Bryant's Pies former owner Peter Bryant visits Goulburn

He caught up with the Post and talked about the business he began after baking: exporting tea-tree oil for some 25 years, now from his Ballina home.

“My son Jonathan runs a tea-tree farm at Ballina. He does a lot of distilling work for other growers,” Mr Bryant said, accompanied by wife Margaret.

“He distilled 28 per cent of the Australian crop a few years back. With improved seeds, some great plantations have been created up there.”

Mr Bryant said he’d started in the industry before he left Goulburn.

“When the cafe burned down [on June 26, 1999], it changed our lives,” he said. “It broke our hearts.”

With a payout from the insurance company, the Bryants set up the tea-tree oil distillery.

“I sell the oil for the small growers in the industry over the internet,” he said. “It mostly goes to Hamburg or New York. It is all for export.”

Tea-tree oil is a versatile plant, Mr Bryant says.

“It is a good plant, useful medicinally and as an anti-fungal in agriculture. In South America it is sprayed on bananas to stop black sigatoka,” he said.

Black sigatoka is a leaf spot disease of banana leaves caused by fungus.

Mr Bryant’s father Keith started Bryant’s Pies in Goulburn in 1955, and Mr Bryant said he was proud the legacy continued.

“I visited the new bakehouse (near the Post Office) and it seems fantastic,” he said. “Some of the machines are 50 years old, but still going. It was a bit nostalgic to see them.

“I don’t come back [to Goulburn] often, due to the distance, but every time we do, we try to see all of our old friends.”