A Word a Week Photo Challenge : High

In 1998 we bought a house in the beautiful tropical paradise of the Goldcoast. It had been a rental property for many years surrounded by a patchy and weedy area of uncared for lawn. It was a challenge and we started creating a tropical oasis. First plants to go in were the majestic and stately Alexander Palms. They would create shade for the under story of ferns and other shade loving, tropical plants.

That was 15 years ago. Look at them now. They have become towering giants. They are so HIGH they look down on our two-story house and drop their huge fronds onto all the ferns and other plants they were put in to protect. They produce thousands of seeds that drop and then grow in the fertile soil of the garden. They create a lot of work.

Sadly the time has come to say goodbye to these tropical beauties.

Enter Big Jim and his team of skilled arborists.

With spiked shoes and a strap around the trunk, Guy shimmies up to the top of the palm and makes short work of demolishing these giants. Look carefully at the bottom of the photo and you will see the roof of our 2 story home.

The team collect the logs and fronds to take them away.

 

Big Jim feeds them all through the mulcher

 

Oops one of the branches drop over into the neighbour’s place

No trouble Guy reaches over to haul it back and I help by holding the ladder…

 

In less than an hour Jim and his team had demolished 5 palms, one tree-fern and a decaying Ivory Curl tree. Leaving the garden open to more sunlight and me with the job of relocating a number of plants that all of a sudden had the wrong growing conditions.

************************

Sue of “A word in your ear” opens her dictionary each week to find a word to challenge us with. This week it is HIGH. How appropriate for me as today we had these very high palms cut down.

 

 

A Word a Week : Two by Two

My turn for a head scratch

Now it is my turn

Major Mitchell Cockatoo, I’ve got my eye on you

 

Young magpies

Jabirus changing of the guard on the nest

 

I love our beautiful Australian birds and many of them mate for life so I immediately thought of these birds when Sue of “A word in your ear” opened her dictionary at TWO this week.

 

 

A Word a Week : Fur

Romeo is a real lover-boy

Mungo, my bed companion

Have you ever felt anything as soft and warm and sensuous as the fur of a Ragdoll cat? You can run your fingers through their coat and they will purr with delight, before rolling over for a tummy rub. They are affectionate and playful. Living with 5 of them is a constant delight. Watching the interaction between them, sometimes loving and then in a flash a mini spat will erupt with fur flying and ears back, but it is quickly over and they are all friends again.

These are just 2 of the boys. When Sue of “A word in your ear” gave us “FUR” as the word from her dictionary I just had to take another couple of photos to show you.

Another couple of weeks and we will be heading home and I will take fond memories of these lovely cats with me, plus a folder full of photos

 

A Word a Week Challenge : Just 2 Sleeps left…

The challenge this week from Sue of “A word in your ear” is SLEEP.

How appropriate this is for me as I have just 2 sleeps before I fly off to Tasmania. When I mention I am going to Tasmania at this time of the year I get some funny looks. You see I live in sunny Queensland and at the moment the temperature is 26deg and has been that warm and sunny for over a week now and this is almost winter. The garden is at it’s best with many plants coming into bloom.

Bromeliad in glorious bloom

Swamp banksia opening in uniform style

While down in Tasmania it is 17-18deg…

I have been told by many people about the beauty of Tasmania. It is a world apart from the rest of Australia, both in scenery, climate and economy. It has a slower pace of life. Tasmania promotes itself as clean, green and pristine. Well known for the wines and fruit it produces.

According to Peter Timms in his book “In Search of Hobart“;  “Tasmania along with Outer Mongolia and Timbuktu has long been the symbol of remoteness, whether of the mysterious, the enticing or the cruelly comic kind”. He also mentions that “when you climb to the top of Mount Wellington the city is spread-out map-like below you, but turn round and face west and over the vast expanses of forest toward the ocean the nearest human habitation is 11,000 kilometres away in Patagonia” Now I find that a stunning thought….

So to me it is presenting  a variety of contradictions and I am looking forward to being there. House sitting and living in Hobart for 8 weeks is an ideal opportunity to discover the city and hopefully find out just what Tasmania is like from an insider’s perspective.

We will have two new four-legged friends to explore with. I’m looking forward to brisk invigorating 🙂 walks along the beach with them. Finding interesting shops and cafes and, of course, lots of photo opportunities. I am even taking a tripod and hope to try out some of the new techniques I have been shown.

Sleeping with Rimfire the Jack Russell, at a previous house sit in Cairns.

Now I just have to finish packing and have 2 more sleeps…… ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Dancing in the streets at the Tauranga Jazz Festival

jazz tauranga jc 134, originally uploaded by gypsy woman1.

I just gotta dance..

This post is inspired by Sue at “a word in your ear” and her challenge of the word “dance”

For more of my dance photos go to my “memories are made of this” blog

A Word A Week Challenge : Zoom

Skinnywench from “A word in your ear” opens her dictionary at random and out pops a word. The challenge is to interpret it in either words or photos. This week the word is zoom.

The zoom lens creates so many photo opportunities and creative possibilities I would be in a photographic wilderness with out it. Capturing wild life would only be a blob on the horizon as it is so hard to sneak up close to them. As for birds they are up and away as soon as they see you. So for this challenge I am going to show case a gallery of bird photos I have zoomed in on over the years.

Major Mitchell parrotts

Swallow

Jabarus

Eastern Rosella

Willie Wagtail

Rufous Night Heron

Brolgas

Brolga

Darter

Galah

Ostrich

Lorrikeets

Little Corrella

Black Falcon?

Tawny Frogmouth

A Word a Week : Garden (take 2)

Gardening is one of my passions. It gives me joy and peace at the same time to watch the evolving seasons and the different flowers come and go. The garden has changed over 15 years. We started with an almost blank canvas. This place had been a rental property for years. So it was easy maintenance, surrounded by lawn with a couple of struggling cane palms and one glorious Bauhinia tree in the centre of the lawn. Sadly it died during the drought of 1999 to 2009.

In New Zealand we had a cottage style garden, but many of the plants grown in New Zealand could not tolerate the hot, humid conditions of the Queensland summer. So when we moved to Queensland we enjoyed the years of planting and developing a lush tropical garden to suit the climate.

Here is a gallery of some of the flowers and plants and a couple of birds that regularly visit…

Thank you Sue for picking this word from your dictionary this week. Visit “A word a week” to wander round many more gardens.

Front garden

3 daisys

That bottle is a bird feeder

I cannot remember the name of this vine

Bali corner, a lovely place to sit with a cup of tea.

Jack made the pillars from gem stones collected around Australia over years of travel. Then cut and arranged in these columns. He also made the Buddha statue…

Heliconias

Batplant

Fish ponds

Kookaburra

2 juvenile magpies, part of a family that called our place home

Bauhinia vine

Side garden, Bauhinia vine

Hand made stepping stones around the front garden

Tropical lilies

Yellow water lily

Tropical water lily

Lily ponds made from recycled baths

Browalia

A Word a Week Challenge : Garden, Townsville Botanic Garden

The theme that Sue has chosen from her dictionary this week is GARDEN. I know there will be lots of post’s submitted on this theme. Go to Sue’s blog “A word a week” to see all the different gardens from around the world.

It  would be my all time favourite subject. When we travel I always search out the Botanical Gardens in each area. Today I am going to take you for a stroll around the beautiful, small but exquisite Queens Gardens in Townsville, Australia.

 

Initiated in 1870, Queens Gardens is the oldest Botanic Garden in Townsville and is heritage listed. Now covering 4 hectares, reduced from an original 40Ha, it is considered a fine example of a tropical colonial garden of that era. Originally established as a trial acclimatisation garden for European settlement, in which potential food and economic plants were trialled during the era of colonisation.

 

Today the gardens are a lush green oasis set against the dramatic pink granite cliffs of Castle Hill, and offer a quiet cool retreat from the nearby city centre. The emphasis of the current plant collection is on colonial ornamental plants with colourful, attractive flowers, foliage or fruit.

 

Townsville residents use its luxuriant gardens for leisure and recreation, while the City Council and community groups use its green splendour to stage a variety of special events.

 

 

Castle Hill overlooks the gardens

Hibiscus

Lawn to enjoy a quiet moment

Red cloak bush

Rainforest tree

Bamboo

Barrel cactus

Bromeliad

Maze

Orchids

Mature trees

Rainforest

Palms

Heliconia

Rainforest walk

Can you see Jack in the fig tree?

A Word a Week : Round

This week Sue’s dictionary has given us the word “round“.(Click here to go to “A word in your ear”) So many things are round in shape, but I thought about a circle of friends. When travelling to meet new friends and catch up with old ones is one of the delights and memorable occasions that stay in your mind for ever.

Dinner with friends at Margaret River

I first met Carroll and Jack five years ago when I stayed with them in their beautiful cottage in Margaret River. They took me around and introduced me to the many attractions. This was the start of my love affair with Margaret River, it is now acknowledged as Australia’s  best town to live in.

I couldn’t wait to return and this time I had “my Jack” with me.  This delicious meal we shared around a round table, a circle of friendship and warmth renewed.

======================

Picnic with new friends

On another occasion Jack and I sat with our thermos of coffee and sandwiches after walking around the beautiful Araluen Botanic Gardens in the Perth hills. We were delighted when this group of people from Afghanistan invited us to join them at their picnic. They assured us they had plenty to share. Just look at the spread, it was delicious. The women were sitting at a separate area. I became a surrogate man and joined this group. But later joined the women.

========================

These are just a few more round things…

Wreath flower lechenaultia

Poppy

Yarloop rail yard museum

Trailer wheels

Old 2-up circle. Now an illegal pastime

Norseman museum

 

A Word a Week Photo Challenge : Clouds

Sunset reflecting in the waves on the West Coast

This sunset will forever be in my memory as, for me, the most spectacular sunset ever.

We travelled for a year around Australia in 2010. Mostly the skies were a pristine cobalt blue with not a cloud in site. That is till we rounded the corner after going up the East coast, across the outback and headed down the West Coast.

WA, as the locals refer to it, is spectacular in every way. The distances, the wild flowers, the soaring mountain ranges, the national parks, the mining boom funding and fuelling our economy, the enormous road trains, the wild ocean, the wide fish and crocodile filled rivers, the emptiness, the spinifex grass clustered in clumps like small animals and over and above it all the vast expanse of the sky.

I met Mic and Wendy in 2005 and I WWOOFed (willing workers on organic farms) on their seahorse sanctuary in the idyllic township of Kalbarri, in the heart of the National Park and the centre of the fabulous wild flower display (another story for another post…) We visited again in 2010 and this was our last day with them. We took nibbles and wine to the beach, which was just across the road from their place, and watched this sunset.

Kalbari sunset

Thank you Sue for your “word a week challenge” of clouds as it reminded me of that time on our travels around Australia, and gave me the opportunity to share this with you.