Tropical Fruit World

I was really excited this past weekend to go to a place called Tropical Fruit World. As you can imagine from the name it is a world of tropical fruit. It is about 90 minutes south of Brisbane and is actually in the state of New South Wales. I live in Queensland. So I got to pick up my second Australian state (there are only about 8). The countryside down there was stunning. Tropical Fruit World is a 170 acre farm that grows more than 500 varieties of tropical fruit. I was excited to see and taste fruits that I had never seen before. We took a guided tour of the farm and got to see lots of fruit hanging from the trees. I realized how removed we are from where our fruit comes from. I had never seen avocados actually hanging in a tree!!!
We got to learn about and taste some of the fruit in season. I took a picture of my fruit plate. We had ruby grapefruit, blood orange, mango, star fruit, yellow dragon fruit, papaya, two kinds of avocado, banana, tomato, custard apple and chocolate pudding fruit. The chocolate pudding fruit (or black sapote from Mexico) didn't taste like much right from the fruit but it looked just like chocolate pudding. But for some reason when the flesh is mixed with any dairy product it tastes like chocolate! So the little drink I had was like chocolate milk. And it has no sugar in it!!
I just have to mention the custard apple. They are really prevelant in Australia and are quite possibly the most delicious fruit I have ever had. In fact, that is what Mark Twain thought about the fruit when he had it. It looks ugly but when ripe the white flesh is like a complex beautiful dessert just by itself. It is too bad they are not in Indiana! If you ever get a chance to eat one take it. Just don't eat the large black seeds because they contain arsenic.
We also bought a fruit called mamey sapote and ate it last night. It is also called the pumpkin pie fruit because it tastes like pumpkin pie. And it did!! Not quite as sweet though.
It was an interesting place to go and maybe we will go back during a different season to see what other fruits are ready.