Birkbeck family reveal Denmark cannabis health retreat vision as tourism venture marks one-year anniversary

Denmark’s Birkbeck family have revealed their long-held vision to open a cannabis health retreat on their sprawling farm, a year since they opened the doors of their first on-site tourism offering, The Dam. Three generations of Steve Birkbeck’s family live on Raintree, an 880-acre jigsaw of seven farms with up to 10ha of cannabis sativa, fields of French black truffles, marron and Angus cattle all supplied by 200 million litres of fresh water from 40 dams. In the past 16 months, Steve’s daughter Chelsea and her husband Matt Beaton have launched an Australian first-industrial hemp based alcoholic seltzer through the Cannabis Botanical Distillery and the family have opened the doors to their 250-person restaurant The Dam. Mr Birkbeck, the founder of Mt Romance, is using his background as a sandalwood oil and perfume industry pioneer to develop perfume and organic flavours extracted with the family’s homegrown hemp solvent Last month, they took their entire operation off-grid. “Now we want to go to the next level. I want to find, in this district, people that want careers, people that want to spend 10 years taking these products around the world,” he said. “It’s a venue to promote a new local carbon economy and what we learn here and what we experiment with, with all of these cosmetics, perfumes and alcohol. “I’ve always said in exporting, if you can test your product in your domestic market and you can build a domestic beachhead then . . . you scale it afterwards. Don’t just jump into exports too soon. “I would love to sell cannabis to Amsterdam . . . in the form of alcoholic beverages.” Now, the family are setting the wheels in motion for the next stage of their plans for the property, to create a sustainable cannabis health retreat — an idea they first raised with the Shire of Denmark in 1998. The family are in the long and expensive process of rezoning their property for further tourism use, with a plan to start with 12 hempcrete chalets along the edge of their main 120ML dam, pending further State and local government approvals. Mr Birkbeck said it would also be used for holiday-goers or adventure seekers passing through the region on the Bibbulmun or Munda Biddi tracks. But as he dips his toe into WA’s medical cannabis sector, he hopes Raintree could become a place to seek relaxation, treatment or even palliative care for people prescribed medicinal cannabis. “To have the ability to bring people here and for those who choose to be consulted to then be able to take a prescription and have a seven-day break here — I think would be amazing,” he said. After battling cancer and a recent knee-replacement, Mr Birkbeck said he had personally found relief in medicinal cannabis, something he wanted to be able to share with others. “It’s beyond pain and sleep and anxiety, which are the three most prescribed areas at the moment as I understand it, the area that I am passionate about is also palliative care — so not as a cure,” he said. “I want it to be just part of the palette of things, it shouldn’t be the last resort.” Mr Birkbeck was recently appointed chair of Cannaponics’ advisory board of directors and has entered into an agreement between his Raintree group and the company. In March, Cannaponics broke ground on the first phase of its multimillion-dollar medicinal and pharmaceutical cannabis vision on a 65ha site in Collie with construction starting on a $2.6 million, 3600sqm greenhouse. Mr Birkbeck said he envisioned Raintree as “an entree” into the world of cannabis — both through their industrial hemp products and medicinal cannabis — that could attract people from around the world. “I see the cannabis side of these retreats being an international thing, where you might have two or three or four of them a year,” he said. He said he hoped that by getting involved with industrial and medicinal hemp, he could help push along the industry in WA. “Over the last seven years of exploring this area, I have often gone three steps forward, two steps back,” he said. “We, as a family, have really learnt what we can and can’t do in that hemp space and then we’ve adapted to what we can do. “WA has limitations to what it can actually do to help the hemp industry — most of the regulatory reforms are at a Federal level. “That is partly why I got involved with medical cannabis, so that we can play in both areas”