Rachel and Olivia Orchard: All in the mix

They started fermenting yoghurt and bread at home, while also encountering Korea’s great fermented side dish, kimchi, for the first time. It was the start of something which, over the next four years, would eventually result in their kombucha (fermented tea) brand, Gather Brewing.

WHO WE ARE: Rachel and Olivia Orchard

Prior to January 2020, few of us had much – if any – knowledge of Wuhan, China. Not so Rachel and Olivia Orchard. In November 2019, Rachel was in that very city, playing one of her final professional volleyball matches. After finishing up the season, Rachel, Olivia and their then fivemonth-old daughter, Mila, headed home to South Australia. A week later, Beijing was in lockdown.

All in the mix

Story by Kate Le Gallez. Photograph by Heidi Lewis.

That exceptionally well-timed exit marked the end of one type of life – that saw them living in South Korea, London and China among other places – and the beginning of a new one making a permanent home on the Fleurieu, growing their family and brewing some excellent kombucha.

Rachel and Olivia met in 2011 playing on Australia’s national volleyball team, which means they were both very good at a sport that barely gets noticed in Australia. Internationally, it’s a different story. Volleyball is the world’s second most played sport and in many European, Asian and South American countries there’s real money for professional women’s teams.

At the time they met, Rachel was playing professionally in Italy, after leaving her Sunshine Coast home at age seventeen to attend college in America. Olivia studied accounting in Adelaide before working full time while playing on Australia’s national team. Their friendship developed over time as the team toured together twice or three times a year. As for their romantic connection: ‘We didn’t see it coming,’ says Olivia. ‘Looking back, it’s obvious there was something more going on, but we just didn’t pick up on it at the time.’

As they explain their relationship to me, it’s mapped out according to where in the world Rachel was playing. When they first got together: Poland. Long-distance relationship: Azerbaijan. First time living together: South Korea. ‘That was when we sort of went okay, if we’re going to make this work, I’ll go as well,’ continues Olivia.

Their time in Korea during 2014 was important, not just for their personal relationship but for how it would shape their lives postvolleyball. ‘We found that all the bread and yoghurt we would buy was full of sugar,’ explains Rachel. ‘Like not just had sugar in it, but was the sweetest thing you could ever have.’ They started fermenting yoghurt and bread at home, while also encountering Korea’s great fermented side dish, kimchi, for the first time. It was the start of something which, over the next four years, would eventually result in their kombucha (fermented tea) brand, Gather Brewing.

After Korea, Rachel and Olivia based themselves in London for two years. Olivia picked up contract work, while Rachel continued to rotate between time in London and playing volleyball abroad. Her first season in China was short – only three months – leaving plenty of time for her fermentation experiments including, eventually, kombucha. ‘I never drank tea. So kombucha was the last fermented thing that I tried to make (of the non-alcoholic variety),’ Rachel laughs.

With Rachel’s post-volleyball career plan becoming clearer, the couple decided it was also time to think about their geographical plan. On one fateful trip home, they found themselves housesitting in Port Willunga. While still based in London, they managed to find and buy an unpolished mid-century gem with expansive views over Linear Park. The house had immediate charm (and the odd quirk) but a renovation completed in June 2019 transformed it into a light-filled family home for Rachel, Olivia, Mila and baby Zoe, born in 2021.

Among all this, Rachel and Olivia took up a lease at Adelaide-based food and beverage cooperative Squatter’s Collective, finding a home and a distribution network for Gather. The name speaks to the unusual mix of ingredients – experiential and edible – that led them to establish the business. It’s perhaps best explained by the story of how Rachel first sourced her tea. It was on a volleyball trip, of course, against a team in Yunnan Province coached by a known tea drinker. ‘This other coach took me to this hole in the wall, down inside an alley,’ recalls Rachel. ‘We just sat there for like two hours one day drinking tea. And then I had to go off to training.’ She still sources her tea directly.

Volleyball plays a lesser role in their lives now both Rachel and Olivia are retired (although don’t write Rachel off from a Brisbane Olympics comeback). But the opportunities it’s offered the pair belie the sport’s almost non-existent reputation in Australia. While Gather Brewing may bottle up those experiences to be shared with all of us, the life that Olivia and Rachel have created for their family here on the south coast is itself a gathering of riches.