Exotic Fruit Tasting

The ten fruits at the tasting

I have my first visitor here at Cape Tribulation! Rachel has come from Wellington to spend a week with me in Far North Queensland. I’ve been so looking forward to sharing this place with a friend, but unfortunately she has arrived just in time for some spectacular rain.

I had warned her about the lack of cell phone coverage up here, but today we haven’t even had any internet connection. Far more dramatically, Cooper Creek has flooded across its causeway over the only road so that it is only accessible to 4WD vehicles. I am too scared that our tiny rental car would be swept off the road and we would have to swim the raging torrent, fighting off 4m crocodiles, to reach the shore soaking wet and miles from anywhere.

One of the best rainy-day activities (actually one of the best any-day activities) in Cape Trib is the Exotic Fruit Tasting at the farm where I did some wwoofing when I first got up here. I did the tasting back then but didn’t take my camera so I’ve been waiting for another chance to go, and Rachel’s passion for fruit proved the perfect excuse.

Every fruit tasting starts with a glass of Tahitian Lime juice to clear the palate and then some hot roasted Breadfruit chips which are similar to potato wedges and possibly even yummier. Breadfruit is usually cooked unripe and eaten as a vegetable but apparently once picked, it ripens quite quickly and turns into banana flavoured cream which can be used as a batter for making hot cakes or muffins. I can’t wait for breadfruit season (summertime) so I can start experimenting with it!

Digby cuts a pommelo

The next fruit on the menu (there are always 10 fruits to taste) was Pommelo, and I’m very glad because I had thought pommelo was pretty much the same thing as a ruby grapefruit and had been merrily misinforming all sorts of people along those lines. Pommelo is actually an early, wilder ancestor of most of the citrus fruit we know today. It is grapefruit coloured and grapefruit shaped but the size of a beachball! The pommelo we tasted was a smaller version known as the ‘Cocktail Pommelo’ (cf cocktail onions) and it was the size of a child’s head.

Black Sapote (Chocolate Pudding Fruit)

Next we tried three different kinds of sapote all of which I know but still learned more about. I have already posted about my cooking experiments* with Chocolate Pudding Fruit or Black Sapote, but at the tasting I actually learned how to cut it open properly instead of the arduous approach I have been taking. I had no idea that the sweet little Sapodilla can contain up to 17% alcohol as the sugar ripens and ferments inside the airtight skin, nor that until the 1950s the tree was widely grown, not for its brown and grainy fruit, but for its sap which was used to make chewing gum until replaced by petroleum synthetic latex (bleuch!).

The tasting finished with three fruits from the amazingly delicious custard apple family. I’m already a big fan of the Soursop and Atemoya (which everyone just calls custard apple) and I had tasted an (in retrospect) inferior specimen of Rollinia before. The Rollinia at the tasting was exquisite and very much like a lemon meringue pie. Rachel and I both thought we’d both died and gone to heaven and it was difficult to resist beating up the other tasters so as to eat all the Rollinia ourselves.

Rollinia (lemon meringue pie fruit) cut up and ready to eat

Our host for the tasting was Digby Gotts himself and we heard the facinating story of how he and Alison left their Melbourne teaching careers and found themselves growing fruit in Cape Tribulation. As an teacher, Digby must have kept even a Year Nine class enthralled as he is a enthusiastic, knowledgeable, funny and calm presenter. After we were full of fruit it was still raining so we took our tour of the food forest and fruit orchard under big umbrellas, sampling things like curry leaves and tumeric root along the way. I showed Rachel some of the little mangosteen trees I had dressed while wwoofing there.

* Tonight's version of Chocolate Pudding is black sapote, chocolate port, yoghurt and drinking chocolate.

Translating the calls of the Night Chicken*

The orange-footed scrub fowl may not look

like the Italian movie stars of the rainforest,

being small and sleek and subtly beautiful.

Pair-bonded megapods**, they work hard all day eating,

building massive birthing barrows,

and scratching up the forest floor with a vigor

all out of proportion to their unassuming appearance.

But by night, oh by night, they are noisy neighbours,

unabashedly, torridly, passionately, loquacious.

Waking to the nearby cries of the night chickens*

is like watching a sexy Italian film with the subtitles turned off,

the volume up high, and your eyes closed.

Who knows what the orange-footed scrub fowl are saying to,

and hearing from, each other in their conversations after dark,

but I imagine Sophia Loren clasping a dark-haired lover

to her heaving bosom as they verbosely make love

with indistinct murmurings,

throaty chuckles, gurgles of delight,

shuddering moans and drawn-out ecstatic shrieks.

Other people complain about the long, loud night calls

of the orange-footed scrub fowl.

I hear night chicken love chat as a romantic embrace spooning me to sleep.

Call me kinky. Call me a salacious eavesdropper.

But listening to the birds in bed turns me on.

* Before I knew the name of the bird making these night noises I called it the 'night chicken'

**Having big feet

Azure Kingfisher

The guppy population in the fishpond at Rainforest Hideaway is kept under control by this Azure Kingfisher, who with his short tail and brilliant colours, is a frequent treat for visiting birdwatchers. The goldfish are too big for his beak and are so blase about his hunting that they will swim right underneath his perch. The red streak in the water next to the bird's reflection is a goldfish swimming past in the photo above. The kingfisher is, in turn, so blase about people that one day he swooped in right in front of our lunch table to catch a guppy less than a metre from us.

The opening in the forest created by the big fish pond lets more sun in than is found anywhere else on the site, which makes it an extra appealing place to sit. But even on overcast days, the setting is so beautiful and the birds and fish (not to mention occasional passing Lace Monitors) are so watchable, that the gazebo on the water is my favourite spot (where I was sitting when I took these photos).

Library Fix

A happy coincidence of circumstances enabled me to hitch an unexpected lift to Mossman yesterday. Unlike my first (and last) visit when I needed to buy lots of things, this time I had only one goal: to join the library and bring home books.

In the past week, provoked by a fever of existential angst, I suddenly entered my novel-addicted state when I lose the ability to read slowly or in short bursts but instead am compelled to gobble fiction, preferably selected obscure science fiction, as fast as I can. It's some kind of chemical imbalance that, if I liked wine or jogging or reality tv, could probably be satisfied by another kind of fix. Unfortunately my drugs of choice are not so readily available in the rainforest, where the little two-shelf book exchange in the corner of the Cape Trib Shop, has proved insufficient to meet my narrow tastes now that I am on a book-reading bender.

This weekend I experienced that awful desperation that comes with being half-way through my Last Book. I know at least my mother, and Jo (oh, how we used to joke about our fear of somehow running out of books to read), will be able the imagine the bleak horror of such circumstances and anyone with a serious substance abuse problem will be able to empathise with the scrabbling panic of being down to the last cigarette or cup of coffee.

The gods were smiling on Monday morning though, when the B&B had no checkouts and all the guests finished breakfast early to depart for a rainy day on the reef, so with no significant housekeeping responsibilities I was able to join in Rob's sand-and-cement shopping trip across the river to Moss-Vegas.

There were errands to run on the way to Mossman: first unloading a trailer of rubbish and recycling at the Cow Bay Tip and then stocking up on fresh fruit and veges at Scomazzon's where the lady behind the counter was sure she'd overcharged Rob and insisted on weighing and totalling the large box of produce twice despite the line of customers growing behind us (the second total was greater than the first but she ended up only asking for the original price). By the time we cruised into Mossman I was panting with literary anticipation. Rob was taken aback, I think, when I forcefully declined to come for a cafe treat first, and hurled myself out of the car almost before he stopped around the corner from the library.

Being school holidays, the library was full of children, mostly from the local Kuku Yalingi community taking advantage of free internet access and largely ignoring the books as far as I could tell. But truly, I was too absorbed in meeting my own needs to pay much attention to anyone else there. I waited at the counter patiently for, oh, 5 seconds or so before calling out to attract the attention of a librarian.

I love librarians, the way an addict loves their dealer, love for the pleasure they facilitate and resentment for the gatekeeping power they can wield. The sweet, helpful young man was pleased when I said I wanted to join the library and far more disappointed than me when I couldn't provide the requisite identifying documents to prove my residency. I interrupted his suggestions for ways to acquire appropriate identification by saying I'd just buy one of those Lifetime Visitor Memberships I'd read about on the website. I was already pulling the notes out of my wallet, thrusting $25 across the counter.
"No", he said, pushing away the cash, "it will only take a couple of weeks to organise a new driver's license and then you can join for free".
"Just give me a (f*cking- subvocalised, so as not to be banned before I'd even joined) membership card now, I can't wait two weeks, I need to take books home with me today."
"But..." he started again, still refusing the notes I was pushing at him.
"Please," my voice rising in volume and pitch in my agitation. "I'm not trying to have a go at you, I just want a card now, I'm desperate for something to read and I don't mind paying. Please..." I started laughing, slightly hysterically, at my own ridiculous urgency, and finally he accepted my money and gave me a form to fill out.

Naturally there followed minutes, endless minutes, of red tape and slow computer processing, while I tried to act casual (cool had obviously never been an option for me here) until he finally handed over my very own rectangle of swipable plastic, that sweet key to satisfaction and I could walk into the stacks and begin to fill my arms with books.

My fix:
Pip Pip: A Sideways look at time by Jay Griffiths (I'm only up to page 23 and its already changed my life)
Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts (the only sci fi I could find on the stacks that I want to read and haven't already)
Coral Reefs & Islands: A natural History of a threatened paradise by William Gray (lots of photos)
Tree: A Biography by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady (no photos)
Visions of a Rainforest: A Year in Australian's Tropical Rainforest by Stanley Breeden (illustrated with Willaim Cooper's watercolours instead of photos)
Djabugay Country: An Aboriginal History of Tropical North Queensland by Timothy Bottoms (worthy and dull, with sad, sad photos)
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (I wanted His Illegal Self but would have to wait for 8 other people to read it first)
The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease (historical novel about pre-letterpress book making)
The Encyclopedia of Scultping Techniques by John Plowman (not very well laid out)
Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Zen Journal and letters of an Irish Woman in Japan by Maura Soshin O'Halloran (I anticipate uplifting from existential angst)

Finger Lickin' Surprise

I've been asleep an hour, still in a dreamless state, loosely draped in only a sheet against the midnight heat, when I feel the unmistakable texture of a very small, very raspy (cat-like) tongue licking my index finger.

Some deep, primal part of my hindbrain recognises this sensation as WRONG and I wake instantly and fully with a yelp and a thrash. A small animal scuttles the WRONG way, up the bed towards my pillow and thankfully past it to disappear into the gap between mattress and wall before I can turn on the light.

Remarkably calmly considering the sharp teeth that probably could have accompanied the rough tongue, I lie back and wrap the sheet tightly over my entire head and body for a few seconds before the suffocating heat becomes unbearable and I kick it off again. Inspired, I kick the mattress beneath me to try and scare off the finger-licker and it must work, because later, as I gradually coast back into sleep, I hear a small scuttling along the floor, away from the bed and towards the open window. Sleepily I wonder what might have motivated its investigative tongue. Was he looking for a midnight snack and testing my taste before taking a bite?

The following afternoon as I bask in lazy sunshine with my feet in the fish pond being tickled by guppies and my own personal dragonfly coming to rest repeatedly on my knee (he does this most sunny days when I sit in the gazebo) my daydreamy mind reconsiders. Really, the night's tongue brushing my finger was just as gentle a touch as the guppies delicately nibbling dead skin. If I were a different kind of animal I would probably be able to interpret a lick like that as communicating (as well as collecting) a great deal of information. If I only knew how to understand wild animals with more than my eyes and ears, perhaps I would know whether the lick was as benign in intention as the dragonfly's trusting flutter.

I don't really want to invite more unexpected encounters with animal mouths, but in truth, there was nothing horrible about this one.

Window and Chair

Wwoofing at Rainforest Hideaway usually means cleaning several bathrooms a day and yesterday meant helping to clean out the grease trap (yuck!) and sometimes involves not-very onerous tasks such as painting this window.
The window was a joint effort between Rob and I. It's done with special glass and fake leadlight paints. We left some of the window blank in our rainforest scene so that the real rainforest outside the window becomes part of the picture too.
On a sunny morning, at least in mid-winter, when the low sun angles in the right way, it casts jewels of light onto the staircase leading to where I sleep. The living room at the bottom of the stairs is a work in progress towards our goal of lighting the fire one cool evening and sipping port in front of the flickering flames.

Rob would like to have us all seated in furniture handmade from gnarled tree roots. He's made a start with this chair which, when viewed from the dining deck (up a different set of stairs) looks very much like an Ent escaped from Lord of the Rings. It took five guys to wrestle the Ent in from the pathway it was blocking during the sculpting process. The ratio of seat space to room occupancy is not terribly efficient (this is a chair which favours very narrow bottoms yet requires a whole corner of head space), but it has such character!

Marrdja Mangroves

Remember the original Star Wars movie, where the young Luke Skywalker visits with Yoda on his home planet? Yoda lives in a dark, creepy, misty, muddy place seeming to consist entirely of gnarled tree trunks and buttress roots.

When I first visited the Marrdja Boardwalk, which passes through several diverse mangrove and coastal rainforest ecosystems, the mangroves reminded me of Dagobah and I wouldn't have surprised to see a short, wizened, big-eared, sci fi puppet waddle out from behind a buttress root saying, Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.

But I would have been less surprised to see a crocodile, and in fact was keeping a close watch out for them. No crocs either, thankfully, though I felt pretty safe high up on the boardwalk.
In New Zealand there is only one species of mangrove, but here there are dozens with all shapes of brightly coloured flowers and seed pods and best of all, amazing root systems. It really is like being on another planet.

Beautiful and Terrible

Beautiful and terrible, the rainforest

has no sympathy for human weaknesses,

human needs.

‘Here you are,’ it says. ‘Deal with it.’

And covers your feet in tiny itchy red lumps.

‘Listen,’ it says, ‘listen to the cooing

of the wompoo pigeon, the screech

of the catbird, the whispery whistle

of cassowary chicks stalking their way

across millennia of preserved prehistory.

Stop whining about the damp, the heat, the cold, the insects,

the cost, the rain, and your rotting clothes.’

The rainforest says, ‘Open your eyes and look,

look again, again and again and

every time you’ll see more, see new,

see different, there’s no end to what

can be learned here if you pay attention.’

The photographs are of a Strangler Fig Tree near the start of the Marrdja Boardwalk near Oliver Creek, Cape Tribulation. Strangler Figs start as an epiphyte, draping down and around a tree and eventually choking the host to death and becoming a free standing tree in its own right. They can grow incredibly huge and intricate. This one probably was growing on a palm which bend under the weight and died pretty young, leaving this amazing lattice arch.

For the courageous collector

I have proved that it is actually possible to make an artist's book in the rainforest. It was not easy, it was not quick, it didn't turn out quite as I hoped and there will not be an edition but it is done and (ironically) it is called Dry.

Why was it harder here, than back home in my well organised, well lit, dry studio, or even in my bedroom, or a kitchen table at a housesit? Ah my gentle readers, sitting in your civilized homes and offices far from the tropical rainforest, allow me to elucidate.

(Soft focus caused by camera steaming up)

For a start, the rainforest is never dry and although there are days when it is not quite as damp and muggy and relentlessly moist as usual, paper never really stands a chance of staying free of ripples, mold or general fragility. Then there's the ever present dirt. Most obviously there is an endless supply of gecko shit and bits of dead insect falling onto every surface with alarming frequency. You wouldn't expect the rainforest to be dusty, but it is and the prevailing wind keeping a haze of rainforest detritus blowing through the windowless, doorless rooms of the house and adhering to the damp paper.

But worse is the dim lighting. Natural light is never bright this far down the triple canopy and the super-efficient bulbs running off solar power are not exactly glaring nor well-placed for measuring out equilateral triangles in light pencil onto textured handmade paper. The best surface available for measuring, cutting and gluing is the big handmade table in the middle of the deck-come-living room which is the centre of the social life of the B&B. But best is a relative term for a beautiful, funky table with a surface that maintains the quirks and irregularities of the tree trunk from which it was hewn. And of course, whenever I spread out my paper and tools, someone wants to come along and eat lunch or drink a cup of tea, prompting me to quickly sweep my activities into the corner of the table furthest from the comestibles.

All these challenges have slowed me down but not daunted me! Dry was completed today. It's made out of Chinese Burr paper that Helga and I made on the Sunshine Coast in April. The paper was a bit ripply to begin with (due to not being dried flat for long enough) so I gambled that the moist air would enable my manipulations to ease it into a useful state as I made the book, and that's worked out all right. Not having a press, nor being willing to turn the moldy books around here into a makeshift press, my book is pretty springy anyway. The paper has also been dribbled with watercolour paint allowed to spontaneously flow and soak into the unsized paper.
The text (about drought, the first section of the Water Rights poem in this post), is handwritten, since I don't have access to a press, or indeed even a laser printer, here.
The structure is an experiment with folding a string of equilateral triangles, intended to evoke a kind of flowing stream of paper and text which, in the end, I consider to be only partially successful. To read the text you have to keep twisting the accordion folded triangles in a bit of a tricky way which requires courage and creativity from the reader. Since even my less demanding books often evoke anxiety in a reader figuring out how to open each page, this one could induce palpitations in a nervous novice.

So its probably a good thing that it's a unique book, that I will not be putting myself through the angst of trying to create an edition under rainforest conditions (besides, I have used up all the Chinese Burr paper on just this one copy). Instead, I will start working on the next, completely different book, one that I hope will overcome the environmental challenges in a more satisfactory manner.

Dry, for the courageous and creative collector. POA

Cooking with Tropical Fruit

Star Fruit

How many times have I intended to write a post about tropical fruit? I think I've procrastinated in part because I have yet to get enough really good fruit photos to illustrate. Well, that may never happen, due to the tendency for fruit to get eaten before it is photographed. So you'll have to make do with the photos that I do have.

Dragon Fruit growing on its cactus plant

Some of the fruits are more luscious looking than they taste (e.g. dragon fruit) and some taste best when they look really really bad (e.g. sapote and papaya). Some fruits are freaky looking but kind of bland (e.g. rambutan), and some are pretty ordinary looking and taste sublime (e.g. mangosteen). And here in the tropics where the fruit can be picked ripe and eaten fresh, familiar fruits such as pineapple, lychee and mango taste completely different, and infinitely better, than the (in retrospect) awful imported versions I knew in New Zealand.

Unripe mangosteens

At Rainforest Hideaway B&B, my wwoofing duties are not onerous and my favourite jobs are preparing breakfast for the guests in the morning and dinner for Rob and myself in the evening. Breakfast here includes a platter of tropical fruit chunks which this week has included mame sapote (aka pumpkin pie fruit) and black sapote (aka chocolate pudding fruit).

Tropical Fruits Breakfast Platter
(top row: honeydew melon, mame sapote; middle: pinapple; bottom row: dragon fruit, rollinia, star fruit; sub-bottom row: banana)

Like many of the tropical fruits, sapotes seem to be extremely variable in flavour depending on the specimen. When you strike a good one, there is nothing better, but an average sapote is, well, pretty average. In texture they are creamy, and in taste they are not particularly sweet, but rather subtly flavoured. Mame sapote when ripe looks like a moldy grapefruit from the outside but the flesh looks like a reddish cooked pumpkin. It has a slightly sweet pumpkin-ish flavour too.
The black sapoteis not as bad looking on the outside (like a granny smith apple) and looks like the darkest chocolate pudding on the inside yet does not actually satisfy the needs of a chocoholic. Every day there's been leftover mame and black sapotes after breakfast to experiment with and see if I could make something really delicious.
Here's what I have discovered. The two sapotes, mashed smooth and mixed together with a tangy plain or vanilla yoghurt, with a sprinkling of cinnamon and a grating of chocolate taste like heaven in a bowl. Alison informs me that mame sapote smoothies are all the rage in Cuba, and that a squeeze of fresh orange juice and a teaspoon of cocoa makes chocolate pudding sapote really live up to its name, but I haven't gotten to try that version due to the lack of both those ingredients in our kitchen.

What the Hideaway kitchen is fully and completely stocked with is pretty much every ingredient known to Thai cookery. I think I'd eaten Thai food maybe twice in my life before this month. My old adverse reaction to the heat of chillies always put me off as I used to get a sore spot between my shoulder blades whenever I ate hot foods but since I stopped with the flour and dairy, I can eat heat- go figure!. In contrast, Rob loves Thai kai so much he attended two Thai cooking schools while vacationing there during the Wet Season this year. He's bought all the makings and has the little cookbooks the school's provided. So, without having any real familiarity with Thai flavours or textures I've started teaching myself to cook Thai, and braving the heat, and enjoying myself.
As well as curries, fish cakes and pad thai I've made the Green Papaya Salad a few times, because green papaya is something that is very readily available in this part of the world. You might have to wait days or weeks for a ripe papaya, but there'll always be a green one somewhere!
Ripe papaya is luscious and sweet and red and squishy (and looks almost rotten from the outside). Green papaya flesh is white and firm and juicy and bland. It grates as easily as carrot and the salad is made by pounding all the raw ingredients in a mortar and pestle and letting the juices seep together... tomato, green beans, fresh chilli, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, roasted peanuts, and sugar (everything Thai has sugar in it). When I hear the words green and salad, I tend to think of cool and soothing mild flavours. Well, green papaya salad is like juicy fire!

Viva Moss Vegas!

The beautiful raintrees of Mossman

It is exactly four weeks since I rode the ferry North across the Daintree River and became a rainforest-dwelling wwoofer. Today I took the ferry South, heading for an exciting day of shopping in Moss Vegas, as the nearest actual town with actual shops and actual services is known to locals. I was hitching a ride with Alison, the wwoof host I stayed with a couple of weeks ago, who lives around the corner from my current Hideaway home and makes a weekly trip to Port Douglas via Mossman.

Being driven along Cape Tribulation Road generally strikes me dumb with awe and often moves me to tears with its beauty. Today gratitude for the long-awaited ride kept me making conversation despite the distractions of several types of dense forest crowding and overhanging the road. Every trip across a creek or river involves craning my neck for a glimpse of a crocodile, especially on the short ferry ride, since the Daintree River is the only place I have ever actually seen a croc in the wild. But the conversation was riveting and enlightening, thanks to Alison's comprehensive local knowledge, and I learned a lot about the history and hidden complications of power supply, generation and usage North of the River (more on this another time).

Sugarcane with Daintree National Park on ranges in background

South of the River, the landscape changes dramatically and abruptly to a sugarcane monoculture (where 170 years ago there was only rainforest). And then of course the exquisite coastline appears on the left, today a silvery mirror of placid sparkling Coral Sea, highlighted by densely forested islands and headlands visible in various directions. And then the ute coasted to a gentle halt on the side of the road. Diagnosis: fuel filter problems. Attempted solution: kangaroo hopping a couple of hundred metres at a time in slow motion around a several kilometres of narrow windy coastal road, causing some lip-chewing near misses as impatient fellow travellers passed us at speed on blind corners. Final solution: pulling up at a safe spot on Rocky Point, with great cellphone reception and calling RACQ (equivalent to NZ's AA).

View North from Rocky Point to Snapper Island (so called because it resembles a croc gliding through the water...)
and Cape Kimberly hiding behind the tree

While waiting to be towed Alison and I admired the view, enjoyed the sunshine and then the shade, I scrambled down the rocky slope and dabbled in the warm water's edge for a while, and then we both realised that we could take advantage of the cellphone reception so utterly lacking at Cape Trib. Alison had a hilarious video call with her sister's dog and I texted my daughter and my best mate in NZ.

Flat-bed Tow Truck lifts Hi-Lux

The tow truck driver and Alison shared increasingly outrageous shark and crocodile tales all the way into town and then, at last, I was let loose for some retail therapy on Mossman's main street. As well as my own extensive and diverse list of needs I had various errands to run for two friends. So starved am I of consumerism and sophistication that Mossman's choice of not one but two chemists, two haberdasheries, two clothing shops, two electrical shops (etc) was unbearably thrilling, and shopping was not the chore I often find it to be in more regular circumstances. I found some great books and an orange fleece jacket in the one op shop and managed to get all the other important things on my own list, as well as a television aerial and shower unit(!) for Rob.

Mossman having only one supermarket and one organic cafe, Alison and I bumped into each other twice before our arranged meet-up at the library. Sadly for me, the ute didn't take long to repair and I only had a few minutes to flick through the two excellent books I quickly found on rainforest and indigenous values before I was collected for a beautiful and uneventful ride home.

Daintree River from the ferry, with tourist cruise looking for crocs

I just had time to copy into my notebook this quote from Marius Jacobs, which articulates my own nascent ideas so well:

Knowing a tropical rainforest is like 'knowing' a city. To grasp all that happens is impossible, yet a good deal of understanding and meaningful knowledge can be gathered as a basis for what we do... good or bad.
In the process of getting acquainted, this relationship develops according to the interest, capacity, keenness, curiosity and fantasy of the person and to such a relationship there is no end...
[S]he then realises [s]he receives more than [s]he gives, an affair with terrible difficulties, to be sure, but which, once overcome, results in something sublime.

Fancy seeing you here! (Mid-level)

Sitting above the bottom canopy

high enough to glimpse blue sky and shafts

of sunshine but too low to feel the heat,

the forest floor is invisible

beneath mandalas of palm fronds.

Here in the middle level, the second canopy,

the view ahead is all vertical columns reaching

straight up and straight down to invisible destinations;

columns swagged with familiar vines.

These old acquaintances were once only known to me

as clipped and controlled little pot plants

sitting separately in shiny urns

on hard grey carpet, trying unsuccessfully

to disguise the miserable forest

of cubicle dividers in our second floor office.

Flaccid under fluoro lighting

breathing badly conditioned air from corner ceiling vents

doled a weekly dribble of water

and trimmed of the first signs of decay,

those office mates were tame avatars of

the uninhibited natives clinging rampant here.

Gnawed by wild animals,

yet covering every available trunk that ever sees sunlight,

all tangled together with a previously unimaginable diversity

of twenty-metre-dwelling plants.

I am looking for tree snakes

but I give myself over to a fantasy of supplying

offices with appropriate foliage:

definitely, the seried shark’s teeth of the wait-a-while

would be more honest in the workplace,

to snag the wage-slaves’ city clothes;

yes, surround the photocopier with

the tender pink tips of something so delicate

it grows along spider silk,

yet so ruthless it strangles saplings;

and for head office,

a spiraling double-helix

that chokes the life out of its host vine

and remains a free hanging corkscrew

with no visible means of support.

Daintree Infusion

I have dreamed of the Daintree for so many years that to finally, actually live here in reality is quite a dreamy experience. You may recall the poem, Daintree Calling, that I wrote before I first visited in January, and posted here on my return to Whangarei. I'm now working on a 'response' to that irresistable call which includes these lines:

I have come here to fall in love

with the forest, to live intimately in its embrace

to let every cell of my body be infused

with its essence. I give up

my southern/city tainted blood

to the leeches and sandflies,

wanting my veins to run with Daintree sap.

What does it mean to let myself be infused with the essence of Daintree? It seems to mean allowing many of my attachments to fall away and genuinely relaxing into having all my attention on being here, right now. Consider the mundane aspects of everyday life in the rainforest:
At first not 'being in contact' with family and friends, with the outside world, via cellphone (no coverage), landline or email (unreliable access), or snail mail (uncertainty about what address to use)was challenging, but now I can barely rouse myself to pursue the necessary communications that are possible.
More recently I still thought I needed to have 'my own space' that was private and comfortable but instead I have chosen to stay where I sleep in an office/laundry room which is two flights of stairs, two rooms and a veranda away from the bathroom. My priorities for creating a sense of (temporary home) have been turned upside-down and now it's the qualities which connect me to the wilderness, rather than those which separate me, which matter most.
Coming here to wwoof and without my own vehicle meant abandoning most illusions of control over my future activities and allowing events to unfold at least partly in the hands of my hosts and other people around me. My current challenge is letting go of my 'need' for a shopping trip to a real town (Mossman, Port Douglas or Cairns, I don't really mind) to replenish some personal supplies. The list keeps growing, and I keep missing out on appropriate rides with acquaintances, yet I don't feel desperate enough to make a concerted effort (eg pay the ridiculous bus fare). The local shop is having an outrageous sale on Cadbury chocolate bars which is apparently more than enough retail therapy for me right now! Come to think of it, perhaps my easy-going state is because my veins are running with Dairy Milk.

I am surrounded by people who constantly have lessons in non-attachment forced on them by the rainforest. Clothes, furniture and books all rot quickly in the pervasive damp. Anything electrical can only have a short life of erratic efficiency caused by unreliable solar or generator power, persistent wildlife of all denominations and of course the inescapable moisture. Vehicles break down, gardens are overgrown/eaten/diseased, buildings are encroached to near-disintegration, creeks rise and cut off the only access road, (and to the North the roads are 4WD only anyway). And there is little money to made here yet the cost of living is high and rapidly increasing due to our inherent dependence on petroleum for generating electricity and for transporting in food and every other consumable.
Cape Tribulation is a small, friendly town that is proving easy to feel accepted in. Like many communities that survive in adverse conditions people are kind and generous. Yesterday was my host, Rob's, birthday and a local nightspot put on a Thai-themed party night for him. Almost everyone in the area seemed to be there, including little children and wild men down from the hills. Rob was shouted beers until they ran out and after dinner an enormous chocolate cake appeared from the kitchen on fire with sparklers.

Most people who live here have a 'Cape Trapped' story that begins with a short touristy visit that became a permanent residence. It gets in your blood, this place, and its hard to regret the way it transforms us.

Flirty Fan Palms

Flirty fan palms

rising confidently on delicate trunks

like courtesans of the rainforest.

spreading their crimped mandalas high above

the chaos of the forest floor, a dense green tangle of diversity

spotted with poisonous fruits in lolly colours.

I am the plain and earnest student,

come shyly to study the lush abandon

of the tropics, to learn

how to live lavishly

on an impoverished planet

in this greenness my blood runs ruby

Hanging out with the Cassowaries

A highlight of my first trip to Cape Trib in January was several cassowary sightings. These spectacular, big, colourful birds are rare and endangered and not every visitor is lucky enough to catch a glimpse of them stalking deliberately through the forest. I felt very lucky in January, and now, staying at the Rainforest Hideaway I am lucky again.
A family of cassowaries are almost daily visitors here, coming right up to the veranda, which is raised high about their heads, creating a sense of mutual safety and separation between bird and human.

These photos are of the slightly larger female, who spent about 15 minutes hanging out with me late one afternoon when I was here alone. She sat down by the steps and started grooming in a very relaxed manner, allowing me lots of time to take photos of her amazing colours on the skin and feathers of her neck and head, the texture of her hard crest (which is apparently spongey on the inside of the hard covering) and her enormous feet and talons.

Shortly after she stood up and stalked off, a group of guests arrived just in time to see the Papa Cassowary come to visit with his two little chicks. Little is a relative term as they are the size of 10 year old human children. They made a soft high whistling noise as they scratched around on the forest floor while Papa kept a keen eye on the humans standing around frantically snapping photographs.