On-site location work at Plants Whitsunday

After working at the nursery for 2 weeks in retail and wholesale, I volunteered to go out on location at the company Christmas party. With that - the guys who go out on location didn't realize that my Dad had taught me how to garden, dig, shovel, use a wheel barrel, electric screw gun and handle tools. (Thanks Daddy!) So many of them were sceptical of me sticking out working in the direct sun in what feels to be 99% humidity, and not complain about it.

I sure showed them :) With a smile on my face we arrived at our location in Proserpine, Australia, not 20 minutes away from the nursery. With "Utes" (what the Aussies call Utility Trucks) loaded and work starting at 7:00am, you can already feel the heat. Mind you it takes 12 minutes to burn in the Whitsundays, so when you see Aussies apply sunscreen 4 times a day, any other gringo, or Caucasian should apply double the amount of sunscreen. And thats what I did. Lathered up and ready to go, here is our site. Nearly 200 plants total to be planted, irrigated, and mulched the next day. Here are some pics:

Here is a quarter of the site, mounds piled and holes dug, we were unloading all of the plants out of the truck.



This is another half of the property, plants are now in their designated areas, and there are more along the back fence too. You will see some boards in the bottom left of the picture as well, those are for day two when we mulch!

I shall also mention that, around this time of unloading some of the trucks I had my second Kangaroo sighting here. Along the back fence, it came hoping along at what seemed to be lighting fast. It stoped in its tracks again to get its barings, and as soon as I went for my camera, it was gone again. Working with three born Aussies on site, none of them had ever seen a Kangaroo in this city, nor had they seen one in general in a small town setting. It was a 'in the right spot at the right time' kind of moments.


The first break is Smo-Co, which means a smoke and a coffee. That is 3 hours into your work day, you get a small break for a snack, smoke and a coffee. Leaving out the smoke and coffee I had some fruit and got back to work, but Matt and Sam felt it a good time to take a little sit back in the shade.






After break its back to work, here we are planting.




After all the plants are in the ground, we did irrigation. Every plant has to have water especially in this heat and watered nearly 4 times daily. With that runs a major irrigation line, then you have to create alternate lines to reach each plant.




While testing the irrigation lines I had the priveledge to give all the plants a little drink in my wide brimmed hat and loaned purple boots!


Day two after all the plants are in the ground, heaps of mulch were brought in, thousands of pounds worth and we had to spread it all. Notice here the boards are also up now around the plant islands to hold in the mulch as well.




And at the end of day two, a well finished product, greenery and mulched... the guys were proud to have me as part of the team.



They even asked if I wanted to join in the next day laying 300 square meeters of sod. I accepted.