Have you checked out the many exchanges forums here? Dave

I was just playing around. Here is a recipe I cook at home. Beef fillet steak with mountain pepper sauce. Grind in a mortar and pestle about 6 large dried mountain pepper leaves with half a teaspoon of sea salt. Crush 3 cloves of garlic and rub the garlic and a little olive oil into 4 premium fillet steaks. Sprinkle the mountain pepper leaf and salt mixture liberally over the steaks and rub in by hand. Cover the meat and allow to sit at room temperature for the flavours to infuse. Slice potato and sweet potato into rounds about 5 mm thick. Partially boil them in salted water making sure they are just still firm. Thinly slice an onion into whole rounds. Layer the potato, sweet potato and onion into an oiled baking dish. Pour half a cup of cream over the potatoes, season with pepper and a little freshly grated nutmeg. Pop into a hot oven (fan forced if available) until brown on top. Add a tablespoon of butter to a hot pan and fry the steaks for around 2 minutes each side, cook them to your liking but DO NOT OVER COOK. They should feel firm by still springy when pressed with a fork. Remove the steaks from the pan and allow to rest briefly whilst preparing the sauce. Add a good swig of red wine to the pan to deglaze, remove from the heat. In a mortar and pestle grind a teaspoon of mountain pepper berries and 4 or 5 dried bush tomatoes (Solanum centrale). Add this to the wine in the pan together with a tablespoon of honey, a knob of butter and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Simmer briefly, transfer the steaks back into the oven to reheat (pour any juices into the sauce pan). Cut a triangular section of the potato bake and place in the centre of a PREHEATED plate. Slice the fillet steaks almost all the way through in strips creating a fan shape. Arrange on top of the potatoes (work fast or it'll go cold). Simmer the sauce to reheat and pour through a sieve over the meat and drizzle a little around the plate for effect. Serve immediately.

Luke, its a Tristaniopsis laurina (Myrtaceae). Strictly a riparian species. It is basically the Xanthostemon of the southern rainforest riparian niche. In the Wet Tropics we have Tristaniopsis exiliflora which is a close relative of T.laurina. Can be grown readily by seed and can be established away from water. You guys down there also have Tristaniopsis collina which grows at higher elevation and often is association with temperate rainforest (at least in the Tweed area). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristaniopsis regards Kris

The limestone adds an interesting challenge, as far as we Eastern Australians are concerned. What is your pH? Your temperature extremes, of course, are unremarkable to plants of the inland here. However, the rainfall is also a big factor. You may get too much of it, for many of our inland plants. How much do you get, and which is the rainy part of your year? Trish