Aussies go crazy for cat poo coffee

Cafe-crazy Australians in the last decade have embraced coffee in all its forms, but they've saved the most expensive -- and excremental -- for last. Kopi Luwak, made in neighboring Indonesia from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats, is reputedly the world's rarest and most expensive coffee, painstakingly extracted by hand from the animals' forest droppings. When roasted, the resulting beans sell for around $1,000 a kilogram ($450 a pound) and brew into a earthy, syrupy, coffee acknowledged by connoisseurs as one of the world's finest. Despite the closeness of the coffee's home on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi, Australia's first civet cat brew has only just gone on sale in Queensland state, selling for A$50 a cup at the Heritage Tea Rooms, west of Townsville.