Nearly ten days without rain is a very nice break and the courses are showing it as they finally dry out.  Light winds and fine sunny days make for excellent golfing conditions and there has certainly been lots of players taking advantage.

Earlier this week saw nearly the last of the tree works associated with the cyclone.  While removing some hangers one of the tree loppers found some substantial structural damage in two large Eucalypt's between the two 18's and there was another dead tree in the area that was also removed.  Two of the trees have been left as "habitat trees" as they are full of hollows which will give some excellent nesting spots for the variety of birds on the courses.  There are already some Cockatoo's that have moved in as seen in the photos below.

   

The two trees between the 18's.

 

First residents??  Location circled below.

 

That's where the cockatoo is located!!

The greens on both courses are holding up very well for this time of year.  One of the issues that we can experience in winter is disease but thus far our preventative applications have kept them clean, which given the amount of leaf wetness that there has been is a great win.  The Poa annua (Wintergrass) population is also down on the past two years in the greens which is also a good thing.

The irrigation system install continues and as mentioned last week there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel with 11R in progress and only 1W remaining.  It was certainly a fairly big week for us as the power to our old irrigation system was dis-connected along with the old pump station meaning we are now only using the new system.  Probably not that exciting for golfers but I can tell you it is for us.  We ran a couple of large irrigation programs this week and the water pressure supplied from the new pump station was extra impressive to say the least.  The new pump station only has slightly more capacity than our old one  but the bigger new pipe size allows for greater water flow and resultant pressure.