A rather unexpected 8mm of rain on Thursday morning was quite welcome with the courses once again drying out and the irrigation struggling to keep up.  We pump around 1.2 megalitres of water down to our storage dam every 24 hours and that is what we then put out on the courses at full irrigation which is where we are now.  At least it hasn't been windy of late which allows the sprinklers to operate to the maximum capacity.  With over 32 hectares of fairways it is a big area to get covered compared with most courses averaging about 11 - 13 hectares per 18 holes.

Speaking of rainfall we recorded just 1317mm in 2018 which is well down on our average of over 1700mm and actually makes 2018 one of 20 or so driest years since recordings were started for this location in 1886.  We record the rainfall for the weather bureau and are officially station number 058056 and known as Tweed Heads.  As a matter of interest the driest year was 688mm way back in 1902 and the wettest was in 1906 with 3193mm.  In more recent times my first year here in 1999 came in at 2,874mm and the recent lowest was 2007 with 1,293mm.

Repair on 2R

And not the most enjoyable New Years Eve for us with two fairly substantial irrigation repairs required with one being right in the drive zone on 2R fairway and the other right in front of 8R tee.  Unfortunately with what is known as a single row irrigation system almost all our sprinklers and pipe are located in the middle of fairways and have to be repaired ASAP.  Another great job by the irrigation techs had the system humming again that night.

We started some tree root removal this week and will be trying to get as much done as possible in the coming months to try and get recovery on the areas prior to winter.  It will be a long slow project that will probably be like a lot of jobs we do which means it will be done "forever"!!

Root removal on 16R tee