Three-year-old Jacob Carroll sits elated in a Perth strawberry field, mouth stuffed with berries. “Yummy,” he beams to his mum, Amanda Charles, 41, naturally oblivious as to why she’s brought him here. The two are among hundreds of West Australians who have flocked to Kien’s Strawberry Farm in Gnangara, north of Perth, to pick berries.
“We’re here to show the farmers we care,” says Amanda, whose cousin Amanda Harvey, 44, and her daughter Chloe, 15, trawl a nearby field for plump red berries. West Australian growers have opened their farms to the public to help clear excess berries after the sabotage catastrophe, which one grower has termed “the 9/11 for strawberries”.
Australia’s $280 million dollar strawberry industry is now in turmoil, with more than 100 instances of strawberries and other…
