Our New Home in Far North Queensland

Our neighbours are Chinese (Singapore & Shanghai (VERY traditional Chinese with their small gods etc) and Malaysian Chinese,Japanese,Papua New Guinean, and one Australian, me, and one English person on the third floor here). The Papua New Guineans have 6 children and are always cooking.

Our guests include a very cute small flying fox we named Xiao Fu: this is a lucky symbol in China...although I did scare him off with the masonry hammer drill; still we hope for his return to our balcony.

The 4 Curlew couples are lovely birds indeed calling out 'curlew curlew' at night, and scoot around at dawn and dusk in their noble life-long pairings, with their big eyes and fearsome self-respect.
The brown snake has come from the creek next door I expect, and has been accidently run over a few times now by folk in 4 wheel drives...and is at the moment 'spitting venom' about downstairs. I left him there in case the New Guinean kids want to play with him.

This complex was an interesting experiment in Chinese-type high-density living on a small scale in about 2008, before the big financial crash. Those who bought in early, all Australians, can't really afford to leave as the prices dropped $100,000 overnight.

There's spaces of really nice nature, huge towering old figs and jungly parts between the buildings, (the curlews love this) and the neighboring houses have great massive trees as well, which, from the 3rd floor here in the treetops provide a great outlook East all the way to Yarrabah mountains which we have re-named Wang Mountains.

In terms of Feng Shui, it's a brilliant little revolutionary 'uprising' of high density living on a pure North-South Chinese basis. The apartments are spacious and basically new. Good quality inside, and, in the Chinese tradition, a bit daggy outside so as not to promote envy and thieves. Everyone puts there washing up on lines on the balcony, as is the Asian tradition, and it is exceptionally inexpensive compared with clothes-driers. It is very similar to China high density living now, in design and pattern, although the complexes in China go straight up for 30 floors rather than 4. The prices here and in China in a regional small city for a place much the same are much the same now.

Being a two minute walk to the best Asian shops in Cairns, and with a very large super-market complex next door, it is amazingly quiet at night. So remarkably peaceful. Silent. Who ever designed it all did a great job; as I guess it was designed for some elite folks. Fortunately, due to the Crash of 2008, we live here now.

Cheers from here, looking out at Wang Mountain, Far North Queensland.
John