Liam Phillips

AFTER purchasing a piece of land before Christmas, the Havesi family were excited to make the most of their new plum tree, before it was stripped completely bare in a “greedy” act.

Mother of two young kids, Lauren Havesi, said she uses the plums for a number of things, from purees to desserts, and to see the work growing them go to waste was “frustrating”.

“It’s okay to take a few, but to strip the whole tree is pretty brutal,” Mrs Havesi said.

“We’ve been coming and picking fruit every few days, and we’d planted trees, so we came back one night to pick and water the trees and the whole tree was just stripped, even the under-ripe ones.

“It’s just pretty sad, because you put all your money and time into it and they just get flogged.”

Lauren said she has heard of similar situations throughout the Barossa region, even for industrial growers.

“There’s been a few in Tanunda and a few in Angaston, and some other orchards,” she said.

“Their paycheque is their orchard, so they were saying ‘how would you like it if we came and stole from your paycheque’.”

With plans for planting a number of new fruit trees, the family must now take extra steps to protect their property, which Jordan Havesi said was an unforeseen problem going forward.

“We definitely didn’t expect to have to keep an eye on our fruit trees, that’s for sure,” he said.

“We’ll definitely have to be putting cameras and fences up… It’s just very disheartening really, we just bought this block of land and this has already happened.”

While the family feels that the matter is not severe enough to bring to the police, SAPOL have said that entering someone’s property with the intent of theft carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.

Lauren said the previous owner recently informed the couple that this was an ongoing problem, and extended an invitation for the Havesi’s to come and pick some of her plums.