ARRIVAL

After such a long journey it was so good to get out of the car and into the house for a cup of tea and to talk over old times and new with Anne and Jack. We each caught up with the news of our families and started making plans for what to do during my visit to them.



Like me, Anne is a bird lover but she has many more mouths to feed than I do and her's seem to be constantly backwards and forwards to the window like this Butcher Bird.


Sugar Cane Farmhouse is a typical old Queenslander style of house and while the front door step is at ground level.........


....the back of the house is way above the ground, thankfully, because they have as their back boundary the Maroochy River which sometimes bursts its banks. The highest the water has come since they have been living there is the back steps.


Their garden is superb, this is just a small part of it, and has been created over two acres of land with lots of tropical fruit trees and many many different types of flowers and shrubs such as gingers and heliconias.


....and even bananas.


Other things in the garden are not exactly my favourites. This Golden Orb Spider had made its home in a hanging basket just outside the front door and when Anne wanted to change the basket, she carefully unhooked the old one to make way for the new and then transferred the edges of the web to the new one. No way could I ever do anything like that ! The only thing I know of that she has had destroyed was an aggressive brown snake which had chased her when she was in the garden one day. These are one of the most poisonous snakes in the world and even Anne decided that there was a limit to her conservation principles - she said she wanted to live, too.


Ah.....the Bush Turkey ! These birds make their nest in a huge - and I really do mean huge - mound of leaves, twigs, grass - in fact anything it can scrape together. The mounds can be several feet high and cover quite a few square feet of ground with the eggs being buried in the middle of it. The turkeys then go away and forget all about them.

Anne had planted some small camellias when a bush turkey decided that that was just where the mound needed to be so before anyone knew anything about it there was a very large area covered with all the new mulch that had just been scattered over the nearby rose bed. No sign of the new camellias ! Very carefully, Anne removed the mound litter and placed it in a neat pile a good distance away.

The next morning the mound was back in the original position.

It was moved again.

The next day it was back, and the next and the next...

Anne then realised that the mound was being built in the early hours of the morning so the next morning, she was up early and dressed in a mauve dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers, opening and closing a multi coloured umbrella in the turkeys face. Everyone told her that she would NEVER get the better of one of these birds but she was determined that a bird brain wouldn't beat her !

.....and it didn't, but the camellias didn't survive.



The Maroochy River, Sugar Cane Farm is situated on a bend in the river.


The nearest beach to Anne and Jack is Coolum Beach - beautiful white sands, good surf - paradise.....