SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS

It can be said that nothing succeeds like success. Once a successful outcome has been achieved more successes will automatically follow. Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt near Stanthorpe in southern Queensland was named by the journalists of The Courier-Mail newspaper in 1998 as the Best B&B in the Sunshine State. As our fame spread every journalist who visited the Granite Belt chose to write about our Bed and Breakfast home or my garden.

Back in the 1980s when I had lived at Dalby, I had begun a course called Writing for the Media from the TAFE College in Adelaide. The knowledge I gained was to assist me enormously. I could write advertisements and by 1998 had I designed our website layout for http://www.webstation.com.au/accom/helwig

When contacted by SBS TV The Food Lovers Guide to Australia asking for details of our  German style Christmas in July dinners I wrote a TV script of how we spent our days. The presenter arrived carrying my script in her hand and proceeded to follow it during their two day stay.

Eberhard is filmed preparing a goose.

Eberhard joked with the crew, “What is the difference between a cook and a chef? A cook does his own washing up. I do my washing up!”

This six minute segment was broadcast Australia wide that year and has been repeated many times since on the Lifestyle programs.

Eight years after we opened our garden to raise money for Brisbane Legacy the Mayor of Stanthorpe said I had proved my point, the Flanders poppies were not spreading on our land to become a weed nuisance and if I wished to again put a proposal to the Stanthorpe Shire Council concerning planting poppies along the route now named Armistice Way, it would probably be considered favorably. I declined, saying I had shown the way for someone else living in that region of the Granite Belt to create a Memorial Drive. Such projects need a driving force and I needed to concentrate my energies on the Red November promotion for Glen Aplin.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month 2008.

In 2003 the Queensland Government department covering Multicultural Affairs decided to select twenty successful businesses in Queensland to display the ethnic diversity of the State. Our business, Das Helwig Haus B&B, was selected as the German example.

Multicultural Diversity

Two years later in 2005 the Premiers department established the Queensland Multicultural Awards for Small and Large Businesses. Das Helwig Haus B&B was named the Queensland Small Business to receive the inaugural award in 2005. At the time of the presentation of the awards, I was attending the wedding of Margaret Arnott’s son in Tennessee, USA so Eberhard had the honour of receiving the award from the Queensland Premier, Peter Beatty.

Eberhard Helwig receives the 2005 Queensland Multicultural Award for Small Business.

In 2007 I was asked to be the only woman on a panel of judges to read the submissions and prepare evaluations before reaching an agreement selecting the recipients of the the 2007 Queensland Multicultural Awards for Small and Large Business.

In 2005 I had realized that all the fame generated by Das Helwig Haus B&B and the money I had spent on advertisements and promotions had not increased our  guest numbers each year between December and April. Most of our guests are drawn from the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Queensland residents choose to spend their summer holidays at the coast and with air-conditioned homes they no longer feel the desire to head to the hill stations like the British Raj in India. The cool mountain climate of  Stanthorpe had attracted many wealthy families from the greater Brisbane area to establish summer homes in Stanthorpe after World War One, but this is a thing of the past. Due to the media focus on the inland in times of drought, many young urban residents have grown up with the belief that inland regions are associated with heat, dust and drought. They don’t comprehend that because of the altitude of the Granite Belt we rarely have a summer night when the temperature doesn’t drop below 20 degrees Celcius.

Every year more and more people were following our example by choosing to open accommodation houses on the Granite Belt and I had to keep our business competitive. It was imperative for the continuing financial success of our business that I discover a new summer market. Once more I was able to see the commonality of several factors.

• Our business is licensed by the Stanthorpe Shire Council to take 18 paying guests. We had empty beds in the summer and autumn months
• Queensland Tourism statistics showed that the fastest growing segment of visitors to Queensland were young South Koreans. What QT doesn’t acknowledge is that these young, mostly university graduates are coming to Australia on Work/Travel visas, not as tourists but to work. They are backpacking, itinerant workers who must complete three month’s work in regional areas before they can get a visa extension for a second year, which will enable them to get work in the cities.
• Over twelve years I had noted the increasing number of Asian faces in the streets of Stanthorpe during the harvest months.
• I had welcomed several young South Koreans as WWOOF members to work in my garden during the summer months and knew they were polite, clean and hard working . I asked one of these Korean WWOOF girls to write what I was offering in Korean lettering on A4 sheets of paper and we pinned these to the noticeboards of Stanthorpe. This was positive discrimination as only the Korean backpackers could read these notices.

The story is told in Ebook form in the voice of my cat Patches of that Summer of the Morning Star. If you haven’t already downloaded it, please do so as it is an entertaining tale. Presently, my home is once more filled with the sounds of happy young Korean backpackers who have found a home away from home.

Patches, my cat.

To be continued.