Contemporan

We Are

Sophie and Chris
Sophie and Chris
Sophie and Chris
Sophie and Chris

12

Foragers is a farm-based cooking school and dining room with self-contained accommodation located in the Southern Forests region, 6km south of Pemberton.

Chris & I moved from Fremantle to a nineteen-acre property previously called Pemberton Breakaway Cottages, with our two children in 2005.

Pemberton greatly appealed to us for its unaffected, stunning natural environment, wine, variety of fresh produce and small country community.

We built new accommodation, dug a productive kitchen garden, started a learning curve with farm animals and crafted a forty-seat dining room with a large commercial kitchen; relaunching as Foragers in March 2011.

Throughout these early experiences we have met wonderful locals and made valuable relationships with producers and other like-minded people that now play an integral role at Foragers.

Chris migrated from Switzerland to South Australia in 1985. Some years later, he started his own business in Fremantle producing kitchens and furniture of distinction. This allowed him to accrue the skills and knowledge necessary to undertake larger building projects. Chris’s love of building, attention to detail and artisanal craftsmanship is clearly evident in the Foragers Field Kitchen, chalets and farm outbuildings.

I’m originally from the Barossa Valley in South Australia where I qualified as a chef at the Pheasant Farm Restaurant with Australian food icon Maggie Beer. I then cooked my way around the world before we settled in Fremantle in 1991. I continued to work as a chef, undertake a visual arts degree before writing, teaching and consulting while we raised two young children. Fremantle Press published my first book PicNic – Outdoor Feasts in the Australian Landscape in 2002.