THERE’S something in the “apple-a-day” adage – founder of Beltana Grange Orchard in Pialligo, Bert
Hauptmann
has just turned 99 and says he still loves apples as much as when he was a boy.
He says he’s not quite himself on the day we meet, following a covid jab, but Bert, one of Canberra’s first apple growers, is always ready with a laugh and a story of the early days of the orchard.
When he first bought the Pialligo property in 1952, he grew veggies “down by the river flat, before the road came in”, he says, as well as raising a large flock of chickens, supplying eggs across Canberra for about 14 years, which “brought in a good income”.