FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND

One of my favourite fruits is the custard apple. Many large black seeds are found within the fruit, but the soft flesh is sweet and delicious.

Watermelons were popular target for kids

The tropical pineapple fruit is now famous throughout the world. The leafy top can also be cut and grown as an attractive houseplant.

Typical of all tropical areas are the palms. There are a large number of palm species distributed throughout the world in warm climates

The sweet potato creeper produces large crops of tasty and nutritious yams in tropical areas.

Much time is spent doing simple repetitive tasks while maintaining the hobby farm. Menial tasks such as weeding or watering allow the mind to relax, wandering to past and distant places. Images, sounds and smells come freely when in a peaceful and reflective mood.

Hunters And Gatherers

Reminders of my life journey from the late nineteen fifties to the early seventies are signposted by the many wild and cultivated plants found within the agricultural and horticultural districts throughout Australia.

On arrival to Australia our family first moved to the sugarcane fields of North Queensland.

My earliest memories include images of mango trees laden with large aromatic yellow-orange fruit, succulent guavas and the acidic tang of star apple fruits. As a treat we cut sugar cane stems, chewing the sweet fibrous flesh. We hunted and foraged as a group of mostly immigrant kids, raiding watermelon and sweet corn patches, digging sweet potato yams and ran the gauntlet of large and menacing looking cattle to lick molasses from their feed troughs.

Farm Fun

The early mangoes to ripen produced small fibrous fruit of poor quality. This however never deterred us from throwing rocks at the bright red and yellow fruit high on the tops of trees, eventually a half ripe fruit came down and we would gnaw its turpentine smelling flesh. There are also fond memories of sugar bananas and pawpaws growing in our backyard.

To a group of eight to ten year olds everything had to be investigated. We foraged throughout nearby swamps for wild guavas keeping an eye out for snakes and goannas, searched nests for bird eggs and collected the white latex from ficus trees to be boiled into a bouncy ball or eraser for school. During summer we fished fast running creeks and of course played brutal games with cane toads.

The Early Years

One of my strongest memories is that of a row of mandarin trees fully laden with ripe fruit. The leaves glistened after a downpour while pendulous branches sagged under the weight of its multicoloured load. A mixture of yellow, orange, red and green fruit is typical of citrus in the tropics, unlike the uniform fruit colours produced in temperate areas. Returning to the same area after many years I could not help but think of how tropical citrus fruits reflected the colours found within coral reefs.