Hanging out in a Queensland garden


G'day everybody!


I thought you might like to come with me for a trip around the garden where I am staying. Gardens in North Queensland look just like ours at home at first. There's a lawn and flower beds with some bushes and trees. When you look more closely, however, you realise that Queensland gardens are a bit different. 

I bet quite a few of you have  swing in your garden. Maybe someone in school has tried to grow an ornamental banana tree but I don't think anyone at Cobden has bananas growing in their garden. Queenslanders are always talking about the price of bananas. Because they grow everywhere in Queensland, people expect to buy them cheaply. Over the last few years, however, drought, floods and a hurricane have done a lot of damage to the farmers' crops so bananas are more expensive in Australia than they are in the UK at the moment. It takes a few years for a banana tree to grow big enough to bear fruit and once the bananas appear, the tree dies back so it's going to take a few years for the price of bananas to come back down. The banana farmers are "doing it tough". That's Australian for "having a hard time". 


Next I'm going to show you an Aussie icon. Australians get all sentimental about these and are also very proud of them because they were invented in Australia by a man called Lance Hill and they are made in Australia and used every day. Here I am sitting in front of the famous trade mark:

I bet you can't wait to see what it is!

What do you mean it's just a washing line? That's a Hill's Hoist! Australian's get a bit fed up of being told that everything good comes from the Old Country (i.e. the UK) so when they have something that is invented and made in Australia they are very proud of it. 


Now I didn't expect to find one of these in an Australian garden:

Mrs P's sister got it as a Christmas present from her husband. He sometimes finds it hard to find something that will be a real surprise but she really wasn't expecting this!


I didn't expect to find a mermaid beside the pool either.

She was made by Mrs P's sister who makes lots of pottery. Can you see the railings around the pool? Every pool in Australia has to have railings and a lockable gate so that small children can't fall in. Lot's of people in Australia have pools because the weather is so hot. When our plane landed in Brisbane you could see all the pools twinkling in the sunshine as we came down to land. 


Here are some more strange pottery creatures: 

This is a baby crocodile coming out of the egg. 


This next one shows a puffin with some fish in its mouth and some towers on top og hills. 

If you are interested in re-cycling, have a closer look at the floor boards on the verandah. They are made out of re-cycled plastic milk bottles. 


Here's a view of the front of the house. Can you see all the blinds in front of the windows? They are to keep the sun out of the house. There are two little things that look like chimney pots on top of the roof. They have fans inside them that suck the hot air out of the house. 

The other thing you will notice on top of the roof are the solar panels. These produce electricity that can be used in the house. Any spare electricity can be sold back to the grid. The government is giving everyone grants to install these. 

I found this bike as I was rummaging around the garden so that's it for now. I'm off for a bike ride. Hooroo!


There are some more pictures of Queenslander houses here