Thousands of people are already visiting the region each cherry season to pick their own fruit in an initiative that an Orange councillor says could become a boon for tourism in the region.
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Councillor Chris Gryllis said in the last few years more and more orchards have been welcoming people to pick their own cherries and stone fruit.
Cr Gryllis said since the initiative started at orchards in the Orange and Cabonne areas, thousands of visitors have visited to pick their own produce.
He is hoping that with more promotion and a more concerted effort, the number of visitors can grow further and is urging growers as well as Orange City Council and Cabonne Council to get behind the initiative.
“I think this is a very important industry and Orange and Cabonne councils should put their thinking caps on to see what we can do with it,” Cr Gryllis said.
He said after talking to other growers he believed between 25,000 and 30,000 people come to the region each year specifically for the cherry season.
He said some visitors come by the bus load but he’d like to see a train also chartered from Sydney similar to the FOOD Train during Orange FOOD Week and the Elvis Express which runs to the Parkes Elvis Festival.
“I would like the councils of Orange and Cabonne to put on their thinking caps and bring the XPT, the Cherry Christmas Express,” Cr Gryllis said.
“A few years ago this was impossible but in the last few years finally the growers allowed these people to come.
“I think this can open to more and more orchards.”
He said the idea would be to getting people to stay for a day or overnight and the cherry picking initiative could increase the profile of the area with some visitors returning for FOOD Week or the Orange Wine Festival.
Among the orchards that encourage people to pick fruit is Hillside Harvest at Borenore, which sells all its produce on site.
Hillside Harvest manager Hayley Cantrill said the fruit picking initiative has already attracted thousands of visitors through word of mouth and repeat visitation.
Although the recent cherry season was shorter and later due to wet weather in 2016, Miss Cantrill said about 7000 people visited the orchard to pick cherries during a two-week period.
“Sunday was our busiest day the week before Christmas, we had traffic and buses everywhere and people just kept coming, we had to call it off at 2pm because we ran out of cherries,” she said.
She said because cherries and stone fruit need to be picked quickly and get sugary and start to rot if left too long, allowing people to come in was an effective method of getting the fruit off the trees.