Western Australia's South West

How apples came

Early colonists carried apple seeds and cuttings from Europe to Western Australia and planted them in the country south of Perth, where warm summers, cool winters and reliable rain suited the fruit⁸. Donnybrook, gazetted in 1894, became the centre: its first Granny Smith tree was planted in 1900, the orchards spread after the First World War, and the town earned the unofficial title of apple capital of the west^8,13. Today the state’s apples grow in the South West, at Donnybrook, Manjimup and Pemberton, and in the Perth Hills⁷.

Then came the seedling. From the 1930s Maud and Arthur Williams and their sons worked twelve acres of apples and stone fruit, and forty cows, on Boronia Farm just outside Donnybrook. A tree with bright red apples sprang up unexpectedly beside the tank stand next to the house, and Maud, who collected ideas for unusual plants from catalogues and women’s magazines, saw what it was worth: the fruit was firm, crisp and kept for months, ideal for export, and the family got a good price for cases of it⁶. The variety became Lady Williams. The original tree, now some eighty years old, is on the National Trust’s register⁶; pomologists give its origin as a chance seedling of about 1935, probably from Granny Smith with Jonathan or Rokewood pollen¹⁴.

How they’re grown

Western Australia’s apple breeding began at the Stoneville Research Station in the Perth Hills in the late 1960s, formally in 1972; it has been the Australian National Apple Breeding Program since 1989, and its main work has moved to the Department’s research institute at Manjimup^2,3. The method is unglamorous: cross-pollinate apple flowers, germinate the seed, grow the seedlings and wait. By 2010 the programme had made 311 crosses and planted 166,156 seedlings²; it now raises up to 6,000 seedlings a year, keeps more than 58,000 trees under evaluation at Manjimup, and reckons that one seedling in 100,000 becomes a commercial variety³.

Its first great success was made in 1973, when John Cripps crossed Golden Delicious with Lady Williams at Stoneville¹. The result, Cripps Pink, has Lady Williams’s firmness and keeping with the sweetness of Golden Delicious. Fruit of the variety that meets a quality specification is sold under a trade mark registered in many countries, and by 2015 the variety made up more than 30% of Australia’s apple production^1,4. A sibling from the same breeding, Cripps Red, is the late-season partner, and a non-browning apple, Western Dawn, followed^2,3. Cripps, a British-born horticulturist who spent more than two decades on the variety, was inducted into the Royal Agricultural Society’s Hall of Fame in 2010 and died in May 2022 at 95; the original Cripps Pink tree stands at the Manjimup research station⁴.

The next generation is already in the ground. ANABP 01, sold as Bravo in Australia, came from a 1992 cross of Royal Gala and Cripps Red at Stoneville; the first commercial plantings went in in 2014⁹. In June 2026 the first shipment of mainland Australian apples to reach China was Western Australian Bravo¹⁰.

What’s picked

The state’s apples are picked from late summer into autumn, roughly February to May, variety by variety⁸; at Donnybrook the picking runs March to May and the blossom shows in October¹³. Gala opens the season in February, and Cripps Pink, picked a week or two after Granny Smith in early to mid May, closes it^1,15.

Western Australia grew 21,853 tonnes of apples in 2023/24, about a tenth of the national crop, from roughly 600 ha and about a hundred growers. Manjimup and Pemberton produce 69% of it from 24 growers, Donnybrook 15% from 27 and the Perth Hills 15% from 47, and more than half the crop comes from small family orchards picking under 1,000 tonnes a year. The most planted variety is Cripps Pink, at 30%, then the club apples including Bravo, then Gala⁷. The older Lady Williams is still grown, and prized for how late it ripens¹⁴.

On the table

Donnybrook’s main street is lined with apple-shaped decorations, and every Easter since 1954 the town has held an Apple Festival, begun that year at the suggestion of Allan Frost, who wanted a South West festival to celebrate the industry¹¹. Its Apple Queen competition, famous in the 1950s and 1960s, grew from a fundraising title into an ambassadorship; the 1989 queen was sent to Singapore to represent the fruit industry^11,16. In the Southern Forests around Manjimup, Newton Orchards, a fourth-generation family business more than ninety years old, presses its own ciders, juice and spirits⁸.

Notes

• Manjimup’s weather station, open since 1915, sits at 287 m, at 34.25° south and 116.15° east¹².
• Cripps Pink is owned and licensed by Western Australia’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development; the trade mark it is sold under is managed separately by an industry body^1,14.
• The Donnybrook Apple Queen finalists of 1954 came from Donnybrook, Manjimup and Bridgetown¹³.

Where the sources disagree

• The year of the cross. The NSW variety sheet, the ABC and the Department’s materials give 1973^1,4; Pomewest’s tribute to John Cripps says the first crossing was made in 1972⁵, the year the programme began².
• When Cripps Pink was released. Industry accounts give the 1980s, but no departmental source for the year was read, so none is given here.
• The first orchards. The account of colonists’ seeds and cuttings⁸ gives no dates.
• A Noongar word. No sourced Noongar word for the apple, an introduced fruit, was found, so none is given.