmers.
Working with poor communities across the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka, Niulife sends over all the equipment to extract coconut oil and start a business.
They then support the coconut farmers with their business model, and in selling their products to their own communities.
Anything export-quality that is un-sold, Niulife buys it back for distribution in Australia, with all the profits going straight back to the producers.
What started in a backyard in Queanbeyan has now helped over 5000 villagers.
And their range has expanded to a whole suite of coconut-based products - flour, sauces and marinades, sugar, vinegars, soaps and moisturisers.
Niulife products are sold at health food stores Australia-wide and at niulife.com.au.
