King Island Dairy, on King Island in Bass Strait, is one of Australia's most famous cheese producers. King Island marks the western edge of Bass Strait, 80 kilometres north west of Tasmania and south of Cape Otway, Victoria.
King Island Dairy produces high quality, French-style camembert, brie and blue cheeses, along with traditional cheddars, hard cheeses, yoghurt and delectable, thick clotted cream. Multi-award winning cheeses are created here from milk produced by the Island’s 25 dairy farms and 7,500 dairy cows. You can visit the Fromagerie to sample the King Island range of products and see cheeses maturing in the cellar. In 2002, King Island Dairies celebrated 100 years of dairying, making it one of Australia’s oldest cheese producers.
King Island was first sighted in 1797 by Captain William Campbell, and was proclaimed a separate state in 1825. The Island’s location, in the path of the Roaring Forty winds, resulted in hundreds of shipwrecks along its coastline during the 19th century. Local legend has it that straw mattresses from the wrecks contained grass seeds that floated ashore and propagated in the island’s rich soil, resulting in a unique variety of grass on which the dairy cows of King Island graze.
