‘Shroom tunneling in Bowral, NSW
I’m always talking about needing to go on more weekend adventures. When Mr. LML surprises me with a long weekend trip to the Southern Highlands, I’ve no excuse but to pack my bags (and warmest jumpers) and hit the road.
Disclaimer: if you don’t like mushrooms, stop reading now.
The highlight of our itinerary: an exotic mushroom tour! What I’d assumed was going to be a weekend of wine-drinking in front of a fireplace was actually planned to be so much more (although don’t get me wrong – there was plenty of wine-drinking in front of fireplaces).
Only operating on Sundays of long weekends, the Li Sun Exotic Mushrooms tour attracts visitors from near and far. The tour bus picks us up from the car park of the Bowral swimming pool and takes us right up to the entrance of the nearby train tunnel that’s situated under Mount Gibraltar, between Mittagong and Bowral.
Before we enter the tunnel we gather in a semi-circle around Dr Noel Arrold, microbiologist, mushroom-farmer and tour operator. We learn how the tunnel came to be: the single track tunnel was built in 1866 and used up until 1919 when a double track tunnel was built to connect Sydney and Canberra. The single tunnel remained unused until the 1950s when it became one of the first cultivated mushroom tunnels in Australia. In 1987, Noel took the reigns and now operates a successful mushroom distribution company.
Bowral to Mittagong tunnel. The mushrooms are kept through the door on the left.
We enter the tunnel, and are blown away by the seemingly endless tunnel of mushrooms! There are ‘shrooms as far as the eye can see (the tunnel is 650 metres long), with varieties including chestnut, enoki, king brown, nameko, oyster, shiitake, shimeji, swiss brown and woodear. In the wild the purpose of a mushroom is to degrade dead trees, converting them into organic matter and enriching the soil of the forests. So, to successfully cultivate mushrooms Noel imitates a forest environment; the tunnel is around 16 – 17 degrees Celsius, at a humidity of 80 – 90%, and dimly lit.
650m worth of ‘shrooms!
If you don’t like mushrooms, this tour isn’t for you.
To replicate a dead tree for the mushroom to grow on and ‘degrade’, Noel creates pretend tree stumps out of eucalyptus compost that he packs into a container. Not only does this achieve the shape of a stump, but it also provides the heat and moisture required to encourage fruition. The mushroom spawn is then added and over time the spawn fills it with mycelia (the vegetative branching part of a fungus), which spreads throughout the compost, before fruiting from the ‘stump’. Once the heads of the mushrooms are visible, they’re ready to harvest!
Ready to harvest!
To absorb much-needed moisture the Shiitake mushrooms are soaked in ‘baths’, which encourages the fruit to grow.
We’re greeted by mixed take-home packs of mushrooms when we reach the end of the tunnel and the other 20ish tourists are as visibly excited as I am.
After all that talk of mushrooms, we can’t wait to get home and taste them. But maybe we’ll stop in at Bendooley Estate for a quick wine tasting first. We are in Bowral after all…
Have you been to the NSW Southern Highlands? Share your recommendations in the comments below.
There are no comments
Add yours