Gurra Downs is situated in the Riverland, approximately 250km north/northeast from the coast and the city of Adelaide. The Riverland is renowned for its exportation of fresh fruit and produce world-wide. It is free from both the Mediterranean and Queensland fruit fly, and free from Red Palm Weevil. The Reilly family purchased Gurra Downs in 1990 and established a 10 hectare organic vineyard throughout the late 1990's. After extensive research, the first date palm was planted in 1998. In 2001, the family imported their first tissue culture date palms from the UK and after a lengthy nursery phase they were planted at Gurra Downs in October 2004. They are now a research and development facility for the production of premium table dates. The approach they have adopted on their home property site, is to field trial as many date palm varieties as possible. Given that there are no commercial date plantations in the semi-arid district or indeed in the state, they feel it is important to economically evaluate a broad range of varieties to determine the most suited selections for the local environment. The Reilly's now grow many different varieties on their properties, several of which are available for sale within Australia.