Half of Sydney seemed to be talking about this milk, so we went to Carriageworks one Saturday to see what the fuss was about, and came home with plain, coffee, purple yam and strawberry because we couldn’t decide and figured we’d just work through them. Purple yam won by a mile, which wasn’t the flavour any of us expected to like. It’s rich in a way that’s obvious from the first sip, with none of that faint milky smell you get from a supermarket carton, though I stopped short of calling it life-changing the way some of the posts do.
The milk comes from Camden Valley Farm, a small dairy out in Cawdor run by Luke and Jess Micallef. Herd size gets reported differently depending on the source — most listings say 30-plus Jersey cows, while Luke himself has put the number at 45 in an interview — but either way it’s a small, grass-fed operation, not a big commercial dairy. Jersey milk carries more butterfat than what comes from the black-and-white cows that fill most supermarket fridges, and that’s why it separates into the thick cream cap everyone’s been photographing for social media. A 1L glass jar runs about $8 and the pot-set yoghurt about $10 for a small jar, both more than you’d pay at Woolworths, though after tasting the yoghurt I understood the price a bit better.
If you only try one thing, make it the yoghurt over the milk. There’s a thick skin of cream on top that you have to break through with the spoon, and underneath it’s properly sweet-sour balanced in a way most shop yoghurt isn’t, closer to a dessert than breakfast. We had ours with homemade granola stirred through and there wasn’t much diplomacy left by the end of the jar.
While we were there we grabbed a banana milk too, which was good, and a strawberry milk pudding, which is worth grabbing if you spot it. AP Bakery sits right next door to the stall, and the lamb bread and the pear tart are both worth the extra stop — skip the chocolate tart, it’s rich in a way that gets tiring by the third bite rather than the good kind of rich.
Carriageworks, or the drive to the farm
The stall sets up at Carriageworks Farmers Market, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, on Saturdays from 8am to 1pm, but not every Saturday — they’re only there on the second and fourth Saturday of the month. Worth checking the date before you drag everyone out of bed early for nothing. Plain sells out fastest once the doors open, so if that’s the one you want, don’t linger over the flowers stall first.
We went back a second time and drove out to the farm instead, mostly to avoid doing the queue again, and the thing that actually stuck with us wasn’t the milk — it was the checkout. There’s a small unstaffed stall with a fridge, nobody watching, and you pay on the honour system. It felt like something from a different decade. There’s a heritage barn on the property worth wandering past while you’re out there, and if you time it for a Saturday, Camden Town Farm’s produce market runs weekly on Exeter Street, so you can turn the milk run into a proper morning out.
The strawberry milk from the farm shop is the one to get if you’re only buying one flavour — real strawberries rather than the syrup taste most flavoured milk has.
The farm’s Delicious Produce Awards gold medal dates back to 2017/18, alongside a New Product Trophy from the same year — a genuine credential, and one they’ve held for a while now.
If you can spare the hour, Cawdor is the better trip — same products, no queue, and actual cows for the kids to stand next to instead of a stall. If you’re stuck in the city, Carriageworks will still get you there, just budget the extra half hour.
If you’re planning this around a Saturday off, check NSW school holiday dates first, and our guide to avoiding school holiday crowds has more on timing markets like this one. If the kids are more into animals than queuing, our list of animal farms around Sydney is worth a browse too.