Diary Notes

Pictures and reflections from a weekend trip to Stanthorpe.

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Stanthorpe

I spent last weekend in Stanthorpe.

Stanthorpe is about 200 km from where we live in Brisbane and it took almost three hours to get there. Its altitude is about 1000 m and therefore is cooler than Brisbane. It is known for its apples and vineyards.

Approaching Stanthorpe, Taylan suggested I make a stop and have Ploughman’s Lunch at Stanthorpe Cheese.

This is “Ploughman’s Lunch for 1”:

The cheese is named “Tait”,which I chose after trying a cheese tasting plate first. The “Tait” has a mouldy camembert-like rind but inside it is harder like Swiss cheese. I liked it. I bought two packs to take Brisbane. The whole lunch bill was $42 including a glass of wine. The wine was local, a very dry and good Shiraz. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask for its maker.

Nextdoors, they have a large vegetable/herb farm protected against pests by good quality netting. It is a good example of protected cropping.

Afterwards, I drove to the motel and checked in. The motel cost me $133/night booked through Booking.com. The name of the motel is Boulevard Motel. The rooms are small but very clean and have all amenities. The management is friendly and helpful. My room had a beautiful view of the Quart Pot Creek. Next time I book, I have to remember to ask again for a riverside room.

This creek has historical significance. The tin deposits found around it in 1856 started Stanthorpe. I learned from a plaque mounted on the main street that the area was one of the richest alluvial claims ever worked in the world and the sale of tin produced revenues around £2.5 million at that time. In today’s dollars, this is equivalent to about $1 billion and it was a major factor giving financial stability to the Queensland Colonial Government, which had separated from NSW only ten years earlier.

Main Street

I took a stroll through the main street, the Maryland Street:

It looks more opulent than Australian country towns of similar size. Stanthorpe has a population of 5300, not enough to support all the shows on the main street without the visitors’ cash.

The town has a large Woolworths store:

In some small towns with similar populations, I remember people agitating against entry of supermarkets like Woolworths or Coles. I have never understood this. If I were living in a small town, I think I would welcome the opening of a supermarket, unless I owned the local General Store.

Another view of the main shopping district from the other end of the Maryvale Street:

Quart Pot Creek Walk

I went back to my motel and started walking along the creek that was seen from the window of my room above. The time was around 3 pm. The birds you see in the following video are a fleet of Little Corellas.

They made a much greater ruckus when they were closer but they were away by the time I took out my phone to record their flight. The flight of the little corellas did not bother these bats taking their afternoon nap along the river:

Dinnertime

After walking about two hours, I was getting hungry. There are good dining options in Stanthorpe. I short-listed three: Granite Belt Brewery or Aussie Beef Steakhouse for a dinner of steak, chips and beer; or Italian at Anna’s Restaurant. I picked Italian, which was a nice cosy restaurant in a large Queenslander building:

It was about 15 degrees outside and I was tempted to start with the Minestrone soup:

It was a perfect start, which I followed with Canelloni:

The cannelloni was OK but not to the same standard as the Minestrone. The pasta was a bit too doughy for my taste and the mince was too fatty. My choice of wine was Symphony Hill Shiraz. I visited the winery the next day, which is in nearby Euka.

Nighttime Stroll

After dinner, I took another stroll along the river in the direction opposite to my afternoon walk. This took me to the “Big Thermometer”, which is a local attraction:

I took this picture using the nighttime mode on my Pixel 7 camera. You can see the Southern Cross but cannot read the temperature displayed at the top of the “Big Thermometer”. It was 13.1 degrees.

You see below a dark vortex under the bridge which looked ominous in the dark.

Breakfast

In the local paper, I read about Taleyha Evans, a Stanthorpe girl, winning the 2025 Darling Downs Sub-Chamber Showgirl competition at the Toowoomba Royal Show. She is going to compete in the Ekka in August for the Queensland title. She was asked what she would do after Ekka and she said that she would go to Foxy’s and have a cappuccino and whatever else. Foxy’s is the bakery on the main street and I went there for a breakfast and had steak and pepper pie and a long black:

Being a Sunday morning, the bakery was quite busy.

Ballandyne

Most of the vineyards are further south in Ballandyne area. I drove to the Symphony Hill winery in Eukey. You see the vineyard below. This is the first time I saw a vineyard covered with a mesh. The mesh was meticulously installed and must have cost a fair bit.

Huge mushrooms on the lawn outside the winery:

They were kind enough to show me inside the winery. The expensive wine is fermented in unglazed terra cotta vessels.

The vessels were purchased from Tuscany. The wine, from what they called Amphora grapes, sold $250 a bottle. I bought three bottles fermented through the normal method (stainless steel barrels) at $45 a bottle (Shiraz, Cab Sav, and Tempranillo). We drank the Tempranillo with Meliz in Brisbane this week. The wine is good but not spectacular. You probably can buy better wine for $45 but, hey, this is what you do when you visit a winery. You buy wine.

Apple Pie

On the way back to Stanthorpe, I stopped at the Ballandyne General Store and Bakery. I wanted to have a cup of coffee but I could not resist the locally baked apple pie:

The pie was brilliant. It was not too sweet and the apple was crisp yet perfectly edible. The pastry was good too. I bought two pies to take home.

Buying apples

On the way back to Brisbane, 5 kilometers after Stanthorpe, I saw a sign on a side road that said Coco’s Orchard, Fruit. I turned in and drove for 200m to arrive at a shed next to a large orchard. You could fill boxes with apples from large containers on the floor in the shed. The choices were Red Delicious, Royal Gala, and Granny Smith. No Pink Ladies yet in this orchard.

After driving another 10 k towards Brisbane, I saw a sign to Sam’s Fruit shop on Middlemount Road and I thought I should check that one too:

Here they had Pink Lady and I bought a 4-kg box. I also bought a box of Roma tomatoes, some apple cucumbers and a stalk of celery.

The rest of the drive to Brisbane was uneventful. I made a pit stop in Warwick, which I found to be a quite a sizeable country town but I have not got much else to say for it. I made a stop at the City Centre. Nicely dressed couples were walking to restaurants for a Sunday lunch, possibly after the Church Service (I say so because of the nice clothes).

In Brisbane

Finally in Brisbane, I thought I should get a picture of what I brought over from Stanthorpe:

I shared the apples and apple cider vinegar with the family. We still have a lot apples and hopefully will finish them before they go bad.

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Pascal Hagi

Pascal and Hagi do not eat every lettuce. Just this Cos Lettuce that I but from Coles. It is hydroponically produced and cost about $4 for a slim lettuce. They say lorikeets need to eat greens regularly and this is their greens supply.

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Comparing Istanbul and Brisbane prices - AT index

Based on my basket of goods, Australia is 36% more expensive this week compared to Istanbul. Both Coles (AU) and Migros (TR) prices are expressed in Turkish liras for the items in the basket on 29 March 2025. I converted Coles prices to Turkish liras at the exchange rate of 1AUD=23.92 TRY.

The trend (the red dotted line) is rising, which means that, since 5 July 2024, the Turkish prices are slowly approaching the Australian prices. Some items, e.g. beef mince, is more expensive than in Brisbane and has been consistently so since I started this chart.

The code to create the above tables and the chart is in my github repository and can be downloaded if you are interested.