We found Cape Tribulation in January 1986 on our journey from Melbourne to Darwin to take up teaching positions in the Northern Territory, and fell in love with the place, especially the rainforest, the isolation and the warm climate. The variety of fruit was amazing - fruit we had never heard of - and which tasted so different to the traditional apples and oranges.

In 1988 we came back to spend a week camping at Cape Tribulation before setting off to travel the world for several years. It was even better than we remembered it from two years before.

But this time, there was land for sale - abandoned grazing land which had been cleared of rainforest in the 1960s - and we had money saved from two years of teaching in the Northern Territory - money intended for world travel. We looked at the land, and in five minutes we decided to stay,and have now established an orchard and made our life at Cape Tribulation.

Over the last 10 years, we have collected seed from around the world and planted an exotic tropical fruit orchard at Cape Tribulation, with more than 100 different species and over 2000 fruit trees from the Amazon, South East Asia, and the Caribbean.

We have chosen to set up an organic farm and apply the philosophy of permaculture to Cape Trib Exotic Fruit Farm. We needed to develop a system which copied the rainforest and provided a supply of nutrients to the orchard trees in rotting material and vegetative matter. To this end large numbers of legume trees, bananas and legume ground covers were planted through the orchard to creat a food forest, and provide a nitrogen supply for the plants.

In 1996, as our trees started to produce enough quanitities of fruit we decided to offer an exotic fruit tasting to visitors who were interested in unusual fruit and permaculture. Hundreds of visitors from around the world have arrived on our doorstep at Cape Tribulation, and we have enjoyed watching them discover for themselves the delights of eating exotic tropical fruit. You can read some the comments from visitors in our guestbook.

After spending 18 months overseas travelling and working - Digby had a contract with the UN working in Samoa with the Ministry for Agriculture - we returned to Cape Tribulation full of renewed energy and opened our Bed and Breakfast accommodation in October 2001. Now we are able to offer the kind of hospitality that we experienced and enjoyed in Bed and Breakfasts in Ireland and France - where you arrive as a guest and leave as a friend.

Whenever we go away on holiday we return to Cape Tribulation with greater appreciation of the place and how lucky we are to be able to live here.

We have two Rottweilers - Mia and Kim, who get to visit the beach every day - two of the luckiest dogs in the world.The photo shows Alison with Mia as a puppy. Alison is also the web designer for this site