Travel Tips

My husband and I spend a lot of time in our garden.
Actually, we spend more time outdoors than in.
This is what we see when we're enjoying sundowners under the pergola.

Frogs in Australia are diminishing in numbers because their natural habitat is being used up for houses. So we made our garden frog friendly and built abig pond and dozens of them have come.
Most are tree frogs and can climb, they like it on the pergola by the mozzie zapper where they can catch lots of insects.
For details of a frog friendly garden click here
To see my frog photos
click here

Looking down into the sunken patio behind the pond and waterfall. We built all this ourselves. My husband shifted the rocks, dug the pool and laid the paving, I did the planning and the planting. (think I got the easy job!)
It was designed to be out of sight from the house and very tranquill. Feeding and counting the guppies in the pond is very relaxing.

Earlier this year the back wall had an identity crisis and decided it wanted to be a patio.
All of a sudden, my beautiful secret garden was not secret any more, and the pool was more public than the Aquatic Centre!

It took months to sort out the insurance and get it rebuilt, during which time we came to appreciate the openness and the view.

We had it rebuilt with a colorbond (powder coated steel) fence set on top of limestone blocks, more in keeping with the feel of the rest of the garden and reducing glare.
For those from cooler climes who may not have seen one before, the thing in the pool is an automatic pool cleaner, often known as a creepy crawley. ('Creepy Crawley' is actually a brand name, ours is a 'Barracuda'). We bought it last year and I wrote this little poem about it.

The Barracuda
It glides slowly around the pool, it's big blue mouth trembling as it sucks along the floor, it's long blue tail trailing far behind. Hour after hour it goes back and fore, never slowing or even pausing for breath.
The floor of the pool gleams as the bright sunlight reflects thfough the ripples on the surface, inviting me in.
It's wonderful to have a pool, but so much work to keep clean-it's even more wonderful to have creepy crawley.

When I emigrated I was surprised to find that all the plants I had grown indoors in UK would grow outside in Australia. Most of them are shade plants.
There's an old plastic roof on the pergola which we have hidden with branches trimmed from the Canary Island Date Palm in our front garden.

I've always enjoyed gardening and when I came here I found I could grow things I'd only dreamed of - I'd never even seen a passionfriut flower before.
This year I've picked bucketfulls of fruit.