Brand Tas

Remember the seemingly endless lockdown days of 2020?

We filled those long, slow hours with banana bread, YouTube yoga, and sourdough starters. We proudly shared our culinary creations on social media. And then, when the world began to open back up again, we stepped away from our stoves and back to our desks. Back to some kind of “normal”.

At least, some of us did.

Cam and Ally Skeels were newcomers to sourdough, and newcomers to Tasmania too. The couple moved to the Huon Valley from New South Wales in December 2019, hoping to ease into semi-retirement and enjoy a lifetime of long walks through the wilderness – but the combination of Tasmania’s unreliable weather and the impending covid pandemic meant things didn’t quite go to plan.

“In January, just before COVID, I sat flicking through Instagram one day and saw a recipe for homemade crumpets,” says Cam, sitting now just metres away from the site of his very first crumpet attempt. “It was a miserable day – cold and wet, a classic Tassie summer day– and I thought well, I’ve got flour and I’ve got milk, yeast, egg rings and a flat plate on the stove. I’d never eaten a homemade crumpet in my life but I thought I’d give it a go. I made a batch, and thought oh… I didn’t know crumpets were supposed to taste like this.”

Over the following weeks and months, Cam became determined to create the perfect crumpet. But it was when Ally jumped onboard with the lockdown trend of sourdough that the magic really started to happen.

“Those are the rules,” laughs Ally. “You’re not allowed out of lockdown without showing your sourdough starter.”

“Sourdough crumpets are one of the things you make to use up your excess starter,” explains Cam. “So, we played around and made a few. Some of them were terrible, but there were enough good ones that we kept going, and I remember searching to see who else in Tassie was doing them. As far as we could find, no-one was. Ally and I both claim that we missed the meeting where we decided to make a business out of it, but at some point, one of us said ‘maybe there’s something in this…’”

“We needed to find somewhere to cook,” says Cam. “I put a note on the local Huon Valley Facebook page and a lady got in touch from Geeveston. She offered a share of a kitchen that she was only using for one and a half days a week. She also had a pop-up shop, so not only did we have somewhere to cook, we also had somewhere to sell straightaway.”

“We started in there the first weekend in August 2020,” says Ally. “We made a grand total of 48 packets of crumpets and we were exhausted. Absolutely shattered. We’d been putting out a few teasers on Instagram and said we’d have a pop-up shop over the weekend. It opened at 10am on Saturday, and in an hour, they were all gone. We couldn’t believe it. People came all the way from Hobart to pick up some crumpets. I was part of the Huon Runners, and every single runner came in and bought a packet. People were so supportive. It was the most beautiful, beautiful thing. I don’t think the business would ever have happened the way it did if we were anywhere else because the community here is incredible.”

Not long after that initial exhausting experience, Cam and Ally took a breather with an overnight hike on the South Coast Track. It was the start of a tradition that has continued in the years since: turn the phones off, go on a long walk, make a big business decision.

“We decided, right — we’re going to have a crack at Farm Gate,” says Cam.

“We’d been talking and I just said… do it,” says Ally. “Let’s just do it. Usually, I’m the brakes and Cam is the go, so it really surprised him when I said we should go for it.”

Cam and Ally started selling Huon Me Crumpets at Farm Gate Market in October 2020, and by December that year it was clear they needed to expand to a kitchen of their own. Luck was on their side, with tenants vacating a kitchen in the Huon that was already fitted with a commercial dishwasher and a chest freezer — items that had been on their wishlist for a while.

Since then, their expansion has continued. More cooktops, bigger cooktops, and now an additional staff member in the business to help meet demand. Tasmanians have taken the Skeels’ fluffy sourdough crumpets to heart, and continue to eat them as quickly as they can be produced.

Despite their success, Cam and Ally remain committed to the original, delicious, quality product that was conceived in their home kitchen during lockdown.

“Crumpets are a pretty humble thing,” says Cam. “There’s nothing flashy or fancy about them, they’re kind of grounded. There’s just something about making food and taking it to market and selling it to people who take it home and eat it. It’s deeply human and honest.”

Cam & Ally are featured in partnership with our friends in the Department of State Growth Tasmanian Trade team.

We worked with north west Tasmanian photographers Moon Cheese Studio, southern Tasmanian photographer Jess Oakenfull, southern Tasmanian cinematographer Joshua Lamont ACS, and southern Tasmanian writer Ruth Dawkins for this Tasmanian story.

You can find these images and more in our Tasmanian Partner Toolkit.