Stanthorpe – Queensland Stories

Along Quart Pot Creek, upstream from Heritage Park, the wattle trees are flowering.

The path winds above the creek and under the railway bridge, across sloping granite to the creek and beyond. On the bank near the narrow footbridge, fairy wrens flit among the bushes.

In Stanthorpe this Spring when we visit, the water is cold. Not tempting. Perhaps in summer families come here to lie in the shallow pools and sunbake on the warm granite.

On this short trip out of Brisbane we are counting wattles. Leaving Stanthorpe, we drive over the New South Wales border to Bald Rock and then back home via the Bruxner Highway and Summerland Way, counting many varieties of wattles in bloom along the way. Green and gold everywhere.

In April 2023, I planned a fine road trip. It was the right time: the rivers were full but not flooding. The countryside was green. There was no threat of bushfires.

We would follow the inland rivers, from the Warrego at Cunnamulla, down the Darling to Burke and Menindee, to meet the Murray River near its mouth, at Gawler in South Australia. We would then trace the Murray upstream to where it meets the Darling at Wentworth in Victoria, then further east to Balranald, near where the Murray meets the Murrumbidgee. Following the Murrumbidgee to Wagga Wagga, we would then head north to the Lachlan River at Forbes; join the Newell Highway and cross the Macintyre back into Queensland at Goondiwindi.

We’d meet the Condamine River at Warwick, then drive east to Queen Mary Falls where the river drops forty metres down from the ranges. Past towering Mount Superbus, the tallest mountain in south Queensland and the head of the Condamine catchment.

In the right season, with plenty of rain and flow through the rivers, the water that plummets over Queen Mary Falls flows down the Darling and eventually ends up in the Southern Ocean at the mouth of the Murray, at the Coorong in South Australia.

What a neat trip that would have been. But life and illness got in the way, and we cancelled just days before we were due to leave.

That left us in Brisbane; but from Brisbane there are many interesting places to go for short trips. That is what we’ve been doing ever since.

In October last year we took a three-day trip to mainly new territory. A night in Dalby and a walk along Myall Creek in the middle of town, then up the Bunya Highway through Bell and Kingaroy to Murgon.

In Murgon there is a small but well set up Fossil Experience Museum called “55 Million Years Ago”. Local businesses, towns and shires seek for something that will encourage travellers to linger and spend. Federal, state and local governments support them. For places as widely spread as Murgon, Winton, Richmond, Hughenden, Eromanga, and even as far north as Chillagoe, Queensland’s finds of fossils and dinosaur bones attract visitors. Families plan holiday road trips to visit dinosaur sites.

From Murgon we drove through Goomeri, stopping at the elegant Wimberley & Co Bookstore, then turned south to spend the night at Highfields, north of Toowoomba.

Highfields has a wonderful park – the 4.7-hectare Peacehaven Botanic Park. In 2004 local dairy farmer Stan Kuhl donated the land for a public park to promote peace.

The world is as far from peace as ever; but wandering these paths and plantings, watching parrots in the fine old eucalypts, with the Bunya Mountains in the distance, I appreciated old Stan’s intention.

In the heat of February 2024, we took a three-day trip around the Darling Downs and out as far as Goondiwindi. The first night, we stayed in the humble motel behind the Pittsworth Hotel, “Pittsworth’s favourite hotel”. The only hotel in town as far as we can see, but its walls show a collection of photos of the many grand establishments that once existed here, only to succumb to fires, like so many old country hotels.

Country towns celebrate their sports stars, from Rod Laver, the “Rockhampton Rocket”, to Laura Geitz, medal winner and former captain of the Australian netball team, celebrated in a bronze statue in her hometown of Allora.

In Pittsworth, there is a memorial to Arthur Postle, the “Crimson Flash” – a local professional sprinter who won many Australian championships in the early twentieth century, even defeating a world champion.

On this trip we were exploring parts of the Darling Downs we hadn’t visited before, so I could look for old churches. My g-g-grandfather, James Matthews, was the Church of England Rector of Warwick between 1875 and 1886. In small farming settlements around the Downs, services in those days were held in inns or private houses; and James earned a name as a church builder. Perhaps he had the naming of them too, because at least one is dedicated to St James, and another to St Matthew.

It was hot in Pratten, a tiny town west of Warwick and north of the Cunningham Highway. St James’s Church is a small wooden building on a hilltop, with a simple bell tower beside it.

The town lay still and silent under the sun, until Con pulled the rope and the church bell rang out.

Still, nothing moved.

At the nearby town of Leyburn is another church visited by James Matthews. This attractive building was designed by architect Richard Suter, who designed Jimbour House, among many now heritage-listed buildings.

Leyburn has a pleasant pub, the Royal Hotel. Along with the Grand View at Cleveland, it claims to be the oldest continuously licenced hotel in the state. We were relieved to have our lunch in its air-conditioning.

Leyburn is known for motor racing. In 1949, seventy-five years ago this year, the Australian Grand Prix was held at here, attracting 30,000 visitors. The event has been recreated in the last few years as the Historic Leyburn Sprints, the main feature of a heritage festival with a motoring theme. The Sprints are held on a 137km route through the surrounding area, including Pratten. You wouldn’t have been able to hear the church bell ringing when the Sprint was running through town.

Royal Hotel, Leyburn, during the Historic Sprints festival

From Leyburn we headed to Goondiwindi to visit the Gunsynd Museum situated in the town’s elegant art deco council chambers. Another regional sporting hero, loved by Con.

Last May, for my birthday, we spent three nights on Minjerribah North Stradbroke Island. This place is a treasure; and so close to Brisbane. White sand beaches, clear water, gorgeous freshwater lakes and swamps (so fresh that Island water is pumped to the other Bay islands and the mainland); birdlife, headland views, and small town life, as well as a strong Indigenous cultural presence.

Sunset at Amity Point, Stradbroke Island

At the Point Lookout Hotel, perched above Cylinder Beach, I ate my birthday dinner accompanied by a beach stone-curlew that wandered among the terrace diners, searching for scraps with its huge, spooky eyes.

I’ve seen stone-curlews’ motionless forms and heard their haunting night-time cries from the suburbs of Brisbane to the tropics. Con tells me that on his first night at boarding school in Cairns he heard them and thought someone was being murdered.

We’ve made other out of town trips since our big trip was cancelled. Short trips to Grafton, Murwillumbah, Maryborough, Coolum, Toowoomba and Warwick.

We also went to Currumbin to enjoy the Swell Sculpture Festival.

What next? Out to Glenmorgan, to pay a return visit to the Myall Park Botanic Garden? The wattles and wildflowers out there would be beautiful in Spring.

And maybe, next April, we’ll set off on that fine rivers road trip. Unless the rivers are flooding, or the countryside is burning…

Main photo: Cylinder Beach, Minjerribah Stradbroke Island

“What if you go into labour? I’ll be on the back of the truck – I won’t be able to help you!”

It was 1970, and my husband Con was Master of Ceremonies at the Stanthorpe Apple and Grape Harvest Street Festival. He stood at the microphone on top of a semi-trailer in Maryland Street, describing events and announcing winners, with thousands of people partying around him. No place for a woman soon to give birth.

In the end I watched events from the verandah of the Country Club Hotel.

Con remembers lots of things about that day, such as the hotly-contested Packing Case Relay.

“There was a team of back-packers from one of the big orchards, all in matching t-shirts,” he says. “They were pretty sure of themselves. They’d even trained for it, carrying the packing cases on their shoulders in the approved style.

“They were beaten by a team of local lads wearing work boots and carrying the cases any way they liked! It was a great win.”

He remembers the facial hair competitions.

“Your father entered in the Best Side Levers competition.”

“No! My dad had competition-grade side levers? I don’t remember that!”

“Your dad didn’t win – Jimmy Esplin won. There was a Best Beard competition, too. They made me one of the judges. I was about the only man in town with a beard, which made me the expert!”

“Which horse won the Melbourne Cup that year?”

“Baghdad Note. Why?”

Con remembers, with advantages, every good joke he’s ever heard, and every Melbourne Cup winner by year, and he can tell me who won the Best Side Levers competition at the 1970 Apple and Grape Harvest Festival; but he can’t remember that we agreed to baby-sit the grandchildren next Saturday night or that the wattle tree out the front needs pruning. We’ve been debating for years over which of us has the worse memory.

“I remember Dad’s whiskers,” says my brother Mike. “He grew them especially for the competition. Don’t remember much else though, because I was busy on the High School fundraiser down the street – Bash a Bomb. We’d dragged in a broken-down car, and we charged people for the chance to bash it with sledge hammers. It was very popular! Don’t think it would go down so well these days.”

Con’s reminiscences continue.

“One float in the procession had a girl on top of a Mini-Minor, sitting on a swing. The driver kept lagging behind, then accelerating, then braking again. Every time he braked, the girl nearly flew out of the swing.

“Her boyfriend got sick of it. He opened the door of the Mini, told the driver to get out, and drove it himself for the rest of the parade.”

Matt was born a week after the Festival, and in the winter that followed our hot water pipes froze and burst, and the nappies iced up while soaking in the laundry tubs and hung stiff and frozen on the clothesline.

Frosty Stanthorpe weather is beautiful, and by nine in the morning, I could put the baby out on the verandah, naked, to soak up the sun.

Stanthorpe is an attractive town, unique in the State, with its granite boulders, wild flowers and autumn colours. The houses have the snug architecture of a cold climate, and the sweet smell of wood smoke hangs over the town for months of the year. Locals are proud of living in Queensland’s coldest town.

The Apple and Grape Harvest Festival still draws a crowd, every second year in early autumn when the harvesting season begins. The next Festival will be in 2020, from 28 February until 8 March. There will be a Wine Fiesta, Gala Ball, Fun Run, Grand Parade, Grape Crushing and fireworks, the National Busking Championships, and according to the website, lots more.