to the end of the Wet Season 2000 Edition of the Sanctuary nEws letter. We hope everybody had a great time at the start of the new millenium (or the final year of the old one depending on your mathematical point of view) and we include a couple of images of the evening here at Sanctuary.

Unfortunately none of the spectacular sunrise on January 1 since there were not enough steady hands to hold a camera straight at the time. Well not Pauls anyway...

Sanctuary was recently awarded advanced ecotourism accreditation by the Australian National Ecotourism Accreditation Program (NEAP).

This program was set up by the Australian government and the Australian Ecotourism Association so as to identify genuine ecotourism operations, that observe the three principles of ecotourism (operate in a natural setting, conserve the natural resource and provide interpretative information), from others that are cashing in the eco name.

Sanctuary achieved advanced status through innovative land use and conservation of rainforest and cassowary habitat.

The monsoon season seems to have finally finished and has been another year of above average rainfall. Our friends the White Lipped Giant Green Tree Frogs (Litoria infrafrenata) like the one on the right have started to leave us and seek moister places. At one stage we had up to 6 inside the main building during particuarly wet periods. Funnily enough, these frogs prefer to be out of the rain when they can (good weather for ducks is not necessarily good for frogs) and they chose the strangest locations to hang out.

For those of you who saw the male Cassowary with the two chicks around November - December last year, the three are now two (we are not sure what happened to the other chick) and as you can see from the photo they are really beginning to make Sanctuary their home.

The chick is now about 6 months old and has lost the stripy brown and yellow down it had when it hatched and sports a uniform brown plumage. Cassowaries have different feathers to most other birds in that each feather consists of two shafts with very little down (a bit like hair really) which allows the bird to move through the rainforest without getting entangled.

From about 12 months old, the chicks plumage will gradually turn black with full adult plumage aquired at about 3 years of age.

The chick has started to develop an obvious wattle (the two pieces of loose skin hanging from the neck) which will shortly develop a bright red colour with the neck turning bright blue. The casque (helmut like growth on the top of the head) won't begin to grow until the chick is about 2 years old.

Mating season is approaching from around June to August and if the male mates again, then he will chase the chick away so he can raise a new family. If not, the chick will probably stay with him until next year. We'll keep you in touch......

was a fabulous time for us here at Sanctuary. It was the people that came (too many to list - or should we? ) made it a very special first Christmas.We had a huge tree with decorations made entirely by our creative guests .They were fantastic and if any of you are Christmasing at Sanctuary this year you will see them proudly grace the tree again . Hopefully with any additions made by our next Christmas guests. But too early to organise Christmas yet...

So Christmas was as it should be ..filled with friends , good food and great cocktails..thanks to Gerd for the fabulous food and Jon and Carla (now sadly missed) for the many wonderful mango cocktails they concocted.

This year we are thinking of keeping the Christmas eve cocktail party but changing lunch to a gourmet Aussie style BBQ, with marinated seafoods and meats, salads and breads etc.. and having the feasting and drinking go through the afternoon with time to lay in the hammocks or swim in the pool in between the eating and drinking.

with a theme of "unique and unusual" was... great fun and wonderful to see the creativity again as our guests made their wonderful costumes.

We voted our Dutch guests, sisters Irene and Betty, as having the best costumes as millenium bugs, although forgot to give them their winning bottle of champagne (actually I think Paul drank it) so when we see you girls next - we owe you one!

It was a great place to see the turn of the century and many of our guests stayed up to watch the sunrise from the verandah.

For those who live in the UK, then make sure to catch "Nick's Quest", a National Geographic documentary series to be shown on Channel 5 later this year.

Sanctuary was the location for the Cassowary episode where Nick Baker in his quest for seeing a Cassowary also managed to spot a lot of other creatures in and around Sanctuary including, of course, our friend who was sleeping behind the bar.

Whilst the film crew could only stay for 3 days, they managed to get some great footage of not only the male and the chick but the elusive female cassowary (more than likely the mother of the chick) who very rarely stays long enough to even get a photograph of her. The crew managed to get about 40 minutes of footage down by following her into the forest where she felt comforable enough to tolerate their presence for a remarkably long time. The lighting through the forest canopy was magical and from the rushes we saw that night, should make some "must see TV". Hopefully programs like this will raise the public profile of the Cassowary and help with the conservation efforts of the species.

It's a sobering thought that only 100 years ago, Cassowaries numbered in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands and now there are estimated to be less than a thousand left in Australia. Their decline is due almost soley to rainforest clearing for agricultural and residential use. Your support of commercial ventures like Sanctuary which preserve the rainforest for cassowary habitat is a significant first step in conserving a species that is in real danger of disappearing forever and soon.

And that's about it for this edition of the Sanctuary nEws letter. In our next edition we hope to tell you of our birthing experience at Sanctuary (expecting to be at the end of June) and the initial infant bus driver training. (More likely to be about the trials and tribulations of nappy folding for the father) As well as the sexual exploits of the male Cassowary and whether the chick stays with his father for another year or makes way for another brood of young Cassowary chicks.

Don't forget that fabulous prizes are on offer for the best picture e-mailed in for publication in the Sanctuary nEws letter. Arnaud of Belgium won the last editions prize for his brooding shot of the full moon rising. (We need your postal address and T-shirt size please Arnaud.)

We hope to see you all again sometime here at Sanctuary or at least your best friends. In the meantime (and we're not just saying this) we really do like to hear from you, so e-mail and tell us what is happening for you in the world outside Sanctuary.

Till next time - Paul & Susan