Sandra McCuaig and Jane Stuart are two generations of a farming family, who love improvising with fresh ingredients for their award-winning ice cream, made from their Bodalla Dairy milk.
“When children and older adults come in, they love [buying] strawberry,” Jane Stuart tells SBS Small Business Secrets. “And there’s a kilo and a half of fresh strawberries in every carapina.
“People can taste Queensland straight away. And we love watching people’s reaction, because it is a really special ice cream.” 
Jane Stuart is a mother of four, who also finds time to serve sweet treats to her local community.
Strawberry flavour is a best seller. Source: SBS Edgard Ferreira
“Ice cream ticks a lot of boxes, it is very nostalgic,” she says.
"And the way we set up the shop is timeless. A lot of grandparents come in and they help their grandchildren decide what ice cream [flavour] they want.”
Bodalla Dairy has so far received 40 awards in Sydney Royal Easter Show and Dairy Industry of Australia competitions. The business scooped gold this year for Kakadu Plum and Rum ice cream flavours.
The accolades inspired the duo to open their first Sydney parlour, Bodalla Dairy Ice Cream on Queen Street in Woollahra, earlier this year and it has since built a large and loyal following.
With summer just around the corner, the small family-run business is already seeing a rise in customers, as pandemic restrictions ease.
“The queue for ice creams sometimes goes out the door,” Ms McCuaig says.
“So somebody is telling somebody about it because we haven't advertised at all.
“We just rely on the fact that we do produce a quality product. We enjoy doing it, and the staff are always happy to look after people, so it's a good feel all around.”
Their ice-cream is made the 'old-fashioned way' at low temperatures in small batches from a single herd. They run a mix of 350 Fresian and Jersey cows, grazing on lush grasslands along the New South Wales south coast.
While the shop offers classic flavours like salted caramel, customers also flock to the parlour for its exotic range, using bush foods like wattleseed.
“We have made a point of sourcing our native ingredients from Indigenous-owned businesses,” Jane says.
“The three [businesses] that we source from are all traditional custodians of their land from Western Australia in the Pilbara region, from South Australia and from New South Wales in the Central West.”
Ms McCuaig bought the dairy farm back in 1989, and since then she has diversified the business into cheese and yoghurt.
Photos of the family farm on the NSW south coast. Source: SBS Edgard Ferreira
“We were struggling with milk, you can't really make much money,” she says. “Cheese has a good return, and yoghurt an even better return."
More recently, Ms McCuaig learned the craft of ice-cream making from two Italians 'who came to live at Bodalla and they stayed for eight months'.
She makes the range by hand at their dairy in the town of Eurobodalla, about 5 hours south of Sydney, and drives it up twice a week, in a refrigerated van.
“We'll spend up to 10 hours a day making ice cream on three or four days of the week," she says. "So it is more than a hobby, yet it's not quite a job. We just love doing it.”
When the ice cream van arrives in Sydney, it's all hands on deck. Even Jane’s children help out.
Bodalla Dairy ice cream has won multiple awards. Source: SBS Edgard Ferreira
“Going into business with mum, she's a lot of fun, she's very caring. Everyone loves working with her,” Jane says.
“She's in her mid-70's and she's still in the factory six days a week. So she's a good role model for everyone that works with her.
“And with ice cream, it is a special creative thing. We see our customers going past the window, lick, lick, lick.”
