Oasis Olives in Kialla has been making award-winning extra virgin olive oil for over 20 years.
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The olive oil mill at Oasis Olives fell silent this week, after months of near-constant processing, marking the end of another successful season for one of the Goulburn Valley’s most decorated producers.
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For owner John Symington and farm manager Scott Sanders, the April to June period is the year’s most demanding stretch, picking olives and rushing them to the mill to produce their award-winning extra virgin olive oil.
Mr Symington has been running Oasis Olives for about 20 years, building a premium brand alongside his wife Marjan, from what was once a run-down olive farm on Kialla’s outskirts.
When the couple took over the property, they saw potential where others might not have.
They leant on the local olive-growing community, learning the craft from the ground up, pruning, developing infrastructure, and eventually installing an on-site mill and storage facility, able to process up to 200 tonnes of olives a day.
That mill is a key reason why Oasis Olives produces oil of the quality it does.
Speed is everything at Oasis Olives in Kialla. The sooner you can get the olives from tree to the mill, the higher the oil’s quality.
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Mr Sanders said speed was everything when it came to olive oil, the moment a fruit leaves the tree, the clock is ticking.
“As soon as you take the olive off the tree, it starts to degrade,” Mr Sanders said.
“As quickly as you can get that oil out, the better it’ll be.”
The proof was not long in coming.
Just two years after firing up their mill, Mr Symington sent a sample of their oil to Los Angeles, entering it in the LA International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition.
He was hoping for a gold medal.
“I nearly fell off my chair when I saw that we had won the best oil in the whole show,” Mr Symington said.
“It was a great shock, but also a great honour, It made us feel good about what we were doing.”
Since then, Oasis Olives has continued to collect awards across the world, cementing its reputation as one of Australia’s premier producers.
Mill and farm manager Scott Sanders has worked at Oasis Olives for 11 years. He has worked around the world, training in Italy and Spain, as well as running a farm in the US.
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Nicholas Spandler
Both Mr Symington and Mr Sanders credit the Goulburn Valley as a critical ingredient in that success.
The region’s Mediterranean-style climate, hot and dry summers, suits olives well, and the proximity to Shepparton means access to tradespeople, fabricators and supplies is never far away.
“The climate’s very well suited to olives here, and you can get basically anything you need in Shepparton, like welding, tanks, fabrication,” Mr Sanders said.
“The expertise is really well established here.”
Oasis Olives processes its olive oil on-site, storing it in massive storage vats.
Photo by
Nicholas Spandler
The Kialla farm processes fruit for around 20 outside growers as well as its own 350,000 trees across 250 hectares, a reflection of the cooperative spirit Mr Symington said defined the Australian olive industry.
“It’s a tight-knit community,” he said.
“Growers and producers are all well-connected. We don’t see other processors as rivals because everyone works in their own niches, all pursuing the same thing.”
At the very end of the production line, the mill releases rich-smelling olive oil, ready to be bottled up and sent off to win awards.
Photo by
Nicholas Spandler
That ethos extends to how Oasis runs its operation on the ground.
Nothing leaves the property as waste, crushed olive pits are burned on-site to generate hot water for the milling process, while the remaining pomace is spread back across the grove as fertiliser.
“There is no waste product,” Mr Sanders said.
For Mr Symington, the motivation behind all of it comes back to something simple.
“We have found that people appreciate high-quality oil,” he said.
“It’s good flavour, and it’s good for your health.”
With the mill shutting down for another year, the Symingtons and their team will now turn their attention to clean-up, then a well-earned break.
