Eleanor, presiding over the table of apples and pears, weighing the contents of the metal
bowls as the steady stream of customers, mostly regulars, file up to her, has just given me
two magnificent tips.
“When you hold an apple up to your ear and tap it with your finger,’ she begins, ‘the higher
the pitch, the crunchier the apple will be.’ She explains how, at this time of year, mid-season
for apples, they change a lot from week to week and this little exercise ‘really helps
determine the crunch level.’
Her second tip is about pears, the pears you tend to dismiss in favour of those big sexy Pink
Ladies, sweet sweet Fujis, useful Granny Smiths – pears which, according to Eleanor, ‘are
amazing!’ She tells me they sell out every week. ‘After three days they’re heaven’, she says.
‘Generally someone will buy just one then come back the next week and buy five.’ Pears, it
transpires, ripen from the inside out, and ‘when the stalk pulls out,’ she tells me, ‘they’re
ripe, they’re ready.’
It’s either Eleanor you’ll find at the McMahon’s stall – where she’s been selling apples for
more than eight years – or her sister Vanessa, two gorgeous girls with a font of knowledge
about the produce they so enthusiastically sell. ‘What I love about selling apples,’ Eleanor
says, ‘is that they sell themselves – I never have to pitch them. Because they’re local and
they’re organic, and everyone has their favourites.’ She agrees with her sister that Pink
Ladies are the most popular – ‘it’s as much because people know them,’ she says, ‘as that
they’re so good!’ But all the apples have their charms, their individual characteristics – the
Sundowners ‘a lot crunchier and a lot more tart than Pink Ladies’; the intensely sweet Royal
Galas and Red Delicious.
McMahon’s Apples are at New Brighton every Tuesday from 8 – 11am and Mullumbimby
every Friday from 7 – 11am
Victoria Cosford
