During the making of The Aussie Spirit series, the craft distilling industry lost a dear friend, Raymond ‘Spike’ Desert III. Spike was one of the pioneers of craft distilling in Australia and built the Hoochery rum distillery by hand on the Desert family farm just outside of Kununurra. Luckily Kathleen Davies from Nip of Courage, recorded a short chat with him about the origin story of his Hoochery distillery, in November 2017, that really captures his character and ingenuity. He has been a great loss to the industry.