Life in the Tropics..

Well, it's been over 9 months since Kveta and I upped and left Sydney. Saying our final goodbyes to the warm temperate zone, and relocating to the hot tropics of Far North Queensland..

As most of you know already, we were accompanied by Emile and David, 2 young American filmmakers who hired a car for the occasion and followed us up and along the coastline of Eastern Australia. They took well over 40 hours of footage of the 2 of us and others we met en route (including some of the participants of a December 801010 gathering held in this neck of the woods)..

Apparently, the 25 minute documentary they knocked together was initially aired to an audience of about 200 in the US, and met with favourable views promoting some of the audience to give fruitful thought to the idea of fruitarianism.. Unfortunately, Kveta and I have still not seen the full video, (the introduction to it is still available for viewing on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LzleNRtyRg, but we have little doubt we will get to see it soon, (we believe that Emile, the director/editor), is knocking together a longer 1 hour plus version, and when he has finished that task, will likely forward us a copy of both versions)..

Initially when we arrived in the tropics, we had no real idea of where we would end up living.. Our first goal was to get to Mareeba, where we optimistically hoped to find ourselves a piece of paradise to live on..

We were thankful to be offered a place to be for a while at a tropical fruit farm called fruitopia (http://www.fruitopiafarm.com/ - this was where the December 2009 801010 gathering was held)..


The Granite Creek Swimming hole at Fruitopia.
This is still one of my favourite places to go swimming..

Our goal was, and still is to find ourselves an affordable river frontage property, secluded enough to practise naturism, with good clean soil for planting as many fruit trees as we can take care of between the 2 of us, and good surrounding nature for exploring some..

Although we appreciated Fruitopia for the roof it offered us, there were reasons why neither of us really would have considered being there for the long term, - having our own space for privacy being perhaps one of the major reasons.. But also, Clinton, the owner, had made prior arrangements for another family to move into the place we were at come February, so after some pretty frantic searching for a while, we somehow managed to find our current rental property, in Mareeba..

We're in a reasonably quiet area, 2 roads back from the Barron River, where Kveta and I generally go swimming several times a week. We have found a nice spot where so far, we haven't really seen other people swimming yet..


Kveta in the distance, swimming in the Barron river, Mareeba

Kveta Swimming in the Barron River
The place we're renting is on the corner of a crossroads, it is a 2 bedroomed on-stilts Queenslander house with a back and front lawn.. In the back garden, we have a large mango tree and an equally large tamarind tree.. the tamarinds are currently fruiting, and the tree is loaded.. YUM! The mango tree is both flowering and with early fruits.. We expect to be eating them in abundance by December..

It's difficult to get any good picture of our garden due to the angles and stuff..

Our front garden is mostly lawn, but since we've moved in, we are gardening along the fence-line.. we have planted probably around 90 pineapple tops that are all looking very healthy.. around 20 pawpaw trees from seed, the tallest of which is already nearly chest high!, and one of them is flowering already!! - Shows you how quickly things grow in this corner of the world..

If you count all the little seedling pawpaws we have too, then we have hundreds of them..

tomatoes and cucumbers we have had an abundance of, and we're currently experimenting with growing our own tomatoes upside down.. (several plants have been given makeshift pots from netting and newspaper, and are hanging from our car port growing slowly)..

Several passion-fruit vine have been planted along the fence-line too, and although none are flowering yet, I feel one will probably start in the next few months..

Between the 2 of us, we generate quite a lot of fruit compost, all of which gets buried in our garden, in fact generally we bury it, cover it with soil, and then plant a garden on top of it.. consequently we have an abundance of fruit tree seedlings sprouting up in the garden.. including durian, akee, chempadek, jackfruit, avocado and many more.. (otherwise, apart from cardboard boxes - which get reused until falling to bits, and the odd free newspaper, we generally don't produce any rubbish)

Our next door neighbour, at the back of us, is very kind and often brings us fruit to eat, especially pawpaws growing wild on some land they have someplace, and frequently give us passion fruit and avocados too..

We have also become friends with a couple of local no spray organic farmers, and frequently buy boxes of cucumbers and tomatoes at really give away prices.. Plus pawpaws, pineapples and other fruit..

Both Kveta and I are in writing mode at the moment, and writing our separate books on the fruitarian philosophy, daily.. hence I am much less present on the internet than before, and consequently neglecting my blog some too..

We are both doing otherwise well, and still hoping to someday find ourselves the river frontage property we so dream of living on.. At the moment, as neither of us have savings of any real value, affordable rental is our only apparent option, but one never knows.. the universe works in mysterious ways, and we both believe strongly that we will find what we are looking for..

Peace and hugs to you all,
Mango.