Attempt to help struggling farmers proves fruitless

IN last Friday’s edition of a Melbourne daily paper was a plea from an apple farmer for members of the public to buy more apples. Maybe there is a glut.

It was ironic that we had just accepted an offer from friends to join them this weekend at Stanthorpe (Queensland) for the annual Apple and Grape Festival.

Our chance to help out the poor old apple farmers I thought.

We went on Saturday as this was billed as the highlight of the week. Got there fairly early and observed the usual array of food and souvenir stalls but no grapes anywhere.

Maybe later after the parade. About 20 schools were represented by various age groups in the marching section, the bands of pipes were magnificent as usual but a sad collection of floats did nothing to elevate our enthusiasm. Even the wonderful sight of vintage cars and farming machinery didn’t help to balance out the lack of produce available.

The parade being over we continued our quest for grapes and apples. NO grapes did we encounter and the sole vendor of apples was operating from a coffee table sized tray and trying to extract $1 each for a very small variety of the fruit. That was it. Maybe we had missed a presentation but I think not. There was evening entertainment to follow but we had seen enough.

How on earth can a festival of apples and grapes be presented without any of the fruit on display or for sale.

We are giving future fruit festivals a big miss and would just hope that the pleading farmer from the Melbourne daily didn’t attend this amazing let down.