A very strange week of weather along the entire East Coast of Australia with lashings of rain affecting most of the coastline.  Fortunately for us it was not that bad with 70mm falling compared with 48mm at the airport.  This was on top of the 70mm that fell in the last 7 days of 2015.  The courses were already wet and unfortunately motorised buggies were off the West course on Wednesday but things quickly turned around with the West greens needing some back up irrigation on Thursday afternoon!!

It was nice to see the sun again on Tuesday afternoon for a little while after a very cloudy Christmas / New Year period.

Some blue sky at last!!

2015 finished the year with 2,220mm against an average for the Tweed Heads site of 1700mm.

We were able to get some fertiliser out on to some tees this week so the rain was very timely for this and the goal now is to get as much grass as possible on the tees in preparation for the winter months.  It may seem strange to be talking about winter already but that's just the nature of looking after plants as you have to give them the best possible help to cope with the climatic conditions that will come up.

The West practice green continues to develop and has had 4 mowings and was heavily top dressed today to start the leveling process.  At this rate it could well be opened at nine or ten weeks with just the banks a little thin.

The River greens received a much needed de-thatching this week which is the process that removes a lot of dead and dying plant material.  It is a six man operation which was half of my staff on Tuesday but is a very important process in preparation of the putting surface.  We normally try and do it weekly through the growing season but with the holidays and short working weeks hadn't been able to do it for the past 3 weeks.