A field of sunflowers blooming under a black sky planted a seed of positivity in the Bemboka community, strong enough to grow into a beautiful annual attraction for locals and visitors alike. Ryefield Hops is a family-owned business growing hops for Australian craft breweries, including many on the NSW South Coast. When Eat Play Stay spoke to Karen Taylor, she was two weeks away from harvesting the hops, but it was another kind of plant that drove the conversation.
Bemboka Sunflowers is a happy accident-turned-incidental side-business for the Ryefield Hops team, one that emerged from the Black Summer ashes six years ago.
"We had sunflower seed in our hop field cover crop and during the season of the bushfires, the hops didn't grow, but out cover crop did so we basically had 10 acres of sunflowers," Karen says. "I opened the field for locals to visit and pick sunflowers because it was such a beautiful sight, and considering no one had even seen a blade of grass in over a year."
A group of visitors - teenagers from Bemboka - said their day in the sunflower field was the highlight of their summer holidays, and Karen didn't doubt them.
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