Devoted durian connoisseurs

It was already close to 9pm. The race was on. We had exactly five minutes to drive to a secret location before the elderly Amma closed up for the night. We had to pick up our durian.

Let me set the scene: I was in Bangkok enjoying a much-needed catch-up with close family friends during Covid-19 curfew/lockdown. In Thailand that meant citizens must be home by 9pm. It seemed miraculous that the eternally buzzing metropolis obeyed this mandate, but not a vendor, an unnecessary vehicle nor pedestrian was spotted after this hour … except the few belligerent durian hunters. Such is the love for this extraordinary fruit.

This wasn’t my first mission. For this fruit, I have also dropped my familial obligations with a day’s notice and flown from Sydney to far-north Queensland. Durian cannot survive overnight temperatures below 15C, so in Australia it is only grown north of Townsville, and typically harvested from late November to February. I was brought to far-north Queensland on a distant lead: a friend had a friend whose sister-in-law recently bought an orchard, fabled to have 40-year-old durian trees that had never been sprayed. They forgot to mention that they had also never been pruned.

Two colleagues and I came as a pack, as soon as the sister-in-law called us back to tell us the durians were close to peaking. They needed to be harvested, and if we wanted them in Sydney, we’d have to come and sort it out ourselves. Easy enough we thought. Not so.

These trees were already well over 25 metres tall, neglected in the orchard alongside purple mangosteens. Mangosteens and durian are a very common companion planting, since harvesting usually occurs at the same time. In the Thai folkloric tradition, mangosteens should be eaten to minimise the nauseating effects of overindulging on durians, as durians are a heating food and mangosteens are a cooling one. They’re often referred to as the King and Queen of Fruits in south-east Asia.

The grass was chest height and the whole wild orchard buzzed with life – life that wanted to consume us as much as we wanted to consume the fruits. In all our earnestness we’d arrived from the city dressed in shorts, sneakers and flimsy cotton gloves. We were completely defenceless against the swarming green tree ants, wasps, snakes, mosquitos and scorching 46C weather. We ascended the trees with no ropes, no plan and no clue.

We did, however, manage to devise a system. We’d identify the ripe fruit, then one of us would climb the tree to cut it down – careful to leave the stem as long as possible. Once cut, we’d aim the 5kg fruits at a canvas parachute beneath us; two below holding it up, to ensure each fruit had a soft landing. Otherwise they would have been swallowed in the sea of grass, never to be found again.

Can you see how this is potentially fatal to three novices?

The environment was threatening enough; then add the danger of a spiked cannonball descending at high speed from above and you’ve got the ultimate workplace trust exercise.

All I could think of was the market price of durian – “Ahhh so this is why they’re so expensive.”

Throughout Asia, there are “No Durian” stickers everywhere – they’re commonly sighted in vehicles, hotels, on public transport and in public buildings. Australia has not embarked on a similar project, so the absence of warnings meant we could pick as much as we could load into our rented car, then set off on a two-hour drive to the trucking company we’d found to transport it down to Sydney. Our work complete, with great relief, we jumped into a frigid waterfall to ease our ant bites.

The Guardian