80,000 trees~

Kangaroo Island Nationally Threatend Plant Project has called upon volunteers to help in their program of planting 80,000 trees.. yes.. eighty-thousand trees on that island in 3 days. 1st i must note here.. THIS IS NOT A RECORD BREAKING PROJECT unlike some countries... making big events for a public stunt *ahem* *ahem*

small little welcome sign greet us on arival of planting ground

the land where 80,000 trees will grow

this project is divided into 3 days and involves about 200 people with 150 volunteers from my uni. my friends and i joined the 1st day as the 1st 50 volunteers to start off with the project. The plan was to re-establish threatend plant species in Kangaroo Island(KI).

the baby plants ready in the tray

single tray, each tray contains 50 smaller potted plants

We started our planting sessions early in the morning at 9.30 and it ends at 4.30 in the evening. and the plan was to plant about one third of 80000 plants. 50 of us is devided into groups of six and was led to a plot of empty land devided into 4 rows. each about 100m X 3m big.

lining up for our lunch.

clear blue sky, people in action

each row we will have to plant about 200 plants of about 20 species randomly to recreate the natural enviroment of the island. in a team of 6, we are devided into jobs of 'making the hole with the planter' , 'placing pots of plants next to the hole', 'planting the plant' and 'collecting the empty pots'. its alot of squarting and bending throuout the day. nevertheless it was fun and enjoyable. they even had a small competition on which group planted the most trees in 10 minutes. our group did 205 trees in 10 minutes pretty fast huh?? apparently 1 of the groups did 300+ in 10 minutes. and nobody belives them.. muahahahhaa

my team in action.. 2 pod, 2 physios', 1 business and 1 engineerin student. the one in orange is our leader.

the empty rows where we plant our plants

the organising commettie was superb!! at every 2 hours we have a break. we had morning tea, and lunch there. and the meals was quite good too given we are in the middle of no where without water and proper kitchen to cook. and during meals, we are given talks about the program and also their koala maintainence in the island. apparently, koalas are afraid of the color yellow.. hahhaa

2 of the many plants we planted

the plants will take about 4 to 6 years to fully grown and only the reall outcome of the program will be seen. although we had planted about 80,000 plants... not all of them will grow. as the law of nature states, survival of the fittest, mayb only half of them will grow as planed. the plants we planted will not be taken care off and nature will take its course on them. it would be nice to go back to the spot in 4 years time to see how our plants grew.

injuries of the day

the sunset bid farewell to us =)

we left the planting ground by 4.30 and leave the rest of the planting to group 2 and 3 for the next 2 days to complete. our team of 50 volunteers manage to plant about twenty something thousand on the day.