‘Country made’: Summer Land Camels, Bush Medijina and Humpty Doo Barramundi

Australian regional businesses have always had to contend with geography. Lately, they have endured a slew of cost-of-living pressures, volatile fuel and freight costs, tariff uncertainty and an economy asking consumers and businesses to make every dollar travel further. Yet across the country, regional enterprises continue to adapt and prosper, often because of where they are, not in spite of it.It is an understanding former prime minister Gough Whitlam articulated in his 1972 election speech, when he spoke of “a great fact of our national life – the interdependence between city and country”. More than half a century later, that relationship is still prosperous, generating the products Australians bring into their homes every day.Inside FMCG has travelled beyond the capitals to meet 14 remarkable consumer businesses whose identity is inseparable from the towns where they reside. What we found was a plethora of diversity. From a camel dairy in Queensland, to a female-led body-care social enterprise in Angurugu on Groote Eylandt, home to fewer than 1000 people, to a berry farm that found opportunity in miniature airline portions, to a barramundi producer operating among the red earth and tropical heat of Humpty Doo.Australia’s regional landscape not only provides vivacious characters but also unique ingredients, knowledge and community. Geography presents its complications, certainly, but it can also become an advantage impossible to manufacture elsewhere – and these businesses prove that point.Summer Land CamelsHarrisville, QldIn the Scenic Rim, an old Australian workhorse is finding a new life in the dairy aisle.At Harrisville, in Queensland’s green Scenic Rim, the animal Australians usually picture against red desert is standing in a pasture beside a dairy. Summer Land Camels has built a consumer business around just that, turning wild-caught dromedaries into a supply chain spanning fresh milk, cheese, milk powder, skincare – and even vodka distilled from whey left over from cheesemaking.Founder and CEO Paul Martin’s interest began through regenerative agriculture and the question of what camels might contribute alongside cattle, namely their different browsing habits, control of prickly invasive plants, biodiversity and another form of manure returning nutrients to the landscape. The commercial proposition crystallised during large-scale camel culls about 15 years ago. “We were actually trying to raise some money. Met with a couple of Saudi wealth funds, and they were just mortified. We were shooting all these camels, and they said, ‘Why can’t you do something with them?’ ”The history behind those culls is dark. From the 1840s, camels were imported to Australia, mainly from India and surrounding areas. The animals soon became indispensable to inland freight and pastoral expansion, due to their hardy ability to withstand Australia’s rather unforgiving climate and terrain.Ryan Butta’s The Ballad of Abdul Wade recounts the world of cameleers such as Wade, whose camel trains carried wool, food and supplies through a country where horses and bullocks struggled. Their success also attracted racial hostility and stigma. After Federation, the White Australia policy restricted non-European migration and cameleers from Afghanistan, India and surrounding regions faced discrimination and exclusion.By the 1920s, motor trucks were eroding the camel trade. Animals that had once been valuable freight assets lost much of their economic purpose; many were released or escaped, and by the late 1920s and 1930s, camels were regarded as feral.Martin said his camels are mustered from feral herds in the interior, moved through Western Queensland and gradually made accustomed to human handling, a process he said can take four to eight weeks before the animals are selected for milk and other uses.The location of Summer Land Camels has a proportionate advantage. Harrisville is close enough to Brisbane and the Gold Coast that the farm can introduce an unfamiliar dairy animal to families, school groups and tourists.Today, Summer Land’s products travel beyond Harrisville. Fresh camel milk reaches retailers including Harris Farm Markets and the brand’s dairy and skincare lines are sold through specialty grocers, health-food stores and pharmacies. A farm completes the circuit, with its café, farm shop, tours and camel rides.For Martin, the commerce carries an old obligation. “It’s like we owe them something, because they [were] just let go. They got brought over here to do a job. They did the job they were meant to do.”A century after camels helped move the inland economy, Summer Land is finding them employment again in a sector many people would not have guessed – dairy.Bush MedijinaGroote Eylandt, NTOn Groote Eylandt, beauty is made by hand, on Country and on its own terms.In Angurugu, on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory, social enterprise and skincare brand Bush Medijina operates from a headquarters made up of five shipping containers. The island’s botanicals are wild-harvested on Country by Anindilyakwa women, carried back to Angurugu, then prepared, labelled and dispatched by hand. The operations are quite literal, with the distance between ingredient, maker and story sometimes measured in footsteps.Bush Medijina operates through the Anindilyakwa Services Aboriginal Corporation and is governed by an all-Anindilyakwa board. Co-founder and CEO Britt Hollingworth calls herself the “accidental CEO”, part of a small corporate team handling strategy, marketing, packaging and procurement while the women remain central to the enterprise and its production. “This is one of our biggest challenges, growing without losing who we are,” she explained.For the women involved, the enterprise provides paid work close to home, opportunities to develop business, technology and leadership skills and, foremost, a workplace where traditional knowledge can be practised and passed between generations. Bush Medijina also reinvests its profits into community initiatives, including for women’s wellbeing, on-Country learning, language and bush-knowledge preservation.Growth from one of Australia’s most remote communities comes with a reality few mainland beauty brands encounter. Supplies travel to Darwin and onwards by barge, a return flight between Darwin and Groote Eylandt costs about $1500, while taking a team to Sydney or Melbourne’s Big Design Market can approach $20,000. Cyclones can interrupt supply, and the business has learned, Hollingworth said, to remain “five steps ahead”.For a skincare business operating on a remote island, Bush Medijina has built a far more expansive social enterprise – commerce with belonging embedded in the formula. It has then turned that philosophy into a substantial consumer range spanning balms, body butters, scrubs, face creams, soaps, body wash and gift sets.Bush Medijina is sold throughout Australia, including at Spell in Byron Bay, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and at online retailers such as Biome, Kakadu Plum Co and Welcome to Country. In 2024, the business opened a physical Bush Medijina + Co store in Cairns.Humpty Doo BarramundiHumpty Doo, NTA family farm in the Top End now supplies seafood to shelves nationwide.Between Darwin and Kakadu, beside the tidal Adelaide River, Humpty Doo Barramundi farms Australia’s native fish in an area that is exceptionally suited to the task. “It’s really that iconic home of barramundi,” co-owner Tarun Richards told Inside FMCG. “This is where people come to go fishing for barramundi.”The Richards family-owned business began more than three decades ago with about 6kg of fish a week for Darwin restaurants. Today, it produces about half of Australia’s farmed barramundi, farming fish across about 70 ponds and an ingenious saltwater wetland system that filters and recirculates farm water through native grasses.That scale has carried Humpty Doo from the Top End into mainstream retail. Its current stockist network includes Woolworths and Costco nationally, Drakes Supermarkets in Queensland and South Australia, and specialty seafood retailers; Richards says frozen product also reaches Aldi and some supply goes into Coles.That sort of distance demands tight operations. Fish are rapidly chilled after harvest and reach major capitals fresh in about four days. “If you make a promise to your customer that you’re going to deliver your product, they don’t care how far away you are,” she said.Found in both fresh and saltwater estuaries, barramundi is a cultural icon for Australia’s unique tropical ecosystems. Australia may not have an official national fish, but barramundi would make a persuasive candidate, and Humpty Doo Barramundi has built a sizable business around keeping it on Australian plates.Originally published in the October edition of Inside FMCG.Futher reading: ‘Country made’: Capital Brewing, Josophan’s, Krinklewood and Byron Bay Chilli.