wwoofing in Julatten, QLD - Part 1

wwoofing in Julatten - Part 1

For two weeks in June we stayed and worked on a property between Julatten and Mossman, 110km north-west of Cairns, at the northern end of the Atherton Tablelands. The property was once a nursery for rare palm trees but has been somewhat neglected and so Fred and Jeanette (the new owners) are tidying it up and restoring much of the native habitat. There is a creek that runs through the property that is part of the Upper Mitchell River catchment and that makes the property eligible for grants to improve the 'health' of the creek.

Lots of great tropical plants

This is one of the exotic palm trees. Covered in spines like an echidna. No climbing!

Misty sunrise

 We were involved in a couple of interesting projects while in Julatten. The first was the new herb garden. This was Rosie's project and as you can see it turned out beautifully! It's an old bath tub standing on cement blocks to keep it out of reach of furry creatures.

We also built a vegetable garden. We learned that vegie gardening up North presents a number of challenges that aren't as much of a concern in other areas. Fred and Jeanette's last vegie patch was a bit of disaster, destroyed by a combination of white-tailed rats, pademelons, wallabies, the neighbour's peacocks and the heavy rain during the wet season (Julatten average annual rainfall is over 2000mm and the record rainfall for a single day is 801mm!) so this time Fred had put a lot of thought into how to make this garden a success.

Fred is an engineer so he tends to think things through. (He is passionate about solar energy and I learned a lot from him about how solar power works and how to get the most benefit from it.) So Fred had observed where the water ran during the wet season and planned the garden on one of the 'drier' spots. Fred dug channels half a metre deep around the border of the garden and used corrugated iron sheets as the edging.

Elijah was in charge of soil testing

Stu learned to operate a tractor, and tractors became Elijah's new favorite thing!

We laid sleepers as edging for the garden beds so that there was a path down the middle. We filled the beds with soil and freshly-collected cow poo. Fred welded the door on and we used irrigation pipes as the roof supports. The ends of the pipes went over star-pickets and we braced the top with a length of square steel tubing. Next it was time for the chicken wire. The entire enclosure needed to be covered with chicken wire to keep out the pests.

Rosie "c-clipping" the chicken wire

Next we installed a watering system and Rosie planted the first seeds.

The finished project. Hooray!