Highlights From Our First 3 Presentations

Wow, what a whirlwind the past 10 days has been! We're now in the city of Warrnambool and just finished delivering our third PowerPoint presentation about forest management in BC and northwest Washington. I thought I'd share some highlights from our experiences in delivering these presentations:

Presentation #1
City: Geelong
# of Rotary Clubs in Geelong: 9
# people attending our presentation: 100+
Location: Ballroom of a heritage building

This was our first presentation and everything went quite well. The District Governor was in attendance and complimented us on a job well done. Everyone was quite impressed at how professional our presentation was! Our hard work paid off. (We had met over 5 weekends as a team throughout this past winter to put this presentation together). I enjoyed the Q & A period that followed our presentation as we each took turns answering various questions.

Presentation #2
City: Colac
# of Rotary Clubs in Colac: 2
# of people attending our presentation: 70
Location: Dining hall of a hotel restaurant

Our second presentation was delivered during a very hot evening (it was 34 degrees C at 5 pm that day). Dave and Ben were pretty hot in their suits and ties (hot like temperature hot, although they did look pretty sharp). During the Q & A period, one Rotarian stood up and asked if I knew how many teats a cow moose has! Since I've only ever hunted bull moose, I really didn't know! It's now my mission to find out and let him know. (I had brushed up on some of my Canadian trivia before embarking on this trip and I can tell you this wasn't one of the facts I encountered!)

Presentation #3
City: Warrnambool
# of Rotary Clubs in Warrnambool: 4
# of people attending our presentation: 30+
Location: Art Gallery

We delivered our third presentation tonight in the open hall of an art gallery. To our surprise, surrounding us as we delivered our presentation were large paintings of nude people! (a little awkward!). Every day is a new adventure here for us!

It was during the Q & A of tonight's presentation that I started to realize some common trends in the questions that Australians are asking our GSE forestry team. These questions are on the following topics:

• Mountain Pine Beetle
• Fire Management- incidence of fire in our forests and the politics around fire management.
• Forest Land Base- questions about who owns our forests and the challenges of managing for all users (preservation, conservation, industrial uses).
• Aboriginal Peoples- cultural considerations.
• Old Growth- questions about the age of our OG and where it grows (public vs. private land).
• Silviculture- questions about how exactly we re-establish our forests and the species that we plant.

Well, that's all for now...looks like we deliver our next presentation this upcoming Wednesday. According to our schedule, by then we will have toured the Penshurst CFA fire centre, a Warrnambool timber facility, Preston Windows (which uses our very own Western Red Cedar for manufacturing window frames!), the Codrington Wind Farm, CEMPAC timber processors, Heywood timber facility and associated forests! We're covering a lot of ground on this tour! It's been phenomenal!

PS- We made the Colac Herald newspaper! During a tour of AKD Softwoods' Mill in Colac, a photographer and reporter photographed and interviewed us about our group study exchange and then published our photo and story in their newspaper!

All the best until my next opportunity to post,
~Jill