Alpinia caerulea – NATIVE GINGER – All parts of this plant are edible, raw or cooked. The pulp of the blue fruit is pleasantly acid and the seed is ginger flavoured. Aborigines wrapped the leaves around meat to be cooked in an earthern oven. The young root tips are gingery and tender.


Ginger is a cane-like shrub with large glossy leaves, common in rainforests . Produces bright blue grape-sized fruits, which when cracked open reveal a mass of dark seeds surrounded by a white pulp which is similar in taste to ginger. The whole fruit (minus the outer coating) is placed in the mouth and sucked before spitting out the seeds. Native ginger was so popular with aboriginals that it is said that the seeds spat out along the trails would mark the trails for future use.



CANDLE NUT - we discovered that the fruit raining down at our rental is probably candle nut, so named because the seeds are so full of oil that they can be stacked and burned to provide illumination. The candlenuts continue to rain down especially when the winds start blowing.




Cockatoo hissy fits - cockatoos can throw a hissy fit with the best of them. A young cockatoo beaked out of the feeder by an older one proceeded to scream and squawk as it flew to a nearby branch where it continued screaming while raising its crest, flapping it wings and hanging upside down on the branch. Quite the show, I didn't know if I should send it to its room or applaud