Agricultural
16 November, 2022
The tale of quail
The Pittsworth region is known for its wheat, cotton, sorghum, beef and eggs to name just a few but one of the more unique products from the district is quail.
On a warm spring morning, as the first rays are sending gold over Banyard Road just outside Pittsworth, Clive and Erika Wylie are preparing for another busy day on the farm.
What a completely unique and enchanting setting it is, as plump geese strut around the vast lawns with their little families and guinea fowl pick around under the trees.
But the beating heart of the business is the quail, hatched, raised and processed here on site in custom built facilities with the strictest procedures in place to ensure quality and consistency.
It helps that two valued long-term members of the team, Jodie and Janine, know the business so well.
A third employee, Gloria, left recently but she too had been part of the team for more than a decade.
Banyard Game Birds was established by Keith and Maria Banyard in the mid 1980s. Keith still resides in Pittsworth.
“He is English and Maria was Greek and the love of quail is very strong in both those countries,” Erika said.
Keith was an engineer and had had game birds in England and decided to do his own thing here in the mid-1980s and began looking for a property with the right elevation, for coolness and drainage.
His search brought him to the Pittsworth site where he set about establishing the farm and adding an abattoir.
“As farmers, if you’re not in control of that processing part of it, you’re very limited so it was very attractive to us to have the abattoir here, there are not many of these little abattoirs around,” Clive said.
They bought the business in 2013, after the property had been in other hands for a few years, and they spent the early years rebuilding the infrastructure and adding a home.
They brought with them precious experience, having established Inglewood Farms with 80 employees, during the 90s, and before that lived and worked in Asia for many years.
The couple even took a trip to Texas in the US to meet with quail producers there to glean some insights.
Today they produce between 2500 and 3000 quail a week and are a major supplier of quail to Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants in Brisbane, as well as to various specialty providores and restaurants around Queensland.
“We don’t restrict who we sell to, beyond the logistics of getting it there because we personally deliver,” Erika said.
“But the Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants are our main customers, they love the quail and it is always on their menu.
“It’s not a specialty, it’s there all the time.”
Erika said the birds are best slow cooked in an oven or barbecue, or marinated and fried with salt and pepper.
Amanda Hinds who opened Crows Nest’s Myrtille Bistro earlier this year, uses the quail as well as Banyard Toulouse goose on her French-themed menus.
Tea-smoked quail crisp fried with five spice salt and Toulouse Goose rillettes have been among her many dishes featuring Banyard product.
Banyard Quail will be one of the destinations included on coach tours for Showcasing Pittsworth in April, 2023.
It will be a chance to see this unique business in action right on the town’s doorstep.
