Another technical fault was revealed in the Camera Traps – March 2020 and yet the month captured 70-cassowary images, 264-feral pigs and 10-dingoes in total.  Cassowary sightings fell by 48 from February’s sightings, whilst feral pigs increased by 84 and dingoes by 7.  All surviving cassowary chicks from last month’s observations were accounted for.

March has certainly been an interesting month.  Quite apart from the variations in numbers of cassowaries, feral-pigs and dingoes, Australia has gone into a COVID-19 travel lock-down, leaving communities like Daintree Rainforest without economic viability.  At the same time, opportunities that might otherwise have been implausible for the requirements of tourism, become opportune.

The somewhat distorted view of our kitchen (below) reveals a timber kitchen bench on the right, sourced from Bruce Rutherfurd Cabinetmaking, in Federation Street, Bungalow.  Bruce acquired the slab from a centennial Burdekin Plum – Pleiogynium timoriense, with the State Government’s sale of the Cairns Lake Street Primary School for re-development into the Cairns Oasis Resort.  It retains a pleasing history, that for over a century, Cairns kids climbed the tree that now serves as our kitchen bench.

In the very earliest part of our company’s development, I consulted with a Cairns Orthopaedic Surgeon, for the long-term planning of a degenerative knee disorder.  Robert Pozzi, as it turned out, owned a holiday property at Cape Tribulation and it gave me some sense of reassurance, that his prognosis of a total knee-replacement within about 15-years, would be most diligently supported by a neighbouring surgeon.  Hanging above the Acacia Red Cedar – Paraserianthes toona work-station, on the left-hand-side of the kitchen, is a utensil module, whose crafting from a Lychee Tree off our property, led to a greater surgical familiarity with Dr.Pozzi, when the orbital chisel got away from me and ran across the top of my left index finger.  

The table-top timber was purchased from Bruce Rutherfurd, along with the aforementioned Burdekin Plum.  Perhaps ten-years-ago, we required some high quality picnic tables for seating up to twenty adults.  Bruce Rutherfurd was commissioned and swiftly produced two magnificent 3.6-metre-long Acacia Red Cedar picnic tables.  Now, with the travel lock-down and other diminishing factors, these picnic-tables have become redundant and yet their cabinet-wood remains valuable.

So, in an absence of tourism, I have called upon Rob Pozzi to perform the knee-replacement surgery and Bruce Rutherfurd to re-construct the picnic tables into a kitchen hutch.  Now, as I work through the hardship of surgical recovery, I am encouraged on a daily basis by the re-constructed splendour of such a valuable asset occupying pride-of-place within our kitchen and hope that my re-constructed knee restores a similar recovery into my future walking and income-earning potential.