Born and bred on a Merbein block, Andrew Zrna went to great lengths – including a detour to obtain a Bachelor of Science in biology – to get off the land. Anything, he says, that would keep him from being a dried fruit grower.

And he’s not.

Instead, he runs Merbein Vine Nursery – albeit on part of a dried fruit block.

Turns out, back in the 1990s, there wasn’t a lot of demand for newl...