Australia is one of the premier destinations in the world for speciality coffee, with its innovation, its award-winning cafeterias and roasters, and its thriving cafe culture. Around 95% of coffee consumed in Australia is locally roasted, making Australia a leading exporter of roasting coffee worldwide.
Today, coffee is an important part of Australian culture, and Australia is home to a number of dynamic coffee-growing regions. According to a popular tv channel, coffee arrived in Australia in the First Fleet in 1788 but being traditionally a tea-drinking nation; coffee was nearly a century away from becoming a part of Australian culture. The first coffee plants were brought into the country by Governor Philip Parker King, who acquired them from Brazil in the early 1800s.
The start of history of coffee in Australia began after the Second World War, with Italian immigrants starting to bring coffee machines to Australia. Italian and Greek immigrants brought their love for espresso coffees and the traditional methods for making them, and the rest is history. The coffee industry in this country developed in large part because of the impact of Italian and Greek immigrants, many of whom moved there after the Second World War.
It began in large part because of the presence of Italian immigrants, who introduced new varieties of coffee and established commercial plantations. With migration came the proliferation of coffee shops popping up all across the big cities, as well as new blends, beans, grinders, and brewing methods to investigate.
Newly opened cafes attracted Australian bohemians, and along with the inner-city regeneration and gentrification, as well as the higher standards of living in Australia, the coffee industry began thriving. After a few decades of steady growth in the cafe sector, a national explosion and maturity in the cafe culture occurred in Australia. Australia is often considered to have the best coffee in the world today.
Coffee was first grown in Australia in the late 1800s, but the output declined, and the market lost its importance until the 1980s and 1990s when the rise of coffee culture worldwide took hold. For over a century, poor-quality coffee was the norm in Australia until European migrants arrived in between the world wars, especially the Italians and Greeks.
What truly caused the booming of coffee culture in Australia was the influx of migrants, especially the Italians, after the Second World War. In the 1930s, Italian immigrants brought espresso coffee to Australia, and it was made more popular by the 1950s as post-WWII European immigrants came to Australia.
In 1952, the first espresso machines began appearing in Australia, and Melbourne and Sydney saw the rise of an abundance of high-quality Italian cafes. The espresso bars that began to make their mark throughout Sydney and Melbourne had an appeal that went beyond the Italian migrant communities who ran them. As early as 1904, quirky coffee shops, staffed mostly by enterprising families of recent immigrants, began popping up across Sydney.
The migrants brought a love for coffee and a few quirky espresso machines with them. Italian and Greek immigrant influences are especially strong in the larger Australian cities, including Melbourne, which has developed a reputation to this day as one of the Australian coffee capitals.
Despite strong currents of anti-migrant sentiments, Australia was uniquely situated to absorb this new culture of coffee. Australia’s coffee culture began to grow, eventually becoming a necessary social experience and a part of Australian cultural identity. Despite having been born only a few decades before, out of existing habits brought by European migrants, the coffee culture today is leading in speciality coffee consumption.
Australian cafe owners use high-quality coffee beans, and their coffee is espresso-based, not a standard filter-coffee-based one, like what you will find in a lot of other countries. Our quality coffee beans make for a variety of different types of coffee, such as Iced Coffee, Espresso, Latte, Mocha, etc. Our coffee beans are 100% arabica.
With its sunny weather and varied landscapes, Australia is ideally situated to cultivate a diverse array of quality coffee beans. Producing mostly high-quality Arabica beans, the relatively small-scale, domestically grown beans of far northern Queensland are perfectly suited for the high-quality coffee culture in Australia.
Coffee production in Australia dated from the early 1880s and showed early promise, with Arabica beans grown on the far northern NSW coast winning awards in Paris and Rome during the mid-1880s.
The Aussies really nail their coffee approach, and as they are the template now for coffee shops all over the world, we get to enjoy that coffee experience, too. Australia is one of the top 30 countries in the world in terms of coffee consumption, with 75% drinking at least one cup per day and 28% consuming three or more cups per day.
This coffee-drinking culture has become so popular that people tend to look for different ways to make that experience even more memorable. You can check out some amazing options, such as coffee cart hire in Melbourne or coffee van hire in Melbourne, to make your event stand out from the rest.
Always remember that beauty is in the details. Although coffee beans are one of the best in the world, the new techniques and local touch just take the experience to a whole new level.