Katherine River, Northern Territory.

Please check your 'spam box', I think many of my comments I've made on your blogs have gone there....I check mine spam everyday before I answer my comments, seems a few are going in there still.  

Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia is a sweet town in the outback.  The town is next to the Katherine River 320km South of Darwin at the top of Australia.  The town is known as when the outback meets the tropics.

The first people to live there were of course the Aboriginals, and more history is here.

There are still Aboriginals there, some live near the town.  Each time we have stayed in Katherine I've seen the Native people sitting on a small bank with a cooked chicken they bought from the shop, the chicken sitting in the sun and that's for hours, then they eat it without ill effect.  

In the winters when we have been there it can be hot weather and cooler nights.  The town is kept clean, and the river area also. 

In one area of the Katherine River is sand and shady trees but the people don't swim because you just might happen to see a crocodile, also you have to look where you are treading due to same on land.

Tea grown in Australia!

 Malanda, Queensland, Australia is up in the Tablelands inland from Cairns, and much cooler weather wise. It's a beautiful drive up that way.  We came across a Tea plantation called Nerada Tea so we stopped and had a look around, most enjoyable and we bought some tea which I always drank until I decided to have a change.

Interesting - the plantation is not irrigated relying on water from the sky.  These days the plantation is the largest in Australia.

On the Nerada Tea plantation, plants are grown predominantly to make black tea. It takes about 8 years from planting for the Camellia sinensis to reach its full harvest potential. Only the tender new growth (two leaves and a bud) are harvested to make tea. Due to Australia's strict quarantine laws the tea bush has no natural pests in Australia and hence no pesticides are used in cultivation.

The history of Nerada Tea is here, and I believe that these days the tea room is permanently closed. When we visited it wasn't.

One paddock of tea and an old shed below.

The tea leaves

The tea rooms are no more. The map with the read around Malanda the tea plantation is somewhere within that area