Who is Lush Lychees?

If you’ve picked up a box of our lychees, poured one of our spirits, or stopped by our farm gate, you might have wondered who’s behind Lush Lychees. So let us introduce ourselves.

From a cyclone to an orchard

We’re Paul and Krystal Caton, a family farming business near Rockhampton in Central Queensland. Neither of us set out to grow lychees. Paul was raised on a cattle property, and Krystal spent her early career as an educator. What we shared was a simple idea: to build a rural business of our own, and a place to raise our family.

In 2016, just after Cyclone Marcia, we took a chance on 19 hectares of storm-battered orchard at South Yaamba. Where others saw fallen trees, long grass and broken netting, we saw a future. We knew nothing about lychees, or horticulture, so we learnt by doing: through plenty of mistakes, and the generosity of growers who shared what they knew. Bit by bit, the orchard came back to life.

What we grow today

Today, Lush Lychees is one of Australia’s largest lychee orchards, home to around 9,000 trees. Our fresh season is short, just six weeks from mid-December to late January, and in that window we send premium lychees to markets here and overseas, and straight to our local community at the farm gate.

We focus on quality and our fruit is never sulphur treated. Every lychee is picked at its peak, cooled quickly and kept cold from farm to shop, so its bright pinky-red colour and sweetness reach you just as it left the tree. Cared for this way, our fresh lychees keep for up to two weeks in the fridge.

More than fresh lychees

A great lychee season passes quickly, and we never want good fruit to go to waste. So we’ve found more ways to share the crop year-round, turning fruit that’s a little too small or blemished for the fresh market into small-batch jams, chutneys and preserves, our lychee vodka and liqueur, and a lychee ice cream range.

Finding more value in what a farm already grows is close to our heart, so much so that it became the focus of Krystal’s research as a 2025 Nuffield Scholar.

Still a family farm

At the end of the day, we’re still a family farm, doing this for the same reason we started: to build something of our own and raise our family on the land.

And we don’t do it alone. Our three kids are part of harvest, too. Sienna and Aria run the farm shop, with Sienna keeping everything organised and Aria looking after everyone who stops by, while Wyatt keeps the fridges stocked between helping Paul load fruit onto the trailers. Their favourite job, naturally, is quality-testing the ice cream range.

So whether you’re enjoying a box of fresh summer lychees, a bottle of something we’ve made from them, or a visit to see where it all grows, thank you for supporting an independent Australian family farm.

From our orchard to you: a short season, grown with care and captured to enjoy for longer.
— Paul & Krystal, with Sienna, Aria & Wyatt