rosy picnic

Random activities

Facepainting
Dried flower press after a nature walk, using bags below which i made last year from jeans scraps.

Soaking in last of tropical summer

Baby turtle, dead. Its nesting time all along the beaches here, lots of turtle nests.

Kookaburra sits on an ol gum tree,

Merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh kookaburra laugh, kookaburra gayor life must be... so goes the rhyme....

Fruitopia

If there's one thing i'll miss about life in tropical oz, its the FRUITS!!! I'm a fruit freak, and mangoes and pineapples top my list of all-time favourites, due in no small part to growing up with them. These are the real deal, not the gassed, tasteless, flavoureless stuff sold in supermarkets. So here's my tribute to my good friends from the plant kingdom, who knows when we'll meet again....

Meet the Papaya (paw-paw) - entire books have been written about the health benefits of this fruit, and especially the seeds. A slice before breakfast, and my system is sorted for the day. They're even better than prunes and pears for you know what...

The green prickly strange looking thing is a fruit called sour sop. It's just that, sour and sweet, creamy white juice with an aromatic tropical flavour. This is the first time in years that i've had sour sop, and as with many of these tropical fruits, its as much about the childhood memories they evoke. I remember my parents getting the juice (can't think how) and freezing it - voila healthy troppo icecream! Turns pink when cooked. Just thought you needed that bit of useful info. Getting carried away here...

Bucket of mangoes from the local market - $6!! Juicy, you can smell them as you walk in the kitchen. The kids have been feasting on about 4 each a day, more if i let them. They grow all over Mackay, dropping onto the street, locals not interested. These are not a sought after variety as they are a bit fibrous.














Lady finger bananas, as they are sometimes called. Tiny, sour sweet and light.

Well, as i sit here avoiding the endless cleanup job and watch baby frogs hopping around the room, thanks to the storm we just had, here's a warm invitation to keep Queensland on your list of places to check out sometime!

Fishy birthday...

Here's some pics from a big day out to the Great Barrier Reef, 90mins drive from where we live. The great barrier reef is one of the 7 wonders of the world (according to tourist guides...), the Whitsundays is a section of the reef composed of 94 islands, a number of which are inhabited and set up for big time tourism. We did a one day cruise of three islands - Hook, Daydream and Whitehaven beach. This was a treat for my 30th birthday - and what a treat!!!

Coral covered beach. The coral pieces are broken off by some type of fish and washed ashore.

Whitehaven beach - pure quartz, white, fine, cold sand. Among top 10 beach in the world. (fishing for visitors here...)

More pics on facebook, blogger is such a pain to work with...

Mackay surrounds

Sugarcane train, we nicked a few for a taste:) Funny that locals don't eat them at all - only the end product, by the truckload (trainlaod?!).



















Banana tree

Teabags, shells and sewing machine

Every morning, as daddy makes his cuppa tea, little miss Amy who wants to do it all just like grown ups insists on getting her own teabag, and swinging it around the house till it ends up in some corner, to be retrieved later by yours truly. So with a bit of inspiration from some blog(sorry can't find link) i came up with this felt version of 'the teabag'. They loved it, for a few days....






A very exciting afternoon at a nearby beach where we discovered treasure-troves of shells and stones. I got so excited after finding cowrie shells for the first time ever, it brought back memories of faraway Cameroon, visiting the palace of a local chief of a village, the front entrance decorated with cowrie shells embedded into the mud plaster, and strung around the neck as a necklace. Historically, they were used as currency in ancient Africa.




Finally, a sewing machine to get on to those myriad projects i've been dreaming up, especially after reading "The Creative Family" (thanks Lessan) and the whole idea of bringing the homely things back into the home.... Got this machine free from our local Freecycle network. Love Freecycle. It works, and at this butterfly stage of our life, i'm not spending much on heavy large objects that may not be able to move to the next destination (no clue yet where that could be).