A PATCHWORK OF sugarcane fields carpets NSW’s Tweed Valley around Husk Farm Distillery, one of Australia’s very first craft distilleries. Mandy Perkins, who co-founded Husk in 2012 with husband Paul Messenger and their three daughters, loves it here. “We’re in a volcanic caldera that’s slowly eroding away over time,” she says. “When the valley opens out, you can see Wollumbin (Mount Warning), which is the first place the sun hits on the east coast. We can see the Tweed River from our house.”
This isn’t just about Mandy’s love of natural beauty: Husk is Australia’s only maker of cultivated rum, which uses fresh cane juice rather than molasses, so the land is intrinsic to the product. Of the family’s 60-hectare farm, 12 hectares are devoted to growing sugarcane, which, come harvest