Stanthorpe’s Brass Monkey Season
Stanthorpe is the coolest town in Queensland. Minus degrees and frosty mornings are a regular occurrence through the winter months and every few years there’s even a day or two of snow!
The Brass Monkey statue in Stanthorpe’s CBD is a famous little fellow that marks the town’s claim to get ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’. Stanthorpe district celebrates four seasons, the most popular being Brass Monkey Season during the winter months.
Not as crude as it may sound, the origin of the ‘cold enough to freeze the balls of the brass monkey’ saying originates by popular account from an occurrence on sailing ships, where the brass monkey was the name given to a metal rack used to store cannon balls.
Photo credit: Leeroy Todd Photography for Stanthorpe Apple & Grape Harvest Festival
The plaque that sits by the little Brass Monkey statue in Stanthorpe’s CBD reads “in long ago wars artillerymen had a brass plate called a monkey, which sat alongside the canon. The plate held 30 cannonballs stacked pyramid-like, until on freezing nights the monkey would shrink and the balls would fall off, hence the expression ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’.”
Pictured below, Savina Lane Wines during a Stanthorpe snowfall.
Snowflakes in Stanthorpe Event!
Even when it doesn’t snow, there’s wintery snow fun to be had in Stanthorpe at the Snowflakes in Stanthorpe festival! It’s held in July every second year (the next one is July 2021). Learn more about this event.
High on the Great Dividing Range
The Granite Belt sits at the cool heights of the Great Dividing Range, at some of Queensland’s highest altitudes, with its lowest point being 700m above sea level, and with peaks at 1200m.
Photo: Reuben Nutt Photography, Girraween National Park