It's a hive of activity at Red Rich Fruits citrus orchard north of Gayndah in the North Burnett.
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Pickers are plucking mandarins from trees and filling trailers, the packing shed is buzzing with fruit and people in a blur of motion, and in the thick of it all is Red Rich Fruits farming operations manager Tim Teague.
Citrus season has just launched in Queensland, which is Australia's largest producer of mandarins, lemons and limes - and the North Burnett region leads this supply with the major focus on mandarins.
Picking has begun later this year due to milder summer conditions, but Mr Teague said the late start is not necessarily a bad thing as the fruit started hitting the markets after Easter rather than before and consumers are thinking more about mandarins than chocolate.
"Last year we started picking into the Easter long weekend and we were supplying the major chains on Good Friday and Easter Saturday and they didn't want it because nobody was buying it," he said.
"This year even though we are a little bit late, everyone is back at school and the focus for mandarins is lunchboxes, if you haven't got a mandarin in your kid's lunchboxes you are kidding yourself.
"So because of this there should be significant uptake in the market to drive sales based on demand, and that is what we want, it now feels like mandarin time of year."
Mr Teague said not picking and packing over the Easter weekend also helping producers save on wages and allowed the weather to cool a little more, which helps the quality of the fruit.
"Good Friday morning we got two and a half inches of rain, so even if we were thinking of picking over Easter, as soon as we got that rain we couldn't go in," he said.
"We have had great weather since that rain though, it's been paradise.
"Blue sky with the nights cooler which is helping the fruit mature and colour up, which is good we needed that, it had been too hot prior to that and now it is dry we can control the irrigation that goes on the fruit and that gives us a better quality fruit."
Mr Teague said the farming operation was currently sending 150 of bins of Imperial mandarins a day from 18,000 trees in the region to the major centres like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
And if weather conditions remained favourable, the North Burnett citrus season was showing a lot of promise.
"Fruit volumes are good, I feel they are up on last year, five to 10 per cent," he said.
"Growing conditions may be a bit late but generally have been excellent, the fruit in good, not too marked and now it is the weather for the rest of the season that defines us.
"If it stays like this and we just get random rain we are going to have a great year and then we will have a good flow into out later varieties and everyone is eating mandarins all year."
Now the Queensland citrus was hitting the market shelves Mr Teague said he hoped consumers supported the local product.
"Prices are OK now but it really is up to Australian consumers to define the price," he said.
"We have a fair bit of fruit at the moment, but they eat well and it's the right time of year so if consumers are buying more under those conditions then the price pressure on us shouldn't be so great.
"Consumers need to support Aussie farmers, it seems people are happy to pay more for a lot of things but fruit and veg doesn't get the same consideration and we just need a bit more."
Mandarin season in Queensland is generally from April to October.
