Well, the first weekend of the club’s major fundraiser for the year – the Christmas Tree sales – was one like we have never experienced before. By early Saturday afternoon we had sold out of our first offering of 160 trees: on Sunday we cleared our remaining stock of 90 trees by late morning! On both days, people were waiting from 7.30 am for sales to begin. The cycle of ongoing wet weather and flooding has resulted in a shortage of trees for harvest, leading to unprecedented demand.
It is quite a logistical exercise across the whole weekend to achieve such a result, starting early on Friday morning with trucks and trailers, so generously made available by club sponsors GoPlay and Trees R Us, heading upcountry to collect the trees before returning to Melbourne later in the day. A big thanks to James (GoPlay https://www.goplay.net.au) and Eltham club legend Roger Iacobucci (Trees R Us), both for equipment, storage area and donating staff to help, and the ‘pick-up’ crew – John Tayler, Alan Steel, Shane Slater, Monty Higginson-Ford, Chris Holland and Aisea ‘Wise’ Naulago.
250 trees sold in a single weekend, just shy of last year’s club record for 268 trees! This could only be achieved through the dedicated efforts our club volunteers covering a variety of activities including early-morning positioning of signs, sales, deliveries, coffee runs and volunteer nourishment. A feature of the weekend was the involvement of quite a few families, which was wonderful to see, and our Masters. A big, collective thank-you to John, Alan, Shane, Monty, Roger, Louise and Emilia Howden, Sylvia Metcalfe, Tim Adams, Graeme Medley, the Hansen family (Nadine, Tor, Kiki, Nilü and Aksel), the Hurdle family (Russ, Cath and Ben), Ari and Ava Su’a, the Daley family (Matt, Seb, Ollie and Jack), Ange Southwood, Rayza Koliavu and sons Kawa and Stuart, the Jones family (Simon, Maisy and Lawson) and Alan Mdehwa. A special mention to Nadine, who revolutionised the way we assemble trees for delivery (yes, so simple an approach…why has it taken us almost 20 years to do this??) and to the new force in tree sales – Ava, Nilü and Kiki!
It all starts again next week….and we are desperately short of volunteer help. The money raised goes to our/ your club, so please make the effort and donate some time. As Simon, one of our Masters’ players put it, “..highly recommended, good for the soul and a great way to spend the day with the kids…”.
Sign up at the following link (or contact the club committee directly [email protected]):
https://signup.zone/XCWBtG3w6LfxfxkTB
Tim Adams, Vice President
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