During the cold winter months, Fay and Eberhard Helwig put on a full Yuletide banquet, German style, at their cosy South Queensland guesthouse, known as Das Helwig Haus.

Eberhard Helwig worked as a cook in Germany... and ran a café in Toowoomba before settling with his wife Fay in the Granite Belt near Stanthorpe on Queensland’s Southern Downs. It’s a region well known for its fruit and vegetables, and for great local wines, too. There’s plenty of the local drop in the Christmas banquet - in cooking a whole roast goose with apple and walnut stuffing, in braising spiced red cabbage to go with authentic German semolina dumplings.

Eberhard also makes a heady brew of gluehwein, mulled red wine simmered with lemon, sugar, cinnamon and cloves.

Dessert? Why not an authentic Black Forest cake?