Meet Saramat Ruchkaew: The uncrowned 'Mango Queen' of the Northern Territory

I'll help first, ok? I guess Australians provide a lot of opportunity for people who want to work hard. You see this one here, just a little bit more. So yeah, working hard is a big deal, but it's actually working smart too. Box please. And to an end, their operation's an example of what you can do if you come here with very little and end up with a sizable operation. She might be tiny, but as one of the territory's biggest mango growers, Saramat Rakkal, known by all as Two, picks well above her weight. And my, it's been a journey. 33 years of building up a 70,000-strong orchard for a woman who certainly was more familiar with navigating corporate life in Bangkok than driving tractors. Just commitment and focus, and don't be afraid of hard work. Loyalty to the people that, you know, help you. And, you know, the higher you go, you're going to be the nicest person in town because when you drop, you have more people to pick you up. It's referred locally as mango madness in the middle of the merciless build-up season in the top end of the Northern Territory. The heat is relentless, but it's these conditions that are perfect for growing arguably Australia's favourite tropical fruit. But Two wasn't always a farmer. Once a career woman working in marketing in Thailand, it was the age-old love story that found her uprooting life and moving to Australia. As a migrant, job prospects were limited. She was also trying to fund an MBA she was completing. Because come to Australia, I don't speak English. What job should I do to make $4,500 to pay school fee? So I have a passion and looking for money to pay school fees and found a niche. Because you don't speak to mango in English. Mango doesn't need English at that time. She quickly realised these were untapped fruits of opportunity. Well, I think the mango industry at that time is probably no industry at all because everyone do hobbies, hobby farm. So if you have 3,000 trees and you're like, whoa, big farmer. So we pick ourselves. We use a weekend and if Ian go to work and I'll pick on my own. And yeah, just go slowly and pick maybe one tonne a day. And being young and fit, I probably not do it now. So that year, first year we pick mango, we make $12,000. The seed was planted and they started to play a part in building up the northern industry. I said, look, too, I think we might have some opportunity here. So we come up with the idea to chair farming. So we went, knocked on the door on the weekend in every farm that have a few run-down mango trees. We'll be asking if we can manage it and we can split the profit. Tu and her husband Ian could see that managing farms would leave them beholden to unpredictable landowners and that if they wanted to have a proper crack at a commercial industry, they needed to invest in their own land and processing facility. They eventually bought a run-down place in Berry Springs, but it was a discovery on that land that proved a game changer. About second week when I start cleaning the shed and walk back to the packing shed, I found the nursery. I was so excited. Breeding meant she could expand significantly. She would go on to eventually graft 35,000 trees from the handful she started with. It was hard slog with her husband working full-time with the Department of Agriculture. I just said, look, I want to be farmer. So Ian said, yeah, we can't go together. Someone got to put food on the table. So Ian continued working and I developed the farms. And Ian joined me in 2007 or 2008. It was full swing after that. They were exporting, the biggest market being New Zealand, and steadily supplying more and more domestically. The epitome of start small, grow big. I came here with not a lot and now a very big farming operation. And it's quite something to do what they've done. Lots of obstacles, lots of problems along the way. Dealt with them all and still got problems, but still deal with them. So very, very inspiring to see that sort of story. They also grew a new variety of mango, the Maha Bliss, which she labels the Miss Universe of Mangoes, with its distinct flavour, smell and look. She's even willing to play favourites. When you eat Maha Bliss, you will never eat other mango again. The Maha variety now takes up 25,000 trees in the entire orchard. Such is the increased demand. Her journey hasn't been free of pain. A very raw and recent tragedy has been the loss of her husband 12 months ago, the man on which she'd shared a dream and a passion for building up this business. And what that's good to me, you know, my dream and his dream and will continue until I join him. Reflecting now, she also says work took top priority and children got put on the back burner. You don't feel it when he's here, but when someone's gone, yeah, you feel that it means that opportunity. It might not fill the gap, but she built up her own kind of family, treating her workers as her own kin, many affectionately calling her mum. She treats us as a family, so we also, like, you know, very happy with her because, you know, sometimes we have some issues. She always tries to find out the solution. She's sponsored people like Callisto D'Souz in a full-time position for the better part of a decade. He's risen up through the ranks to now manage staff for her. He says, too, is a source of inspiration for many of the workers. She's a, like, very strong woman that I have never seen in my life because she's a really hard worker and she's really easy to, you know, control all this big fun. The money is enough to support their families for much of the year in East Timor, where other work can be hard to find. Then when we go back home, we can try to improve our life, our economic life. Then, of course, we're going to send our children to school and build up the house and, yeah, many other things we need to improve in our life. Getting workers and navigating so much red tape is probably the biggest challenge, getting harder every season. During COVID and when prices have been too low, she's had to just let fruit rot in the field. Fertiliser costs have also skyrocketed with global conflicts. You know, price has been three, four times what it used to be and not just that, as well, we can't access to it. So farming's getting really, you know, hard. The margin... The margin getting skinnier and skinnier all the time. It might be hard, but she's a long way from putting up her boots. Plans for putting in another 20,000 trees, giving back to the top end, which she says has given her so much. I guess the Australians provide a lot of opportunity for people who want to work hard, want to make commitment and want to have some idea that can, you know, for me, mango industry, it used to be something small, but I identify this is opportunity to grow big and what I grab in my whole hand and let's do this. Well done, come on. As long as you have that passion, I guess, to drive, you know, and stay focused, don't lose it.