Tweed Eco Cruises

Experience Highlights

• Learn about the ancient connections between Aboriginal and Asian communities
• Gain an understanding of early multicultural history and trade
• Enjoy a private lunch with celebrated Australian chef Christine Manfield
• Optional dinner with multi-award winning chef Ben Devlin

Take your seat at the table for a conversation that started in the old world, since the 1400s of ancient spice and food trade and community exchanges between Asian and Aboriginal Australia. Discover the story of this Asian connection, including India and Melanesia, uncovering collaborations around sugar trade, farming and sharing - a history that began before 1788 between ancient Asia and the local Aboriginal communities of South East Queensland and Northern NSW.

Learn about a shared ritual and reverence for food, and spiritual systems common in cultures between Melanesia, Torres Strait and South Seas. Understand the ‘sugar slave’ trade and deeply connect with matters of Aboriginal sovereignty and a future for Australia that accepts its truth and grows together.

Lunch with chef Christine Manfield

Continue the experience at a special lunch with celebrated, Tweed-based chef Christine Manfield, who has written books and led private epicurious experiences throughout Asia. Embrace the interpretation of Asia and Aboriginal knowledge and food systems, and tastes presented with local produce, local fields and local farms.

Christine will lead you through a global food story to expand your view of these connections told from the perspective of its first people at a gorgeous private residence and our meal will end with the chance to digest the day and a private ‘speakeasy’ session of Q+A time.

Arabella Douglas

Currie Country's Arabella Douglas has featured on SBS and consulted with leading Australian Chefs using native foods in their restaurants. Arabella is an academic, writer and local traditional owner raised on Country and practiced in the lores of her Country.

Optional Addition: Dinner at Pipit with Ben Devlin 

Ben Devlin has over 15 years' experience as a chef working in Australia and overseas, including at Noma in Copenhagen. Having grown up in Byron Bay, he returned to the Northern Rivers in 2015 to work as Executive Chef at Paper Daisy in Cabarita Beach. Together with wife Yen Trinh, Pipit opened in 2019 in Pottsville, the realisation of Ben's dream to run his own place. In 2020, Pipit won the Good Food Guide Awards 2020 Regional Restaurant of the Year.