Drysdale initiative

Upfront I admit to bias in favour of Anne Ripper's Drysdale initiative of going to our regional areas and value adding to their education and training.

Anne has already covered the West coast and is now 'doing' the East coast of Tassie. She has gone to these areas; visited and spoken with all the local employers in the hospitality and tourism-related industries then organised relevant training to be delivered up there, without them having to troll into Hobart and do formal Drysdale classes.

My son, who works at a couple of restaurants in Swansea, went today on one of Anne's pre-planned tours for local hospitality employees. Accompanied by a tour guide, about 8 people who work in various establishments in Swansea were picked up in the mini-bus and taken on a tour of the following places:
*Freycinet Marine Farm - where those who wanted to got to sample the freshest oysters ever, as well as mussels, plus fresh crayfish (which he says are dropped off daily by a woman who works at Freycinet Lodge and whose husband is a cray fisherman out of Bicheno). Son says he's never seen a guy so passionate about his product as the guy at the oyster farm. At $8.50 per dozen, son pigged out bigtime! There's a boy who LOVES his oysters!
*Freycinet Lodge for coffee, and a quick squizz at their menu, to see what the competitors offer!
*Lighthouse at Coles Bay to look at the view
*A Coles Bay B&B for a meeting with local entrepreneurial types to speak about their ventures - kayak hire, fishing boat hire, water taxi, vineyard tours, gourmet dinner provision etc. All these people gave the tour information about their products and offered them the chance at any time to return to Coles Bay and experience for themselves some of these products.
They then fed them with locally smoked ocean trout, ham, organic salad etc for lunch.
*Bicheno - glass bottom boat tour - it was too rough today apparently for the boat to go out, but operator told them what he does with his tourists, and what they see when he takes them out. Son reckons at $15 per adult, it'd be great value.
*Lastly to the Bicheno Wildlife Park - where they had the usual suspects like Tassie Devils, koalas, tiger snakes, roos, wallabies feeding from your hand, wombats, wedge-tailed eagles (sick ones), emus etc.

Son says he has at least 2 parties (of 4 people) of oldies per day coming into one of his workplaces wanting to know where they, as older people, can do a walk in the local wilderness area where they don't have to walk too far (as you do in the Wineglass Bay walk). Well - today has solved that problem for him. He will now tell them all that they can drive into Coles Bay, get the water taxi to drop them off in Half Moon Bay, then they just have a gentle walk of roughly 20 minutes to Wineglass, from where the water taxi will collect them.

Don't you think that's a brilliant idea for the mountain (Drysdale) to go to Mohammed, rather than Mohammed having to go to the mountain? Todays tour was the start this localised training, with coffee making, food handling etc yet to come for locals in the industry.

My son has worked up there nearly a year, and not moved out of his Swansea comfort zone to venture to Coles Bay or Bicheno. Now not only has he been there, but he's had a wealth of interesting and relevant information shoved down his throat - for which he is truly grateful.

This topical and useful training experience they had today will be good for all of us down the track. The more informed and knowledgeable our hospitality workers are, the better service they're offering their customers. Then as a state, it reflects back well on us.

Good one, Anne.