Cost of Living

September 2014

Main Meals for dinner at the Jardine Hotel's 'Somerset Restaurant' and Grand Hotel's 'Malu Paru' restaurant (only open Mon- Fri) are $20-$40, with starters around $10-$18 & desserts $12-$16.  Cocktail specials at the Jardine can be as low as $10, but most are $15-$18.  The Grand only does wines, beers and spirits.  Both hotels have eftpos facilities.

The Grand Hotel does meals in their pub for $10-$20 & have a Tuesday night steak special for $10 = t-bone with chips & salad.  They have a nice new deck that overlooks the sea, POW island & Horn Island & some indoor seating too.  You can pay for meals via eftpos, but drinks are cash only- they have an ATM inside.

The Torres Hotel does counter meals for lunch & dinner.  They have lunch specials for $10 + menu items are $12-$30.  Fish and chips, steak with salad and chips, chicken burger with chips, calamari with chips is their sort of thing.  They have 1 hot & 1 cold display case that they serve roast meals and filled rolls from.  For dinner, they have pretty much the same menu plus a small selection of pizzas too.  You can eat at the bar or at the rustic tables on the verandah overlooking ANZAC park.

January 2014

Photo of the weekly IBIS supermarket specials from the local paper...

May 2013
A few photos of products and price tags at the Thursday Island IBIS supermarket...

 Yes, you're reading that correctly ... Pringles are $7 - $7.50 per can!  Junk food prices are increased here to subsidise the cost of healthy fruit & veg.

These 90g cans of tuna are $2.70 - $3.50 & the bigger salmon cans are $7 - $9!

1kg of Greek Yogurt = $9.50.  A lot of families here use the "easiyo" yogurt making system to make their own, it works out about $3.50-$4.50 for a kilo if you buy the yogurt mix online.

We eat lots of these...$4.50 a pack is pricey...

...and these are $5. 

The cost of groceries on Thursday Island vs shipping them form Cairns...

Well, after much research, I can now report --- Coles grocery orders shipped from Cairns ARE cheaper than buying here! 

I have now done 3 orders with Coles online & had them delivered from Cairns to Thursday Island on 'Seaswift' freight barges.  My grocery orders are usually $350 - $550 worth & get packed into 7 - 11 boxes of varying shapes & sizes.  Seaswift charge on volume not weight: refrigerated (chiller or frozen) freight costs $374.31m3 & dry freight costs $271.05m3, which sounds absolutely terrifying, I know!  But, none of my orders have been anywhere near 1m3 yet, costing $67 - $140 (0.175 - 0.375m3) per shipment, which was a huge relief as I expected the freight charges to cost more an the groceries the first time I did an order!

The boxes come from Coles firmly packed  & with a very thorough inventory of everything ordered with unit prices & totals.  After receiving my first order, I visited our IBIS supermarket here each morning for a week with that inventory list & wrote the local prices next to the Coles prices.  I tallied it all up & the results were...


Coles
Groceries $512.73 + Coles delivery fee $20.00 + Seaswift shipping $142 = TOTAL $674.73
IBIS
Groceries = TOTAL $842.91

That's a difference of $168.18!

Now, I'm not saying it's worth doing every weekly shop with Coles online - it's too time consuming & a lot of work to pick up all those boxes of groceries from the Seaswift terminal, get them upstairs & into my fridge / freezer / pantry ... but I do think a big monthly Coles shop is entirely worth it, especially considering many of the things I buy are not available at all here on Thursday Island.  For example - my vegetarian sausages & mince, kids yoghurts in squeezie pouches, 'vol au vent' pastry cases for making tuna & corn pies, lamb mince, lamb sausages, tinned Mexican beans for tacos & nachos, sliced deli chicken, scones, 100 & 1000's biscuits for the kids, croissants or a full range of brands of anything...

I have discovered "Grocery Run" online shopping too - they ship anywhere in Australia with Australia Post for a maximum of $11 postage & have some cheap deals, but don't do fridge / freezer / fresh fruit & veg / meat...just pantry, bathroom & cleaning stuff.  So, will probably do a monthly order with them too.   

And...I do completely intend to support the Islander Board of Industry and Service (IBIS) supermarket in-between my big Coles orders. 
:-)
Jayne, March 2013