Feijoa: how a fruit obsession turned into an odyssey

Or, as Kate Evans likes to describe the fruit, the "humble feijoa", a fruit that's easy to grow, abundant, easily harvested and constantly shared among friends, family, neighbours and colleagues.

At least, that's what it's like in New Zealand. Feijoas aren't quite as keenly appreciated here in Australia, and it's never been quite clear why.

Evans has spent the best part of a decade following her personal obsession with the humble feijoa - she, like many Kiwis, pronounces it "fee-joa" - and recently published a history of the fruit.

The book charts the history of the fruit, from its native Brazil and Uruguay, to Berlin where it was scientifically named, the French Riviera where it was commercially cultivated and California, where it never really took hold.

Through her historical narrative, Evans is also telling a story of connection. Born in New Zealand, she worked and studied here in Australia for many years, before returning to her homeland in her 30s.

"New Zealanders in Australia, when they get hold of a feijoa, it's just an intensely emotional and homesick moment for Kiwis, and it's something that Australians don't really get," she says.

"So for researching the book, I went to a feijoa farm in Queensland ... basically, they would open their farm gates every weekend, and people would come and buy feijoas by the boxful ... to expat New Zealanders living in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, driving up to the Sunshine Coast, so excited to get their hands on these feijoas."

She's not wrong. I've met several people who'd never even tasted one until I pressed one upon them, cutting it open and urging them to spoon out the weird, creamy flesh. The taste is impossible to describe, except that it's got tones of guava, shades of pineapple, raspberry notes.

Why aren't they more popular? My brother-in-law recently sent me a photo of a crate of feijoas at a coastal market, selling for $19.99 a kilo, and suggested I may well want to start a side hustle.

Evans isn't surprised; she once paid $3 for a single fruit, just to get a taste of home, horrifying her fellow Kiwis in the process. And, while studying in Sydney, a friend from Canberra told her she'd had a feijoa tree in the garden growing up.

"She said, 'We just used to stand on them because we thought they smelled nice, we didn't realise that they were edible', and I was horrified," Evans says.

It was after she moved back to New Zealand, just in time for feijoa season, that she got to wondering about the fruit's origins, and how they had blossomed their way into Kiwis' hearts (feijoa trees produce distinct pink flowers that are, Evans tells me, delicious in salads).

"How did they become the taste of home for New Zealanders?" she wondered.

"I was thinking about being back in my home country as an adult, and kind of grappling with it and how it has changed, and what it meant to have this connection to place as a Pakeha, a white New Zealander."

Working as a freelance journalist, she eventually received a grant to travel to Europe, Brazil and Colombia.

"I kind of wanted to understand how a plant goes from being a wild species to being something that we domesticate, and all the different ways of that process happens through the story of one plant that I happen to be obsessed with," she says.

She's launching Feijoa: A story of obsession and belonging in Canberra at the New Zealand High Commission on May 8, where she hopes to bring together fellow feijoa obsessives.

"In working on the book ... I accidentally assembled this fellowship of the feijoa, so all these people around the world who are obsessed with feijoas," she says.

"And I sort of became this connecting point between all of them."