A Message from Cameron Wickes the winner of the Simplot trip to the USA GIS show in February 2011 in Orlanado

March 21, 2011

On Saturday Feb 5th I left Melbourne in the middle of a torrential down pour. My travelling companions Matt Scott and Ash Duncan from Simplot Partners and I flew to Sydney and arrived late morning to 40°temperatures. We then flew to San Francisco where it was about 10am and perfect blue skies and about 20°. It was the beginning of a week of great weather, great experiences and great fun. We spent 3 days in San Francisco, one of those days was spent visiting the Simplot fertiliser plant. We were given a guided tour of the entire plant. It was an impressive place and very interesting from an end user point of view. In the end, price and results interested me most but at least now i know how it is made and where it comes from. We left San Francisco having visited Alcatraz , ridden cable cars and shopped, on to Orlando.

The turf show was apparently small but from my point of view it was huge. 2 days were barely enough. The range of fertilisers, chemicals and machinery was mind boggling. The Toro stand had a second story office! I met some very interesting people and had some very interesting and informative conversations with turf industry people from all over the world. I hope to put some of this knowledge to use now I am back in Bright.

We visited Bay Hill Golf Club and spoke with one of the staff who gave us an insight into maintaining a PGA tour course. The things I could do with 35 staff and 3 million dollar budget.... We visited the Kennedy space centre, Sea World and watched Orlando Magic play basketball at the new Amway stadium.

I cant thank Simplot proline enough for taking me over there and paying for absolutely everything apart from the 3 suitcases full of souvenirs and shopping.

To Matt and Ash, thanks, you were fantastic company, and to Simplot and all their fantastic people I cant speak highly enough about the way I was treated.

Rest assured, I'll be first in the draw for las Vegas next year. You never know...

Cameron Wickes Superintendant Bright Golf Club

.