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Work starts at quarter to seven. I rock up to the depot and get the tools for the day.
Got oars for the boat.
The work we do depends on the season; basically, we
protect parkland from the effects of weeds and people.
We do path maintenance, we pick up rubbish in the dunes and reserves. But
now it’s summer, and we’re doing a lot of hand-weeding and spraying.
Yeah, Collingwood are playing West Coast this weekend up in Darwin. Oh, right.
So where’s this tyco we’ve got to cut?
Because of the bush, you can’t see where you’re cutting, so you have
to walk it through before you cut it and clear the dangerous stuff.
It’s terrible how much rubbish I find. Syringes, glass, bottles
and the rubbish from the drains that go into our lakes.
In the field, we’ve got three or four other full-time people, who I work with.
There’s your safety gear, Tiff.
You have to look at a job and work out what equipment you’ll need.
A weed is anything not endemic to an area which would take over the native vegetation.
If we can deal with the weeds the vegetation will come back.
If you let weeds grow then they’ll just take over and we’ll lose the bushland.
Then ferrel animals would come in and start taking out the wildlife.
Oh no! Russ, come and have a look at this, mate.
What have you got there, Laura? Jack pepper.
Then there are the really bad ones: the declared weeds, which are a really big deal because
we have to report them when we see them and do everything we can to get rid of them.
We’ll have to chop him out now before he sets seed. Yeah, no worries.
2 stroke,
personal safety gear,…
We operate some dangerous machinery.
Brush cutters with big star blades on them and chainsaws, mainly, so safety is important.
That’s all ready to go? Yeah mate. Everyone got their ear plugs?
I’ll just grab the poison for you, Tiff.
Right, Tiffany, let’s go and get that jack pepper.
Straight out of school, I completed Certificate I in land
management and then a six-month Green Core traineeship. I
loved it so much that I did a Diploma in environmental
science at TAFE, then a term of uni before I got this job.
Volunteer work is vital to get a start in this
industry: it’s the first thing employers look for.
People who do this have a passion for plants and nature, and aren’t afraid of hard work.
Hey Tiff? Yeah? Do you know what this is?
Oh yeah that ones ??fleabang?? Yeah? Yeah, it is a weed.
One of the great things about my job is how much there is to know.
You can get some plant names from a book, but you learn heaps more from others on the job.
Then you travel 20km down the road, and all the plants
are different. You never stop learning on this job.
In the near future, I want to move to a new area and learn
some different plants – and maybe become a supervisor.
One day, I’d like to have my own business, consulting about native plants.
Planting is my favourite work, because it’s putting
something back instead of destroying things.
We plant areas to supplement the natural vegetation,
not to replace it, we’re giving nature a kick start.
Every now and again it’s great to come back to a site we planted
a couple of years back and see it’s all come back over time.
This is what I love about this job – I planted this one only three years ago