When the first fierce frost triggers the truffle season at the foot of Mount Majura, Sherry McArdle-English packs a trowel, mincemeat treats and tweetie bird toy into her bag before hunting for the ''black gold'' fungi.
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This week tweetie proved decisive when noisy birds in a big gum tree distracted Ms McArdle-English's American cocker spaniel Snuffles from the scent of truffles.
The dog's ancestors were bred to flush out squirrels and water birds, and all these years later, Snuffles stood torn between the birds and a whiff of a monster truffle under a nine-year-old oak tree.
A few encouraging words snapped Snuffles from her wayward gaze before she pounced onto the dirt, digging furiously.
''Good girl! Clever girl. Well done. Here's tweetie,'' the truffle farmer said, hurling tweetie into the paddock to reward Snuffles, who bounded after it.
A boutique agricultural industry with hefty establishment costs, truffle farming is teetering in Australia after multiple farm failures. Yet Ms McArdle-English broke even with her costs last season and should be profitable this year with another 1000 trees - inoculated as tube stock with spore - coming on line.
Sold by the gram, truffles fetch $2500 a kilo. The ACT's sole truffle farmer reckons the key is sticking to research and protocols, such as a high security, rabbit-proof fence around her 2500 oak trees which is armed with back-to-base alarms.
When establishing Ruffles Estate Ms McArdle-English dumped 80 tonnes per hectare of fine calcium lime onto her soil which today crumbles easily.
Canberra restaurateur James Mussillon and head chef Clement Chauvin plodded in disinfected gumboots after Ms McArdle-English and Snuffles on the hunt.
They dropped to their knees to smell the first truffle which they said had a distinctive mushroom, earthy, gamey aroma.
''This is just like Christmas for us,'' Mr Mussillon said.
''It's so exciting to have truffles grown here, it is great to give our customers Australian truffles, rather than ones from Europe. We love food from growers we know and appreciate all their hard work.''
They estimated a big black truffle unearthed at Ruffles Estate weighed about 390 grams and would be worth about $900.
Ms McArdle-English said sales at the Fyshwick markets last year were tentative at the beginning of the season, but had trebled by the end.
Kate Marshall, who grows truffles near Braidwood with her husband Peter, a forester, said newcomers to the industry had to be realistic.
''It's like any relatively new agricultural pursuit - you get a big rush and flush in the beginning and people get all excited and buy their alpacas, or emus or this, that and another, then after a while it settles down and self weeds out the people not going the full mile with it.''
The Marshalls host groups of 25 people a day during the 12-week truffle-hunting season, visitors like the inner-city Sydney family who came last year, fired up by a French Food Safari show on SBS featuring chicken with truffle under the skin.