September already !

And Hello!
Yes we are already in September! From now the weather is going to be really good! Facebook is probably more up to date than this blog right now....
We have been busy and also received great reviews on trip advisor and booking.com and lots more in our guest book here in the B&B. It makes it all worth while, when guests are really impressed with this area and our accommodation!
Day off today, catching up on payments and book work and planning to tidy up one corner on the garden.
The photo below is of the table clothes used in the B&B. I love being able to use them all, so they are not forgotten. A lot of were made by my mother-over 50 years ago.

New Daintree video

Hello there!
Our tourism association has worked hard to produce this.
Check it out and make a comment!
https://youtu.be/TewimpLqF8g

Easter 2017

Good day!
Hoping everyone had a great Easter this year.
Our visitors started on Sund and the B&B is busy all this week.
It is still 'slow' season her ein the tropics but our garden is super busy. I am chasing weeds everywhere. It is very pleasant now to do some work outside. It is great to look at another section in the garden, which looks a little more 'tamed' than before. There are still some great flowers around and the white ginger, one of my favourites is doing well right now.
Well, as always: any booking please email or phone me direct or use the online site on our webpage.
Best wishes from Marion und Cow Bay!

From one blog to another

Hello there,
 we had this blogger visiting in December and this is the very great blog this lady has written  about our Cow Bay Homestay B&B.
http://www.woodyworldpacker.com/cow-bay-home-stay-luxury-family-rainforest-retreat-daintree-national-park/
Enjoy!

Review!

Checking emails early today, guests just left to go to airport and then back home...
What a review:
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ShowUserReviews-g2266801-d640457-r469333765-Cow_Bay_Homestay-Cow_Bay_Daintree_Region_Queensland.html
please copy and pst in case the link does high light.

Plants we grow

Hi all!
While redoing our property sketch last week, I thought about adding a list of all the plants we grow here. Well, the list is too long to fit. So here it is:
---in no particular order---

 Dancing Lady orchids, Cooktown lilies, some bromeliads, ferns, 4 + ground covers, Tamarind Tree, Jaboticaba Cherries, Papaya, Sugar Bananas, West Indian and Tahitian Lime, 3 + other citrus, Lychee, Mangosteen, Passion Fruit, Chilies, Chives, Curry leaf, Cat Whiskers, Cat Tails, Happy plant, Pandas,5+ Hibiscus, Jasmine, Gardenia, 15+ flowering Gingers, also White Linen, and Haliconias, Pagoda, Orange Shrimp Plant, Costas, Frangipani + one evergreen, Bangkok Rose, Cord lines, Crotons, Fox Tail Palm, Black Palm, Fishtail-, Alexandra- and Fan Palm, Sun Jewels, Darwin Hibiscus, Chinese jade bush, Monsteria, Mangos, vines, and match box, Rose of Sharon, Pony Tail.
 There are some more and then there are all the Rain Forest plants all around us.

  Right now it is pouring down rain. This is probably the 8th shower this morning. Short and heavy, cicadas are on full volume. It becomes really dark quite quickly, the noise of the rain comes already through the trees and then woooosh ! Easing off a little now. It will then stop, drip for 10 minutes and then maybe clear a little. Then there will be the next shower. It is really nice, sort of, and does not happen all the time either.. Sorry, this shower just intensified: straight down, strings of rain. Right: TV just came on again, and yes it is clearing now. A very spicy smell is in the air- I have never identified this, but it is very characteristic for the tropics.

Business Seminar this week

Good morning!
I went to a business seminar this week and the owner of Sweet Farm spoke about their farm, tours, history and future plans. I think it would be a great tour to do:

http://www.sweetfarmtours.com/

And then there is this: Enjoy!!!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5h_cYHSVux3g8FrQ3UCjQ

That is all the good news for one day!
Marion

January 2017 !

Happy New Year, and let's get into it!

Great guests stayed with us form one year into the next! And we enjoyed some more bookings after that. Right now the rain has sort of started, but nothing what other local areas have had. However the creek is running nicely and I did some ' tidy' up there yesterday and have to cut an overhanging vine out today, in case things want to get tangled up in the next flood and cause a problem. Good work this: ankle deep in cool flowing water. The garden looks really good now, variety of different flowers give nice splashes of colours. For any visitor to the area now, please check opening times for tours and restaurants; some close for maintenance, others just go on holidays as this is our (s)low time of the year. Cow Bay Homestay B&B  is open throughout; phone me for special deals and come to visit the Wet Tropics in the Wet Season!
The photos is of a match box vine, right next to our back deck: the round cases were used to store matches. It will take some time before it is mature and dries and can be used. It is a little more than 1 meter long.

Really !!!

Hi,
 right and we are nearly in November......best making some plans for Christmas. My dream is to go to a good restaurant one year = no shopping, cooking, washing up ! But as someone pointed out to me---no left overs ! That is going to be a hard decision.
Meanwhile back in the B&B: some rain last night, which was very welcome. Lovely guest every day and a visit to Mareeba is planned to catch up with friend and formerly also our neighbours.
I went to Brisbane last week for an Andre Rieu concert. That was a lot of travelling for 2 hours of great music. It was all very exciting, hectic and everything worked out perfectly. However I was glad driving back home with 3 cars on the road instead of 3000.....
Nearly done  in the B&B this morning. Over to a neighbor for a chat and maybe one of their great coffees. I finally started a painting, which is in my head for the last 3 years or so: sugar cane. Started it 2 days ago...just like that.....hopefully it will be good enough to hang on a wall.
And here is the new setting for our B&B  deck.

Catch Up

Good Day !
well ....there is a big gap in this blog now, due to PC issues in a big way, and just when I thought I had it all organized the big let down not only technically. Now, all should be in order and I am catching up.... we have had great guests coming, staying and departing. Hopefully all had a great experience here in Cow Bay and the Daintree Rainforest. We had a warm and wet winter and are sort of 1 month late with flowering shrubs. Now I can go into the garden to do the big pruning job, however it seems to become warm already. But I hope September brings the usual great weather and some time to enjoy it. Anyone interested in staying with us, our online calendar on the this website is live and ready to be checked anytime. Hope to see you here one day !

Ginger News

Just a quick news flash!
Ginger has been exploring the neighbour hood for the last 3 weeks during his " heading off "and was brought back by one person, thank you very much B, who fed him well, but apparently does not like cats ! Lucky for us. Ginger seemed a bit stunned, ate bowl after bowl of bikkies and slept through the night. We hope he will stay home now- the worrying worries you .....

Ginger and Tabby

Hi,
 our lovely boy cats, brothers Ginger and Tabby have gone out and not come back. This is very sad for us and I will indulge myself by putting some of their photos here. They were great little cats, just over 1 year old and expert climbers and chasers and hiders, helpers in the garden and curious in the work shop and now we miss their antics a lot.

 

Electricity- still a hot topic

Hi,
 well, one wouldn't suspect it in May 2016 in Australia, but electricity or the absence of it, is still a hot topic. Not so much for our government in Brisbane, but they most probably don't believe us- that is my guess.
Read this from Rob, who is very good putting a complex issue together:

Rob Lapaer posted in Daintree Hour aims to end pollution and energy poverty in the Daintree.       Rob Lapaer April 30 at 4:38pm   The Mossman Gazette has re-published my open letter to the premier about the Daintree not getting a fair go, no doubt it will generate comments from the readers, and I have replied to them. It does not matter that today it is only Saturday and it will take another five days for the newspaper to hit the shops for me to read it, I already know what they are going to say anyway as it is always the same: 1. It was your choice to go and live there... Yes, that is right, and when I moved in to Cape Trib in 1993 it was an area just getting settled and resorts were being built, phone lines were already in the ground all throughout the Daintree, the road was getting better by the week, and at that time power supply was talked of as a matter of WHEN, not IF. The whole Daintree was within the legal distribution area of the electricity provider at the time, and there was no way of knowing that seven years later we were going to be cut out of this distribution area without compensation. How could I possible have known I had just bought a property in the only place in the western world where a government would legislate against basic services essential to its own citizens? Everywhere else governments want to see prosperous happy communities. 2. If you don’t like it why don’t you move? Not many people are willing to buy a property without electricity supply, or even if they are then they will not pay a realistic price, as they have trouble obtaining finance because most banks have the Daintree on their black list. This means Daintree residents who want or need to move can not sell their places for a price that will buy a comparable place somewhere else in Australia. They can not afford to move and are trapped. Moving out without selling your house is also not an option as renting out means tenants trashing your batteries or stealing your generator as often happens. 3. A grid will bring over-development to a pristine area. WRONG! A three point plan was agreed on between government and stake holders in 2009. Point 1: Buyback of unoccupied and other selected blocks of land. Point 2: An amended restrictive town plan to take away the threat of over-development on the remaining blocks not bought back. Point 3: Grid power to be provided. Points 1 and 2 happened but nearly two decades later we are still waiting for point 3 and at three million litres of fuel per year that gets trucked across the river (as established in survey) another 30 000 tonnes of CO2 has been pumped in to our World Heritage listed rain forest since then, and countless businesses and households have gone broke and closed or left the area. 4. You bought cheap land because there was never going to be any grid power, it was never promised. WRONG! FNQEB was ready to put electricity in, it was only a matter of WHEN, and not IF, for many years. Various politicians over the years committed to the provision of mains power. Jeff Seeney has made promises in the past of Coalition commitment to providing power to the Daintree, I have his fax here for anyone who want to see it. FNQEB has done several studies in the 1990's in to the best way to build the power supply, and if ultra-greens had not stopped them it would have happened a long time ago, now we have the ironic situation where greens are responsible for ongoing pollution. 5. People that want power only want to make profits on real estate. WRONG! Nobody in the Daintree is going to walk away with fat profits. Over the last two decades real estate has surged everywhere in Australia but in the Daintree it has stagnated, this means that people in the Daintree who go broke paying for fuel and generators can not move away and sell their place and get a comparable place elsewhere in the country. A grid would change the value of Daintree real estate somewhat but it is never going to catch up with the rest of the country. It would only mean that maybe then residents can afford to move and not give away their land for peanuts and start with a new mortgage elsewhere in Australia where all real estate has tripled in value over the last two decades. 6. You Daintree people should use renewable energy. If this was a viable option we would be doing it! All renewable energy options have been thoroughly examined in the Daintree. Solar panels need sun, and as rainforests tend to have many trees that provide shade, and even more so have a lot of rain and cloud, solar panels do not work very often, even the newest technology! While small households with enough investment may be able to run on this (together with backup generator), it is not an option for businesses with larger power demands for refrigeration etc. Hydro electricity to supply a whole community would require damming of creeks which means too high environmental impact, and wind turbines have just been banned near World Heritage areas by our government. Other technologies are still too expensive and experimental. Renewable energy in the Daintree now means renewing generators, battery banks and other equipment. 7. You can not expect the Govt to pay a grid from public money. Why not? All other infrastructure in Australia was built with public money. Nowhere else in Australia have residents had to get together to discuss and finance their own basic infrastructure. Only a tiny percentage of Ergon's annual $404 million profit is needed. ARENA has $2.5 billion in funding available for renewable energy projects, hundreds of millions have been spent on solar farms near Cooktown and Weipa, and 34 remote indigenous communities have power grids built and maintained from public money. What we need now is our government to be pro-active in sorting out this situation, instead of ignoring us and knocking back any proposal we make. 1. It goes against all common sense and environmental commitments Australia makes at international conferences to have hundreds of generators roaring side by side. 2. The Queensland Government has created this mess by a.) approving the subdivision of the Daintree and b.) banning grid power and excluding the area from the distribution area of the state’s electricity supplier. They created this mess in these two steps and that makes it their responsibility to clear up this mess. If you want to do something useful then copy the letter to the premier below and email it to her, the more she hears from us the sooner we can move out of our third world living situation.

 

Cleaning with HaRa

Alright !!!
We all do it: cleaning the house!
No one really loves it, but I can stand only so much.... then of course with a B&B to run, I clean a lot more often than usual; guests have certain expectations.
I live here now for nearly 16 years. The wet season = summer is not the same each year, meaning some years there is mould everywhere and I have felt very overwhelmed having to clean walls, ceilings. doors furniture practically every week- I mean: REALLY ??? Then everyone has their special tip:
eucalyptus oil =  monster headache in 5 minutes and no win;
clove oil= little more pleasant but no win; chlorine, bleach, vinegar etc.
I even had a trial on all our timber chairs for a week so see which one grew mould first.... that  should have been a warning for something...
Fortunately this sort of weather is not happening all year around or every year, and a good thing too.
Finally a friend of our  German family came visiting and then posted me a HaRa starting kit.
WOW- how kind was that. I was not really convinced of course, that would have been far too easy-right ! So I diligently kept cleaning but using the HaRa kit; detergent, cloth, polishing cloth and so forth. And there were moments after 2 - 3 months, where I checked the doors, because I had not cleaned them for a while- had I forgotten, they didn't look bad- and they weren't ! I didn't have to clean them; now that was a great outcome. And so on it goes. Even now, middle of a wet season guests arriving this week, I walk around to check book shelves, surface etc. and there is little to do. I am not using any chemicals, the job is done quickly and I clean less and less. Loving this product.
And I just received this little logo to use from HARa

 

Autumn and new Qld app

Hello there,
 yes it is autumn, and right this minute we have the beginning of a storm, brisk wind gusts and a whoosh of cold air coming through, all we need now is some rain to go with it.
Busy pruning the garden back ready for Winter and  a little rain after this helps the plants to settle and get into the fertiliser and new ground covers.
Tourism Queensland has a new website and an app to go with it- check it out and keep it on hand = mobile while you are travelling and even  visiting our Cow Bay Homestay B&B.
http://www.queensland.com/de-DE/Accommodation
oops and in English and lots of other languages
http://www.queensland.com/en-AU/Accommodation
Enjoy,
Marion
 

Holiday in a B&B

B&B Holiday....

Now in January/February when it is a little warm and humid, there is a little B&B in Cow Bay FNQ, where someone listens to the rain, watches the pearl strings of rain cascade off the roof, is amazed at the sound of birds feeding in trees loaded with bright red berries, swings in the hammock , has a good cup of coffee and a biscuit to dunk?, listens to the cycadas and their friends producing ear piercing sounds and then all of a sudden all stop.
That is when they are not out there being busy visitors…….

Ein Sommer Tag

Hallo an alle Leser,
heute mal in deutsch geschrieben.
Wir haben schon seit ein paar Tagen so richtige tropische Sommer Tage- erst noch kuehl am morgen, dann klarer Himmel mit Temperaturen um die mmitte 30 C und kaum ein Windchen; also gut fuer Badestunden in den Frischwasser Baechen auch unserem natuerlich, und Schnorchel Trips zum Barrier Reef raus oder Kanufahrten frueh am morgen oder spaet nachmittags.
Im Moment zieht es sich gerade zu, die Temperatur sinkt und ich hoffe wir bekommen ein nettes Gewitter, das alles schoen abkuehlt und den Garten erfrischt.
Fuer Interessenten,: Zimmer sind frei im Februar und ein 4 Naechte Angebot auf der Website--oder --einfach anmailen oder anrufen. marion@cowbayhomestay.com oder + 61 7 40989151. Ich freue mich schon.

nice rain !!!

Right ! November is nearly over. Looking at our drizzle of a creek today and I am very happy with the current downpour. Little too heavy as the ground is very dry, but good penetration down to the rainforest floor. I bet everyone loves it. Not so busy this November even though the weather is very pleasant- ' balmy ' the latest guests called it. Time to work on some yearly jobs and others.
We finally have 'obtuse' glass louvres  in the little bathroom window. Some people do have reservations with clear glass louvres even though no one really can look in. Then we cleaned the outside of the B&B ready for another coat of timber protection. And did the same on our house, but that doesn't need painting. Hooraay.
Some pictures of our boy cats and some other bits. Enjoy !
...and we had 25 mm in 45 minutes or so

 

September already !

A great day to all!
This is it: we are in  Spring and it did turn warm rather quickly. Still cool nights - but back to cosy blankets and the down doonas are packed away until next year! Today it is little overcast with little rain: good for long walks on the beach or exploring the rainforest board walks in the area. The Orange Shrimp plants are in fully flower - the little sunbirds just love them. The Mangoes are in full bloom with a strong scent right throughout the garden. The Torres Strait Pigeons are back  feeding right up high in the trees and even the Grey Whistler is busy practicing his/her little song over and over again.

 

Wintery !

A lovely Sunday to all. Yes we are in the middle of winter and so far it has been quite good, neither too cold or warm with sunny days, blue skies and cool nights. The B&B guests definitely loved it all and all their activities  north of the Daintree River: kayaking, jungle surfing, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef, walking on the beaches , doing the walks and just reading or day dreaming on our hammock. Which, -- the hammock- has been replaced and is looking good. The 'old' one is now in our Garden House-yeah! Well best be gone to do a little more gardening until the new guests arrive today !

This is the flower of a great bush called Cat Tails !