Utchee Creek Farm

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Utchee Creek Farm We came to retire to a 10 acre papaya farm in the Wet Tropics Dec 2021. Join our journey of sweat, learning and friendships.

Weeds quickly became our biggest challenge, so we embarked on converting the farm to food production and rainforest regeneration.

Both flowering now, Syzygium wilsonii and Syzygium Cascade, the latter being a cross between S wilsonii and S leuhmannii...
13/10/2026

Both flowering now, Syzygium wilsonii and Syzygium Cascade, the latter being a cross between S wilsonii and S leuhmannii.

S wilsonii aka powder puff lilly pilly is the smaller plant, pretty gangly unless trimmed, with longer leaves. But wow, what a beautiful dark pink flower !

Syzygium Cascade has the lighter coloured flowers and small leaves. Also stunning in bloom.

Interestingly I've had nearly 100% propagation success of seeds from last year's Syzygium Cascade which makes me very curious as to what colour flower they'll have. Typically seed-grown offspring of hybrids will throw back to one or the other of the parent plants.

06/10/2026

Old mate scrub turkey is back trying to work out how to get at the ripe paw paws.

03/10/2026

Rhyparida beetle aka swarming leaf beetle - the #1 scourge to growing certain plants in this area including avocado, cacao, Davidson plum, lychee, Illawarra flame tree and native peanut tree (Sterculia quadrifida).

30/09/2026

Scrub turkey (Alectura lathami) feeding on bleeding heart (Homalanthus populifolius) flowers and immature fruit.

Happy to report the theory seems to have worked, although I won't get any prizes for precision design.. Still, it looks ...
13/09/2026

Happy to report the theory seems to have worked, although I won't get any prizes for precision design.. Still, it looks like it'll hold the netting that I've got, which I'll put up in another couple of weeks, when the fruit are larger.

13/09/2026

It looked easier in the pictures...

Trying to build a frame for netting to cover the lychees.

06/09/2026

Finally got around to getting rid of the golden cane palms growing at the front. Cut with chainsaw to around 1' from the ground and immediately sprayed the stumps with a strong glyphosate mix. I'll eventually build the garden bed up again with organic matter and plant out low growing natives and food plants, like pineapples. Plenty of epiphytes also turn up naturally in the area.

06/09/2026

The mulberries are on !

06/09/2026

Had a visit from this metallic starling earlier today (Aplornis metallica). Knocked itself out flying into a glass door. These birds migrate to here from New Guinea every year, arriving around August to nest and breed, departing again around March. They make distinctive hanging nests and are
nearly always in groups, making a distinctive whooshing sound as they fly around together. This one looked to have made a complete recovery.

23/08/2026

I was collecting some native raspberries for a smoothie and got distracted by the insect action on a flowering powder puff lilly pilly. As you do..đŸ˜„

Address

Utchee Creek Road
Utchee Creek, QLD
4871

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