The annual Summerland Olive Festival has been cancelled because of poor harvest predictions for the area.
It was to have been the eighth festival organised by the Summerland Olive Association in the township of Casino on the New South Wales north coast.
However, one of the organisers Don Leo whose family grove Mongogarie Olives has 1100 trees, said the region was hit badly by extreme weather which, despite good flowering, has left them without any commercial quantities of fruit.
He said the situation was similar for most of the Association’s 17 olivegrowers.
The north coast of NSW, particularly around Lismore was struck by fi erce winds of about 100km an hour and large hail in September and October 2007.
Leo said the previously successful festival had to be cancelled as there was only one viable stall and there could not be an olive festival without olives.
The festival is held in April each year to celebrate the harvest season in the Summerland region, which after Queensland is one of the earliest olive harvests in Australia.
The first six festivals were held at Mongogarie (Aboriginal for spotted gum) and offered a day of fine foods, entertainment, with live music and children’s activities.
Leo said the 2007 festival was held in the township of Casino because it offered better facilities but lost some of the rural and olive atmosphere.
Mongogarie Olives is among the biggest of the olive groves in the Summerland region and three generations of Leos have a hand in its management and cultivation.
Leo says that many of the groves in the region are hobby farms and one of the reasons why there aren’t more may well be due to the area’s susceptibility to the olive disease anthracnose.
This disease (Colletotrichum acutatum) needs wet conditions with high humidity and affects fruit close to harvest.
