Bought a 2 kg bag of kestrel potatoes this morning for $3.50, bargain! Last spring the traditional potato growing areas of SE Australia suffered from floods & extremely wet conditions.

The price of potatoes went up severely & it hasn't come back down to normal levels since.

And the Spud Shed got fined 10s of thousands of dollars for selling them cheap, so he gave them away. Was still an offense. Neil

A friend of mine was gowing potatoes years ago ,could not sell them , so he put an ad in the paper ,free potatoes. And yes ,people came and asked for the bags , no he said ,you have to dig them up yourself. They all left whith no potatoes ,well that was it ,he then plough the field up and that was the end of it, cheers

My late in-laws were in the spud growing business. They had several ways to sell them but were mainly:

In bulk bins to McCains (same bin as grain in summer). Auto sorting rocks and undersized spuds was done as the digger sent the spuds to the truck which went straight to McCains. Sold under contract
In boxes. This required some sorting and used end up going to supermarkets via a packing plant (washed or brushed). Sold under random contracts that vary in price.
In 150kg bags. Very manual job plus cost of bags and not a guaranteed sale. Generally went to fruit & veggie wholesale markets. Sold randomly and prices varies greatly. Bit of a gamble selling it this way. Lots of farmers left with excess stock going to seed whilst waiting to get a good price. Holding them in a cool-room just ads to selling price.

For the in-laws, McCains was by far the best option. Very little handling, guaranteed volume, guaranteed money. Because of the certainty here, in-laws got their money and we get cheap frozen chips that are not seasonally dependent.

We have a big old-fashioned fruit and veggie store near us that is proving great. All seasonal pricing but in-season stuff is really cheap. eg. 19c for a 250g punnet of strawberries that we turned into jam (only after we eaten heaps mashed with a bit of icing sugar and poured over ice-cream).

Well I have given up on Coles, Wollies, Foodland, etc and grow what I need.
Fresh and also as they come out have thin skins so you don't worry about peeling them.
What gets left in the ground starts the next crop.

This also means I get to grow the ones I like.

Sorry to hear Coles in Bentley has closed it doors. I often call into Spud Shed Kelmscott, and find its produce as far as fruit and veg goes much cheaper than the supermarket, however most of the time Spud sheds quality of fruit and veg is nowhere near as fresh as Coles. I have proven this many times, and therefore I don't dare keep it in the crisper for even 2 days as it will be limp and dry, then I bin it, or use it for a veg stock. 
Barrie your right it is an absolute rip off,We can thank some of those chefs on television for making what was once cheap veg and cheap cuts of meat expensive, they make them look attractive, and even though its a cheap cut of meat it forces the price sky high, because it is then in high demand.  Winter veg should be cheap, just as summer veg should be cheap, but just go into the stores and you will find quite the opposite. the only time fruit and veg in season should sky rocket in price is when there is a shortage due to hail damage, storms etc. My father had a huge market garden and I remember many times having to go down to the well early morning to turn it on for the irrigation to water all vegies so they wouldn't get frost damage etc., eg., a cauliflower should never reach anywhere near $5 in winter, tomatoes in summer should also be cheap but they aren't.

It's all about supply & demand and handling. Odd sized, very ripe kiwi fruit is dirt cheap at the gate. Found that out around Te Puke in NZ. Same with bananas in Coffs and spuds around Ballarat. But our requirement is for perfect shaped and ripened fruit & veggies 365 days of the year and we pay for that privilege. When I was a kid before Sunday trading, there was a greengrocer who had all the mis-shaped, ripe & over ripe stuff on the footpath. As you moved further in the shop, the quality got better. The stock just made it way forward and new stock came in the back. Sunday after church was a tradition at this shop.

20 shillings is one pound. 2 shillings / 24 pence went to 20c. At our corner butcher, offal meats (lambs fry, brains) were about 6d per item and often thrown in for free if you bought a lot of meat. In the 1970's when I got married, lambs fry was still about 50c each. Then all of a sudden they became about $8 / kg.

I often use this page to check prices then and now. www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualDecimal.html