RACHAEL BOON AND
BEN WALLACE
Oaks Kitchen & Garden (Oak Beach, Queensland)
Compared with two years ago, life couldn’t be more
different for Ben Wallace and Rachael Boon. In 2017 they
quit Melbourne’s northern suburbs to clear 1.6-hectares
of overgrown land owned by Boon’s dad in Tropical North
Queensland. Now Boon, a former manager at Fitzroy
venue Village People Hawker Foodhall, and Wallace, former
sous-chef at Collingwood’s Easy Tiger, divide their time
between growing Thai ingredients, teaching travellers and
locals to cook, and creating Southeast Asian feasts at their
restaurant, Oaks Kitchen. “I feel sometimes I’m in a dream,”
says Boon. “There’s so much nature and beauty around me.”
A highlight of living in lush tropical surrounds, they say,
is having so much edible inspiration at hand. But it’s been
a vertiginous learning curve. Before arriving at Oak Beach
the pair’s gardening know-how was limited to inner-city
plots and balconies. And their daily routine has been turned
virtually inside out. “When we were working in restaurants,
by the time you cash up and clean up, you’re not home until
around 4.30am. These days we’re up at 4.30am – but not
by choice,” laughs Wallace. “We’d probably stay asleep until
5.30am or 6am if we could – but the rooster wakes us, and
we have to go and tend to him and the chickens.”➤68 GOURMET TRAVELLER