Funeral Thursday for driver of Durum wheat from northern NSW

Mr Cush will be remembered at his funeral today, Thursday, at Inverell attended by his wife Helen and daughters Penny, Michelle, Natalie and all their families plus his extended collection of friends including loyal customers of the best milled semolina in the world.

Such a claim Mr Cush was always willing to make, citing northern NSW soils and dry climate for producing higher protein and gluten levels - the type of Durum wheat demanded by the Italians for an el dente experience.

What Mr Cush might have failed to elaborate upon was the farming skill through rotation and nutrition to grow such a crop, a job now tasked to Natalie and her husband James Tydd who will run the header over the last of this year's Durum only the night before the funeral.

Mr Cush was very much a part of this year's harvest, contributing to decisions on fertiliser and eagerly watching how new varieties would perform. But Mr Cush was more than a skilled farmer and pushed himself into alternate comfort zones, like flying planes or challenging those who would call themselves the biggest in the game.

His pride and joy was a mill at Tamworth now managed by his daughter Michelle Shaw and her husband Hamish, producing boutique 25kg bags of Bellata Gold semolina They market their product on its reputation for quality and sell to loyal customers in a world where lower grade Mexican semolina can be imported for less than the cost of Australian grain.

At one point the factory included a pasta making machine and sold dry product direct to consumers. Now Bellata Gold focuses on fresh pasta and supplies the best chefs in Sydney and Melbourne. Some of its milled semolina also goes into fresh pasta meals sold through Cosco and Coles.

Mr Cush will be remembered for making long lasting professional relationships, freely offering his ideas on everything from grain quality to staff rotations.

But he could become frustrated when speedbumps got in the way of regional economy. He constantly railed against the lack of adequate transport for commodity products like grains.

He called out the increasing costs to small processors to comply with biosecurity and yet promoted blockchain traceability to guarantee paddock of origin information to his consumers. He also maintained a very resilient traceability program which was, quite simply, his ability to pick up the phone and talk to his customers whether it was about growing Durum to milling it into flour.

As he grew his customer base Mr Cush took their concerns to heart and helped to bring golden colour to the milled grain, an important consumer demand. He trialed new varieties of Durum developed at the Tamworth Agricultural Institute's breeding program. While yield ability has been superseded by new varieties Mr Cush continued to promote colour as a point of difference to consumer.

When the privatised Australian Wheat Board International refused his applications to sell Durum wheat to his own clients - a position backed in person by then chairman Trevor Flugge during a meeting at Tamworth - he took action. He supported friend, grain trader and barrister Peter Howard who took them to the Federal court.

They listened as AWB staff under cross examination admitted they were told by superiors to reject all applications, regardless of their merits.

The case went further, to the High Court, but lost in a four to one judgement that ABW Limited could not be held accountable, under administrative law principles, as it was a private company.

A little more than a year later Mr Flugge appeared on the front page of all the daily papers bare chested and gun toting during a tour of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and before long the whole oil for wheat scandal led to the AWB's collapse.

Bellata Gold was established to sell to whomever it pleased.

"Doug was a man of incredible vision and strength," recalled Mr Howard. "He was well respected in all his business dealings."

This story first appeared on The Land.