Kitchen Garden: The tale of a Canberra family and their mandarin tree

The author was Canberra Terry Fewtrell and his book is “George, Elise and a mandarin” (Ginninderra Press, 2017) which historians Professor Mark McKenna and Canberran

Dr David Headon have heaped praise. From a horticultural and edible perspective the future for Fewtrell’s Early mandarin may be as interesting as its past.

George Fewtrell married Elise, both immigrants, in Brisbane after her husband and three children had died. The couple had four further children of whom Terry Fewtrell’s grandfather was the youngest. Terry knew him well until he was 97 and Terry 42 and the family’s mandarin was always part of the story.

The Fewtrell household and orchards were in Palmwoods, Queensland, just south of Nambour. The Department of Public Lands in 1889 reported that there was a four room slab house, yards and buildings, 20 acres of the property had been felled and cleared, 6 acres stumped and ploughed and three acres were planted with fruit and other crops that included coffee, ginger, maize and potatoes. George was recruited as a ‘yeoman farmer’ by the Queensland government in the 1870s.

The house had a secondary structure to the rear with a kitchen the linking space. It contained a large kitchen table, a fuel stove (replacing the original open fire) and a kitchen safe for keeping food, an on-going challenge in the climate. A few cows were kept for milk and there was a piggery and fowls.

The orchard barn was made of beech timber, notable that high quality timber was put to a utilitarian use, but beech was an available resource. A horse called Nugget was used mostly for work in the orchard where oranges were the principal crop, followed by mandarins. Fruit was graded and boxed in the barn and a dray used to transport the packed fruit to the nearby railway station.

In 1900 a paper presented to the Palmwoods Progressive and Industrial Progress Association dealt with the export of citrus fruits and proposed co-operative buying and creative marketing for overseas markets. Mandarins were shipped to London for the luxury market. At the conference it was recorded that, “Another variety which has only recently been introduced is one called Fewtrell’s Shipping Mandarin and raised by Mr Fewtrell of Palmwoods…the fruit comes in very early and has been known to keep in good condition for upwards of four months.” It had already gained first prize at an exhibition.

Terry Fewtrell visited the original house in Palmwoods 30 years ago. It was pulled down in the late 1980s. George had sold the orchard and farm in 1913. Knowing of export of citrus to the Punjab, Terry had issues of the Punjab Fruit Journal from the 1940s and ‘50s sent from Cornell University in the US to the National Library in Canberra. He traced the documentation and the Kinnow mandarin was ranked top sangtra (mandarin) followed by Fewtrell’s Early. The two varieties complemented each other with the Kinnow a later seasonal crop.

In 1950 the Punjab Fruit Development Board recommended the two varieties to growers, particularly for the canal colony districts and the plains of North India. It continues to enhance the nutrition of millions of people in India and Pakistan. Terry was in Brisbane last week to be interviewed about the mandarin on a Punjab Radio Station based there.

Terry Fewtrell came to Canberra from Sydney in 1977 and the family moved to north Lyneham in 1986. When we met last week he had just tasted Fewtrell’s Early mandarin for the first time.

It came from the NSW Department of Primary Industry citrus arboretum at Dareton in south west NSW which has had two trees of Fewtrell’s Early mandarin for many years.

Terry has arranged for a friend of his, a retired horticulturist living in Pambula, to receive rootstock and budwood from a contact at the Dareton arboretum and half a dozen small grafted plants have resulted. It will be several years until these reach maturity.

Canberra’s Dr Greg Johnson (Kitchen Garden July 28, 2014) is a plant pathologist who studied at the University of Queensland. He and French professor JM Bove, say Fewtrell’s Early, “is likely to be a natural rangor (mandarin x sweet orange) with Willowleaf as the mandarin parent”. Terry’s six mandarins were not quite fully ripe and were best peeled using a knife, like an orange.

Mandarin glaze

A popular recipe is to place separated mandarin segments (no pith or pips) in a saucepan with a splash of brandy and a spoonful of marmalade and warm gently, using a wooden spoon to stir occasionally. Spoon the glaze over the top of a free range chicken before roasting. The glaze will caramelise on the skin and flavour the flesh.