Aussie Christmas greetings!

Mangoes for Christmas and Daintree Video

The first mangoes are ripening just in time for Christmas! I'm just about to cut these up for Christmas morning's breakfast fruit platters for our guests (the date here is now the 24th December - Aussie-time!). We have "full house" with lovely folk from Minnesota and others arriving this afternoon are from Canada. I don't think anyone is missing their weather at home! Ali and Zack have just left for a leisurely drive and walk through the rainforest with probably a dip in a fresh-water swimming-hole to cool off on this hot day.

If you're interested in a little local scenery I have just embedded a video "The Magnificent Daintree" into the sidebar to the right. This was professionally created by David Vivian of DVDesign for the Daintree Village Tourism Association - of which I am Secretary - and we think David's done a pretty good job (nice background music too!). It mainly covers our beautiful and, as you can see, very diverse region between the Daintree River in the north and the Mossman River to the south. (Tourism Daintree Coast which covers the region north from the Daintree River to Cape Tribulation like it so much they are going to produce one themselves too - well they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!)

Peter and I would like to wish everyone a very happy festive season!

Tropical Weather

It's such a beautiful day today and we know that many of our blog visitors live in the northern hemisphere so it's hard not to gloat a little bit!

We see on TV that many of you are suffering arctic conditions and, having been born and lived in the UK - many years ago! - I can very well sympathise. So I thought you might enjoy a little view of sunshine and I took the top photo a few minutes ago just outside our front door. The other was taken a while ago from our kitchen.

It is now very hot and humid with a few afternoon storms which so far have mostly just circled us. The nights are also hot with temps in the mid-20's celcius and getting up to the mid to high 30's during the day. But our bedroom, office and all the guest bungalows are air-conditioned and also have ceiling-fans so everyone's very comfortable - in fact many of our recent (and current) guests have been from the US, UK and Europe and all very happy to escape their winter weather!

Happy ending!

Well, I did say earlier that I was hoping to get a better close-up photo of one of our many Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfishers but I wasn't anticipating getting quite this close! A few minutes ago Peter and I were having coffee here in the office when suddenly there was a thump on the window and there was this very stunned little Kingfisher flopped on the verandah - happily it was only a couple of minutes before it recovered and flew off.

There are now four nesting pairs that we know of on our 30-acre property and there are probably more - much of the land is rainforested so the nesting mounds and birds are not all easy to spot.

Marmalade!

The first Lemonade Fruits of the season are starting to ripen and I've just made the first of many batches of marmalade which should see us through for the next year.

This delicious semi-sweet citrus is a cross between a Myer and a true lemon and is good to eat by itself and also makes a lovely marmalade from a simple recipe of fruit, sugar and water. A small pot goes onto every breakfast-tray and most of our guests seem to enjoy it - as we do too!

We only have one tree and so far every year it's been loaded with fruit, which are green and grow to about the size of a tennis-ball and eventually turn to a greeny-yellow colour, and are edibly sweet from early maturity.