Rita's week, and thank god it's over

It’s been a big few weeks at work since Rita returned from her holiday in Port Douglas, with trips to Melbourne and Canberra, and culminating on Wednesday in a massive undertaking which was the end of many months of intensive preparation and organization on Rita’s behalf.

Rita’s professional life involves working alongside industry and employers, as well as schools and colleges. For many years it has been as obvious as the nose on my face (and many other peoples faces too) that there is a huge discrepancy between what young people learn at school, college and uni, and what the REAL world of work actually expects/wants them to do as part of their employment conditions.

In an attempt to try and do some small thing to address this imbalance, and recognizing that one must educate the educators initially, Rita held an Industry Visit for 60 statewide Education Department teachers and Pathway Planners (an alternative name for Career Advisers) on Wednesday to Bruny Island.

I hired a bus, picked them all up in town at 8.00 am, then we departed to Kettering to catch the 9.30 am Bruny Island ferry. At Kettering I issued them with morning tea bags, advised them to buy a coffee and use the toilet at the Mermaid Café, then we boarded the Mirambeena (ferry) for our journey across the Channel to Roberts Point on Bruny. (BTW - the morning tea bags and lunch boxes were made by the magnificent Karen Goodwin-Roberts. She kicks the proverbial arse when it comes to catering for my special clients tummies in my movable feasts, and has just picked up the new Bahai Centre caterer job!)

For a surprising few Hobart dwellers it was their first time visiting Bruny! Our first destination was Get Shucked oysters, where I had previously visited and spoken to Joe, Daniel and Mark. Joe was away on the day, as he’d previously advised me he would be, but he was confident he was leaving me in most capable hands with Daniel and Mark. What an understatement! Daniel, 20 years old, and having only been working there for about 6 months proved he was head and shoulders above most employees I have seen over my years in the employment and training industry. He took the lead role in jumping up onto a deck to address the crowd, and extremely competently and succinctly explained to all these teachers exactly what his day involves; what processes the oysters have to go through to get to your table; what issues the industry generally faces and what his plans for the future are.

He was plainly the overall winner on the day, as the Feedback Sheets I got the teachers to fill out at the end of the day all mentioned him as being one of the highlights of the trip! And he performed under pressure too, as he had previously attended Woodbridge High, and his teacher at Woodbridge was amongst the teachers on the tour and instantly made himself known to Daniel!

We had an oyster tasting there (pictured above with Daniel handing round the oysters), slurping up oysters that had been languishing comfortably in their oyster beds 20 minutes before we arrived! They were delicious! Daniel took orders from all who wanted to take oysters back to town with them, then opened them over the course of the day and kept them in his fridge for us to collect on the way back to the ferry.

Next stop was Nick Haddow’s Bruny Island Cheese Company, where Emma, Ross and Ian performed brilliantly. We separated the large group into 3 then each of those 3 staff members took a group. Emma did the cheese tastings, and sales to those who wanted to buy; Ian explained the intricacies of cheesemaking in the cheesemaking room, and Ross manned the woodfired oven, gave them a taste of his fresh bread, and spoke about the industry generally.

Nick arrived just before we departed and helped out with the final cheese sales before we left for our next destination which was Island Fudge or Hiba – Michael Carnes beautiful property on the Adventure Bay road.

This was also a fantastic stop. Michael spoke to all in an honest and straightforward way about industry, small business, getting started up, niche markets, achieving greatness, working out of an island such as Bruny, and many other topics, then we had a fudge tasting. Naturally I had to drag them all kicking and screaming out of the Fudge Shop so we could have our allocated one hour lunch break, which we had in style at the private home of my CEO who very kindly allowed us use of this magnificent “shack”. (Little does she realize she now has many new best friends who all want an invitation for a weekend at the “shack” on Bruny!)

Our final venue was Bruny Island Wines, where Bernice and Richard entertained us with factual and humourous explantions of their business and industry. Unfortunately we were a bit pushed for time by then, as I was mindful that we needed to get back to the ferry terminal in time to catch the 4.30 ferry back to Kettering, plus collect the oysters from Get Shucked on the way, so hurried along the wine tastings and hassled them out of there reasonably quickly. I personally could have quite happily spent another hour or two there.

We made it to the ferry and had a lovely late afternoon trip across the Channel to return to the real world.

All present on my trip came away overwhelmed: at the innovative-ness of all 4 totally different businesses; at the amount of opportunities there are if you care to look around; at the way people tackle different issues in order to make a buck.

The over-riding thing that struck me, and everyone else, was the passion all these people put into what they do. It came across loud and clear in their words, and the way they approached life. And I think it goes a long way towards carrying them to their ultimate aim of conducting a successful business.

It was a great day, and achieved what I set out to do – showing the teachers what life in these industries and areas is like, and what the students they teach could go on to if they wanted.