I’m Mark Rockley. My wife Cathie and I started Paleo Hero out of our kitchen in Brisbane, Queensland. No business plan. No investors. Just a household oven, a bag of nuts, and the stubborn idea that food should be real food.
It started because I couldn’t find anything in the shops around Brisbane to suit a Paleo lifestyle. I’d been living paleo for a while — in 2003 while completing a fitness challenge I began to explore ways to improve my nutrition and I attended a seminar where my Personal Trainer, Darren Bain explained the Paleo Lifestyle to me, it just made sense. Eat real food. Move your body. Sleep properly. Find your tribe. Simple stuff. Breakfast options were limited so I went looking for a grain-free muesli that wasn’t full of seed oils, preservatives and maltodextrin, the shelves had nothing. So I made my own.
The first homemade batch in 2003 was for us. Then after 2 weeks our friends wanted some. Then their friends. Then our local gym, Function Well said they’d stock it. We designed some packaging and launched in 2004. Cathie and I would be up before dawn, slow-roasting nuts and seeds, hand-mixing every batch, packing it into bags on the kitchen bench. That kitchen smelled incredible at 5am — toasted coconut and raw honey. It still does, but now in a small commercial kitchen based in Morningside.
We’re still in Brisbane. Still hand-making and hand-packing every product, every morning. Our team of 5 is small and we like it that way. Primal Muesli, Primal Choc Granola, Primal Bread Mix, Primal Pancake Mix, our Primal Slices — all made the same way, with the same rule: if you can't read the ingredients, we don't use them. No grains, no refined sugars, no preservatives. Never have been. You can read the ingredients list and understand every word on it. That’s the test. If your nan wouldn’t recognise it as food, we don’t use it.
Here’s what we’re not: we’re not a diet company. Paleo is a lifestyle, not a rulebook. There’s no ONE right way to do it — there never has been. You find what works for you. Maybe that’s strict paleo. Maybe it’s just swapping canola oil for olive oil and seeing how you feel. Both are fine. We’re not going to lecture you. The Standard Australian Diet — and yeah, that spells SAD for a reason — leans heavily on processed food. Not some idealised version of a caveman that never existed.
We exist to do two things: feed you well and share what we’ve learned. We’ve got over 200 articles on the blog covering everything from ancestral eating to meal prep to what actually happens when you ditch processed sugar. We let the food do the talking — but we also want you to understand why real food matters, so you can make your own calls.
The food is the thing, though. We make it with our hands, in our kitchen, with ingredients we’d feed our own family. Every morning. That hasn’t changed since the first batch in 2003 on the kitchen bench.
Come and try it. If you reckon we’re onto something, welcome to the tribe.
Mark & Cathie Rockley
Brisbane, QLD