Showcasing our B&B cottage

TTNQ AWARD WINNER

 

Here I am up on the stage of the Cairns Convention Centre, as President of the Daintree Coast Tourism Association receiving the Tropical North Queensland Toursim Award for Visitor Information and Services. behind me are the other members of the executive - Marion, Prue and Terry.

It was quite an event with more than 500 people attending.

Gary's Safaris new tour includes our farm

Gary's Safaris have created the 'Daintree Adventure' full day tour to Cape Tribulation. Our fruit tasting is included in the price of this tour - $155 pp. It is also possible to go jungle surfing as an optional extra. This tour operates only on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and departs Palm Cove at 6.45am and Port Douglas at 7.30am.

The tour includes

Guided national park walks OR the choice of jungle surfing for an extra $80, payable on board.
Exotic fruit tasting and orchard walk at Cape Trib Exotic Fruit Farm.
A visit to the Bat House, the only accredited Wet Tropics Environment Centre at Cape Trib where you get to eyeball a bat.
Lunch at Coconut Beach Resort which provides a hot and cold buffet lunch.
A visit to the Daintree Discovery Centre and the canopy tower and the aerial walk

Phone 4098 2699 or book online via our secure server.

Mamey Sapotes now in season

Mamey Sapotes are on the tree for 18 months before they ripen - the wait is worth it. This fruit tastes like a creamy sweet potato with an avocado texture. Really unusual and a great flavour with yoghurt in a milkshake.

As you can see from the photo there are several generations of fruit on the tree at once. What is interesting at the moment is that we seem to be missing the middle size generation - there are big fruit about to ripen and small golf ball fruit which are another 12 months away from being ready to eat. It has been so dry last year that there was no flowering for the middle generation.

It's really tricky to tell when this fruit is ripe - it gets to a good size and then you have to scratch it with a finger nail to see if it is orange under the skin. Sometimes the fruit can be scratched 20 times before it changes from green to orange. Once picked it may take 1-2 weeks to soften. The right texture is the same as avocado - if you can dent your finger it is ready to eat.

For more info visit

A giant leap in multimedia - The Santol

Our first film production about the farm has hit the internet, overcoming all technical difficulties to bring you 'The Santol'. You can view it right here!

Black Sapote Shots

 

Chocolate Mousse on a tree

Its the season for picking black sapotes. Standing out in the pouring rain this morning picking fruit from the trees, and the soft mousse like flesh is falling on me from above as the birds are eating the fruit above me. All the unripe fruit is covered in the sludge of brown soft 'chocolate pudding'. I have to hose the fruit down to clean it up.

What's fruiting for July

July and August are always hard months to find enough fruit for the fruit tasting. Last Thursday we had two journalists and a photographer visit the farm and taste the fruit. It was great to be able to have Abiu and Rambai on the tasting for the occasion - only enough fruit for the one tasting. Such a small crop but truly appreciated by those who were lucky enough to taste them.

Other fruit in season at the moment - rollinia, soursop, pommelo, sapodilla, longan, carambola.

Temperatures plummet

Last night the thermometer dropped to 12 degrees celsius. A fantastic cold snap to remind me of why I left Melbourne 20 years ago, and I snuggled under the feather doona that has been pressed into service after being packed away for the last 20 years.

Now brilliant blue skies for the whole day - the first day in weeks without a rain shower. We are hoping that this cold snap will force the flowering on the Mangosteens - here's hoping for a November harvest.

New season fruit - soursop

Here is the latest collection of fruit in season for the fruit tasting. We have lots of soursops to be harvested at the moment. You can see the soursop in the bowl - the green one at the bottom with the bumps all over it. We are picking about 6 cartons a week. It's great to have soursop on the fruit tasting again - everyone's favourite on the menu.

The messy bit is the processing of the fruit to get the juice. You have to push the pulp through a moule or a sieve to remove the cotton wool fibre and the seeds. What is left is the most fantastic juice - perfect for a daiquiri - and also for sauces, cheesecakes and jams. Once again soursop jam is available for sale to fruit tasters after the tasting.

Live calendar makes booking simple

Well we have moved into the 21st century, with people interested in coming to the farm able to book directly online without having to ring us first to find out if there is space.

This is now working for both the B&B and the Fruit Tasting.

Having the actual available dates online is amazing to us. It means I won't have to freak out when the advance booking book goes missing any more! There is no advance booking book. Our full manifest is now online. Don't worry - for those of you who still like to talk to a real person first we are still answering the phone.

Mating Snakes in my Wardrobe

The title says it all! I was trying to go to sleep around 11pm last night, and I could a sound in the wardrobe. When I went to investigate, it was coming from the top cupboard.

I opened it and two brown tree snakes intertwined, and writhing fell out of the cupboard above my head. Oh my god! Absolutely beautiful copper and white markings and really big and fat - they looked at least a metre long.

Digby came to the rescue with a broom, though he did take a while to wake up and get his act together. And the dogs? Kimmy and Mia kept their distance out on the verandah watching Digby do the snake removal. You could see it on the faces - snakes are not part of my job description.

Getting 'certified'

After nearly 20 years of growing our trees organically, we have decided to become officially certifed as an organic farm, with the BFA. The reason for the formality is that we are now have the potential to produce a large crop of mangosteens. We posted the application yesterday - it took us about 3 months to assemble all the information that they required, and then a JP had to witness the 20 page application.

What happens next? We wait for the inspector to arrive and check us out, in the next 4-6 weeks.

Will being certified make a difference to selling our crop? Probably not as the mangosteen customer is not likely to care too much if they are grown with chemicals and sprays or not.

Hopefully there will be a niche organic market which will clamour for our fruit and will appreciate the efforts we have taken. But don't hold your breath.

http://www.bfa.com.au/

A Mangosteen Milestone

Twenty years ago we had a dream to start a mangosteen orchard at Cape Tribulation. We knew very little about Mangosteens at the time, but we thought this is the 'project' for us. It has taken 20 years, but this week was a big milestone for us. On Sunday we picked and packed our first trays of our own Mangosteens and sent them to Sydney. Our eleven trays departed on Sunday night from Mareeba by truck, and are wedged into a small space crowded out by huge palettes of lychees, pawpaw, and longans.

Who knows how much the market will pay us for them - watch this space. We are hoping for $15 a kg. Then we have to take out the freight, packaging and wholesaling costs - our guess is $3 kg. So we might receive a return of $12 a kg. Keep your finger crossed for us. Time to start picking again for the next truck departing on Thursday.

Last year we did have a crop of about 500 kg, but we were overseas and arranged for a picking and packing company to do it for us. This is the first time we have actually got our hands dirty.

Counting mangosteens, and forever slashing

It's official - we have 353 mangosteens! I have just spent the afternoon walking around the 'commercial' part of our farm, counting our trees. Every year we plant new mangosteens in the gaps where other trees have died. So we are never quite sure how many mangosteens we actually have.

The planting season - April/May is about to start. We have another 100 mangosteens ready to go in. I am walking around the orchard looking for spaces to squeeze in some more - every nook will have another mangosteen if it will fit. Some of the wild rocky areas which we have never cleared in 20 years are now on the agenda.

'Cape Trib for a Day' package

We have a lot of people drive all the way up to Cape Trib from Cairns or Port Douglas, just to do the fruit tasting. It's a pity to come all that way and not get the most out of the day at Cape Trib. So we are putting a day package together, with Masons Tours and Dragonfly Gallery Cafe, so that it will be possible to have a full day organised for you:

‘Cape Trib for a Day’ -$85 - Self drive package
Experience the best that Cape Tribulation has to offer and make the most of your day. One phone call is all it takes.

The package includes:
• A 2 hour guided rainforest walk with local guides from Masons Tours
• Lunch at Dragonfly—a gallery café with rainforest ambience
• Exotic fruit tasting and farm tour with us
• Time to explore the beaches and boardwalks

DRIVING TIMETABLE
From Cairns /Port Douglas
7.30 Depart Cairns
8.30 Depart Port Douglas
10.15 Arrive at Masons Shop
10.30 Guided rainforest walk
12.30 Lunch at Dragonfly
2.00 Fruit Tasting at farm
3.30 Visit Cape Trib Beach and Dubiji boardwalk
4.30 Depart Cape Trib
6.00 Arrive Port Douglas
7.00 Arrive Cairns

Stripey Possum Visits

In all my time at Cape Trib, I have only seen a stripey possum twice. The first time we were camping under the blackbean a few months after we arrived in 1989, and the stripey came down the trunk of the black bean tree right in front of our noses. The second time was a stripey in a banana bunch a few years later, eating the banana and making a scratching sound on the plastic bag covering the bananas. They are nocturnal and I tend not roam at night.

Then just a few days ago there was a loud 'chirring' sound coming from the gazebo around 8 pm. The dogs were alert and went over to investigate. So did I. In the dark there was nothing to be seen, but a very loud noise was coming from behind a leaf. It sounded like it was upset and annoyed whatever it was. Digby arrived with the torch and low and behold - a very small stripey possum looking up at us. We watched it as it stood up and then in a bowlegged hop it raced acros the driveway and up the mango tree. Digby grabbed for the camera but of course it was gone. We think that it might have lost its balance and fallen out of the tree and was winded - took a few minutes to recover and was making a fuss.

My third siting and I was thrilled!

You can see a photo of a stripey at http://www.daintreecoast.com/rainforest1.htm

Back home and ready for the 2007 season

We spent february in Melbourne. The planned 8 day walk was aborted 16 hours before we were due to start walking when I tripped and fell in the main street at Apollo Bay and landed on my kneecap on the pavement. Two weeks later and it is still not fixed, though at least I am mobile. We changed plans and headed off with our new sea kayaks that we bought while we were in Melbourne and started the drive home with some paddling along the way.

We are now home. The cape has had over one metre of rainfall while we have been gone, and we are madly trying to cut the grass ready for guests and fruit tasters.

What fruit is around at the moment - loads! Salaks, mangosteens, abius, soursop, passionfruit, santols, matisias, guavas, breadfruit.

CLOSED for FEBRUARY

We are taking the month of February off, so the farm will not be open. We will still be responding to emails, but not frequently, so have patience. We intend to walk the Great Ocean Walk in south west Victoria - 8 days hiking along a spectacular coastline and carrying packs. The website is at http://www.greatoceanwalk.com.au if you interested.

Neighbour's horse eats our Abiu crop

People ask us what pests we have in the orchard.

I never thought that 'horse' would be on the list. A golden palomino who lives a few blocks away has decided our place is better than his, and he has moved in to feast on the abius. He eats everything - including the skin, and the seeds. The process is a bit tricky for him because he can't actually hold the fruit while he eats it - a bit like playing bob apple. The fruit bounces around on his nose until he can get his teeth into it.

I always get sticky lips from eating abiu from the latex near the skin. Considering the amount of fruit he has eaten, his lips will surely stick together. I suppose we will have lots of little seedlings germinating in horsey poo all over the orchard too.

Digby went out and madly picked as many Abiu as he could at 'horse height' so that he could sell them to Mossman before the horse got the whole crop. Spurred into action so to speak.