THE GREAT AUSSIE OPERATOR INVASION OF NEW ZEALAND

1-10 MAY 2008

Contributed by : Jason Whittaker - Works Supervisor Central Water Treatment - (Goulburn Valley Water)

April 30 – 9pm and it’s about time to get packed. What to take…10 days in New Zealand??? Here we go, all my jocks, socks, jeans and tee shirts. Maybe a few jumpers (4 or 5 should do), a couple of coats, beenies, peak cap, a few pairs of shoes (sand shoes x 2, casual shoes x 1, dress shoes x 1). Will I need to get dressed up? Better to be safe, so in goes a couple of dress shirts, trousers and a jacket. Pyjamas?? OK, a couple of pairs of boxer shorts and tee shirts. That should do, chuck in some toiletries and I’m done. Now for hand luggage…. In goes the pass port, itinerary, a pair of work boots, diary, camera, mobile phone, some reading material, thermo mug. Now I’m done and it’s only 9.20pm.

Thursday May 1 – 5.30am and the alarm goes off. Strange song to be playing at this time of the morning….”We’re on a road to nowhere”. What is that supposed to mean? Better hit snooze a couple of times and reassess later. 6.15am now I’ll get up. Time for the four s’s…s#%t, shave, shammy and shampoo. Breakfast and coffee was nice, packed the ute and headed to the Shepparton WTP to meet Darryl and rendezvous with George to bum a ride down to Tullamarine. Arrived at Tullamarine and checked in the luggage, all 25.7kgs of it. Met up with Leo and headed through customs. We all ventured through customs unscathed except for Darryl (thanks to a tip off from George to a female customs officer who required a more detailed inspection of his person and belongings). We then met up with the other guys (Tony from Earth Tech and Craig from Wannon Water) flying out of Melbourne and boarded the A330 bound for the Land of the Long White Cloud.

The flight to Auckland was smooth and uneventful, if not a little noisy at times as Darryl thought he needed to speak loud enough to hear himself while wearing the headphones. Arrived in Auckland at around 4.30pm, collected luggage and attempted to pass through NZ Customs. Again all went smoothly except for Darryl. Somehow he had managed to smuggle a blow fly into the country and during the inspection of his hand held luggage, out it flew. As you could imagine, this gave the NZ Customs Officer quite a surprise as he swatted it away and was heard to say, “what the F&#K was that? Eventually all made it through and we met up with the remaining members of our party (or so we thought), Mal and Glenn from Dubbo, Mark from Gippsland Water and one of our hosts Dave Neru, the Executive Officer of WIOG (Water Industry Operators Group) NZ.

Now, that makes a total of ten, good (actually not so good as we were to find out later). After a couple of NZ ales we found our two transit vans, loaded 300kgs of luggage and 1000kgs of bodies and headed into the city to our hotel. An hour or so later we reached our accommodation and checked in. During check-in the receptionist informed us there was one member unaccounted for. George had counted to 10 OK but he wasn’t meant to include Dave in the total. We’d left Michael from North East Water at the Airport. Now, that makes more sense, 10 Aussies and 1 kiwi. A $64 taxi ride later and Michael joined the party. We set out for dinner in Auckland and soon realised that everywhere we go is uphill. This can’t be right, it seemed like it was uphill going somewhere as well as returning back again. Surely not, that’s impossible isn’t it?

May 2 – 7.30am and we’re off. It’s here we leave Dave as he heads home prior to the conference in Hamilton the following Wednesday. We head back out towards the Airport to the Mangere WWTP. The plant had undergone a $451 million upgrade from a lagoon based system to a BNR process including UV disinfection. The tour was very informative and for a novice in wastewater I was impressed with the processes utilised in treating the effluent of a capital city prior to discharge in the Papakura Channel in the Manukau Harbour, including dealing with the issues of odour and biosolids disposal back to landfill. From the word go it was evident the professionalism, knowledge and ownership the Operators (NZ Technicians) had of their facilities was something that was going to stand out for the remainder of the tour. Following lunch we were introduced to our tour guide for the next 8 days, Gil Miers. Once Gil had the NavMan set up, we were off on the next part of the trip, headed for the Waikato WTP. This was a brand new state-of-the-art 35ML/day Membrane Filtration Plant drawing water from NZ’s largest river, the Waikato and providing fully treated water to supplement Auckland’s supply. Again we saw the knowledge and pride from the operators as they presented their plant and we soon discovered that some of the water and waste water treatment problems present in Australia are similarly faced by operators in NZ (even if a bad turbidity event is 10NTU). We then headed off to Waitomo for the night. After tea at the Caves Motel Restaurant (which took quite some finding) we turned in for an early night before a big day on the road.

May 3 – 9.00am following a restful night we headed to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves for a touristy jaunt through the limestone caves discovered in 1887. Back into the mini vans and we’re off to the Taupo region to inspect the magnificent Huka Falls from Lake Taupo and the start of the Waikato River. The falls discharge anywhere between 32 – 270 kL/sec – amazing sight. As I was a total “Occa” and having no idea of where I was in NZ, while driving around the lake (and after asking some stupid questions), I was quickly informed that the lake foreshore was actually not the NZ coast line, but still, it was big. We also inspected the Wairakei steam fields feeding the Wairakei Geothermal power station. An amazing sight to see steam escaping from fissures on hill and mountain side as well as the miles and miles of stainless steel.

Insert photo – Huka Falls

A road trip to Chateau Tongariro at the base of Mt Ruapehu to start our next tour was a chance to take in some of NZ’s north island mountain scenery. A stop off at the Turangi WWTP to inspect the new membrane plant constructed to replace settling lagoons again showed modern technology employed to treat an age old problem. The journey continued and we kept our eyes glues to the mountain ranges as we had been informed before arriving that Mt Ruapehu was still an active volcano and had just starting to rumble once more. Great! We arrive and headed up the mountain (this is actually where Lord of the Rings was filmed) for a lesson in providing water and waste water services to the Whakapapa Base Area (Chalets and Clubs) at 1700m. Having not seen anything like this, it was hard to comprehend trenching through volcanic rock, flying trenching sand in via helicopter, installing the infrastructure and controlling downhill flows back to the WWTP. To say it was cold up there would be an understatement, but it didn’t seem to concern our guide Warren as he chatted away in his short sleaved shirt and casual jacket. Crazy Kiwis. Following a tour of the WWTP we were back at the magnificent Chateau Tongariro (constructed in 1929) for dinner and our nights accommodation.

Insert photo - Chateau

May 4 – 10.00am and we travel back past Lake Taupo (and a quick stop to visit the Tangariro National Trout Centre) before spending the rest of the day in Rotorua. And yes it really does smell that bad. Fortunately the rain had set in which managed to dampen the odour, but it did restrict the chance to go to any of the more famous tourist attractions. We lunched on the shore of Lake Tarawera and then toured around the city looking at the bubbling mud pools and steam vents coming from the ground (these were everywhere, even in backyards). We finally returned to our Motel for a night of Burger King, Dominoes Pizza and chicken rolls. Mark was quite surprised by getting someone else’s meal from Burger King but was even more impressed by the fact he didn’t understand a word the lady serving him was saying. Admittedly she had a very strong Kiwi accent and in truth she probably didn’t understand him either. (She was very polite however).

May 5 – 9.00am and we tour the Rotorua WWTP (which amazingly is located in the middle of the city … no need to be concerned with odour issues here) and then venture through the pine plantations, mountains and mountain bike tracks to the Rotorua Land Treatment Scheme (Effluent Irrigation to Pine Plantation). Amazingly, mountain bikers and bush walkers are free to roam through this region (I didn’t see to many signs that warned of drinking the water, but I was told there are plenty around). We then got to check out one of Rotorua’s pristine drinking water supplies (Waipa Spring) which is a natural spring pumped directly into one of the rich list suburbs of the city un-chlorinated (they don’t want it, so they don’t get it). As George says, “with water like this, who needs treatment?” After departing Rotorua the tour heads for Tauranga and a tour of the brand new 35ML/day Oropi Membrane WTP (one of two WTP’s servicing the “Gold Coast” city of Tauranga). The plant was a classic example of modern design, forward thinking to allow expansion and latest membrane technology. The WTP buildings, space and equipment had to be seen to be believed. The city currently has a population of 110,000 and is expected to be 140,000 by 2015. Plant tour over, we were shown the million dollar plus houses along the foreshore and Mount Maunganui overlooking the city and capped all this off with an afternoon BBQ and a few cleansing ales. The rain has again set in and we head back to our motel. It’s hard to believe this place could ever suffer any form of drought!

Insert photo – Oropi WTP

May 6 – 9.00am travel down the road to tour the new BNR and Membrane WWTP at Te Aroha. Our Kiwis hosts have a strong sense of ownership of their plants and it shows in the way they present their tours. This is made even more evident during our next inspections, firstly of the Te Aroha WTP (which was the location of one of the best feeds of the 10 days in NZ) and then the newly automated Morrinsville WTP where Charlie Crews and his apprentice Jason showed us the ropes. It was particularly impressive at Morrinsville as we were informed that Charlie was doing a paper at the Hamilton conference on the experiences and lessons learnt from the DIY upgrade. We headed for Hamilton in the afternoon and believe it or not, we got to spend the next two nights and three days in the same place at the very impressive Kingsgate Hotel and Conference Centre. The evening presented an early opportunity to meet some of the unique Kiwi delegation attending the conference (G’day Peekie), start some networking and attend the WIOG President’s Dinner.

May 7, 8 + 9 – Operator Conference begins and we hear from a broad range of Professionals and Operators over the next couple of days and get a greater understanding of the challenges faced and techniques used to provide quality water and wastewater services to customers in NZ. The papers were all well delivered with Charlie Crews the much deserved winner of the best operator paper (announced at the final evening dinner). The entertainment at the conference was second to none with an opening night appearance from the Fawlty Towers crew (Basil, Cybil and Manuel) who performed a hilarious stand up restaurant skit amongst the 200 plus attendees. The final night saw Austin Powers, Freddy Mercury, ABBA, Cher and Madonna entertain the crowd with an action packed comedy cabaret show. Their performances were world class but may have been slightly overshadowed by some of the dance moves brought out of the closet by some of the crowd (no names but there was an Aussie ring leader).

May 9 – 2pm return to Auckland. Back into the city for tea before tormenting the Kiwi’s at the sports bar in the casino as we watch the Kangaroos belt the living suitcases out of the All Blacks in the Rugby League International. It was quite amusing to see some not very happy locals leaving quite early. Even those of us who are not that rugby minded enjoyed watching the Aussies belt another country.

May 10 – Everyone back to the airport, we’re heading home. Following our goodbyes and a last minute attack on the Duty Free we all caught our respective flights home. What a 10 days!!!!!!!

Interesting Discoveries –
• Everything is uphill, never down.
• After travelling 1600km we discover Everything is “around a corner” or “an hour away”.
• There are no straight roads in the entire country – It took us 4 days to find a road long and straight enough to be able to do 100km/hr.
• “Choice Eh Bro” actually means something is pretty good.
• A drought is below average rainfall for 4 months, not 10 years.
• NZ appears to have unlimited water but does appear to have a limited beer supply.
• Don’t try to pronounce any words (you’ll just make a fool of yourself).
• Mini vans become smaller and smaller the longer you spend in them.
• NavMan’s don’t understand Kiwi’s either.
• A trolley is actually a Trundler. An esky is a chilly bin. A bit of PK is chitty.
• WH is pronounced F, there are no E’s in the language and in most cases an I is pronounced U.
• Bar glassware consists of Schooners, Handles and Jugs.
• Tui is a beer pronounced Toohey.
• Even the Kiwis won’t drink Waikato beer.

Famous Last Words or Lack Thereof –
• It’s so greeeen over here, my cows would love this place.
• From the movie the Castle - Ah the serenity, Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’, Darryl dug another hole.
• So, are you going Duck Shooting?
• It costs 20 cents to go to the toilet at the Huka Falls.
• Darryl choking on his dinner – Complete silence while eating, followed by uproarious laughter.
• Murray Clayton after three dinner servings – “It takes a lot of food to fuel this machine”.
• Whiskers – Have you got any room in your suitcases for me?
• I didn’t order onion Rings.
• What’s White Bait?

On behalf of the Aussie Operator contingent, I would like to thank George Wall, Gil Miers and Dave Neru for a fantastic 10 days touring a quite remarkable country. The hospitality shown by everyone involved was fantastic, particularly the staff involved in all our water and wastewater plant tours. It was great to see the pride each of them had in their facilities and the real sense of ownership they displayed. Congratulations to all award winners at the Hamilton Conference and we look forward to catching up with Charlie and Gil at the Victorian Conference in Bendigo in September.

Contributed by: Jason Whittaker – Works Supervisor Central Water Treatment - Goulburn Valley Water.

Expressions of Interest in attending future Tours or the WIOG conference should be sent by email to George Wall at info@wioa.org.au

Last updated on 07-Aug-2008