Hoochery Distillery

Raymond 'Spike' Dessert III arrived in the Kimberley from the United States in 1972 to grow seed crops, and by the mid-1990s had built, largely by hand from materials found around his own farm, a pot still and distillery on the family property outside Kununurra. The result, Ord River Rum, is fermented and distilled from cane grown in the Ord Valley and wet-season rainwater, then aged and hand-bottled on site, the oldest continually operating licensed distillery in Western Australia, now run by Spike's daughter Kalyn Fletcher since his death in 2017. Beyond rum, the distillery also turns out a Cotton Gin marking Kununurra's cotton-processing history and a Sweet Sorghum Whiskey made from grain grown on the family farm. Visitors reach it via a drive through cane and cotton country, arriving for daily afternoon tours, tastings, and a cafe serving the distillery's well-known Ord River Rum Cake. Nothing about it reads as built for tourists, because the tourism came second.