Conference Field Trip - 29 May 2010

By Bronwyn Rowse

The first visit was to the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre, where we were split into smaller groups and given a wonderful guided tour by a collection of men who are passionate about vintage aircraft. The museum is a collection of aircraft (many of them are still airworthy, and fly for display days and for fun) and memorabilia from famous aviators from both sides of the great war mostly collected by and belonging to Peter Jackson. The amazing static displays built by Weta Workshops are set up to portray cameo moments from World War One and to tell stories of wartime adventures.

We moved to Morgans Road nursery and were treated to more food and a free walk around. The nursery grows mostly revegetation plants and is working well with conservation species. The nursery is irrigated by a flooded bed system.

We then went to Ormonds Grape nursery and were shown a video about their operation, which produces grape plants for new and replacement plantings.

They talked about the problems of over-production in the wine industry and said that they expected a downturn in 2009 and reduced their production by 50% but the down turn was actually 90%. They have diversified into owning production vineyards and into machinery for vineyard management eg. pruning.