Pomelo tree in Bendigo Museum bears fruit of Chinese heritage

It is an old tree that aptly sits in the back garden of a museum opened to document and preserve Bendigo's Chinese heritage - a living, growing exhibit that occasionally still offers fruit. And while every aged tree has a mystery tale, the story of the country's first pomelo tree, told by the descendants of the woman who planted it more than 100 years ago, seems more like legend.

''My great-grandparents, Chinese market gardeners, were once sent a suitcase full of packages from family in Toi Shan, China, and it is believed that the first pomelo seeds were in that suitcase,'' says Anita Jack, head of the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo.

While most of the Chinese goldminers returned home when the alluvial goldfields of Bendigo faded, a small population remained, Sam and Gladys Ah Dore among them. Turning their focus to growing and selling produce, the tree was first planted by Gladys more than a century ago. Ms Jack believes it was the very first tree of its kind in the region, perhaps the country, and that the majority of pomelo trees now growing in Victoria have come from cuttings from this tree.

She says each year leaves from the tree are used to feed the museum's dragon, Sun Loong, before his performance at the Bendigo Easter parade. ''It's a tangible link back home and to the farming community where our ancestors have come from.''

In 1991, Ms Jack's parents, Russell and Joan Jack, founded the museum their daughter now manages and the original tree was uprooted from the backyard of the old Chinatown and replanted on the museum grounds where, astonishingly, it survived.

When Tim Baxter, owner of Dispensary Enoteca in Bendigo, married Ms Jack he started using the pomelo fruit in his bar. ''It tastes a little bit like grapefruit,'' he says. ''It is virtually unheard of to many Australians, but if you travel to Asia, it is a very common tropical fruit - beautiful, delicious.''

He says Australian-grown pomelos tend to taste more like grapefruit compared to those grown in China, which are much sweeter. For this reason, he often couples the fruit with cured kingfish on his menu and uses its bitter, astringent flavour in many cocktails he creates. In recent years, he says he has watched the pomelo slowly creep onto Australian menus after renowned chef Andrew McConnell, of Cutler & Co, started using it.

Mr Baxter plans to highlight the fruit using a cocktail he has created for the final weekend of the city's food and wine festival, which celebrates regional produce. Together with Geelong's Strasse Bar, the Bendigo-based bar will serve cocktails on a floating barge bar that is part of the festival hub known as the Immersery. Mr Baxter says the gin cocktail for the festival was created to pay homage to the district's history. ''It [pomelo fruit] feels indigenous to Bendigo, even though it is indigenous to China, that's how it feels to us,'' he says.

Festival chief executive Natalie O'Brien said water is the theme of this year's festival. She says of the three-storey rain garden by Queensbridge Square: ''It's definitely our most adventurous pop-up yet … It really celebrates water - we are on water, beside water and then over water on the old rail bridge. I thought I was on a boat.''