The time has come for the Kings Park Festival to draw to a close, which sadly means the same for my prac with the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority. My time with the BGPA will conclude this Sunday with the ever-popular Wild Fairyland Festival - the biggest fairy party in Perth! Kids come dressed as fairies, elves, wizards and pixies and there is fairy floss, pony rides, magic shows and so so so much more! I won't lie, I'm definitely excited to get dressed up as a fairy! Hopefully the weather will be kind to us this weekend - we had to trek though the Lotterywest Family Area analysing the site plan and figuring out what is going to go where in the rain the other day!
Luck hasn't really been on our side with the weather lately! Since my last blog we had a bit of a disaster. Unfortunately, Tree-mendous Family Day on Sunday the 18th had to be completely cancelled due to extremely wild weather and storm damage to the park! Driving into Kings Park early that morning I had to dodge huge branches strewn across the roads that had snapped off during the storm. It wasn't until I arrived at the main Festival site I saw the worst of it... one of the large Tuart trees had completely ripped out of the ground at its roots. Not only that, it had taken out another large tree on its way down, landed on a marquee smashing to pieces the tables and chairs inside and also destroyed some promotional signage and tree-wrapping displays. It fell directly on the limestone pad where we conduct activities and also where the food vendours set up; only about 15 metres from the stage for the live music. We were definitely thankful it fell early in the morning when it did because any later and the outcome could have been extremely worse! But seriously, out of the hundrends and hundrends of trees around the park, why did it have to be one right in the main area! Not a good start to the day!
The area was roped off and the guys with the big machines that demolish the fallen trees into mulch (I'm not sure what they are called) were on the scene immediately. The combination of the storm damage and continual rain meant it was just too dangerous for the days festivities to go ahead. All we could do was retreat to the offices and start calling everybody and anybody to let them know Tree-mendous Family Day had been cancelled.
Situations like this make you realise that no amount of planning can prevent some things from going wrong; in the end, some things are beyond our control. We obviously couldn't control what the weather was going to do so we had no other choice but to cancel. Its so sad to see all that hard work go to waste but what can you do! You will come across unforeseen circumstances in your working career and you just have to deal with them the best you can. In this situation I learnt the best thing you can do is get on the phone straight away and let those involved know what the scenario is. I felt terrible calling people at 8 on a Sunday morning - the majority of them were half asleep when they answered! But ultimately they all said thanks for letting them know early because they were grateful they didn't come all the way to Kings Park and then find out the bad news!
Its sad to see my time with the BGPA coming to an end - being a part of the Kings Park Festival was an experience I'm really grateful of. Looking back, its rewarding to know the activities I've been a part of and to see the work I've produced. I know its corny but I love reading the website or a brochure and thinking "I wrote that!"
Fingers crossed the weather is nice for us this weekend,
Au revoir fellow bloggers!
Kate Brown
Bentley Campus
14290138
Showing posts with label Tree-mendous Family Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tree-mendous Family Day. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
And The Kings Park Festival begins...
The Kings Park Festival has officially begun!
The 1st of September meant an early start up at Kings Park to help get the opening event underway. Guests were scheduled to arrive for the launch of the Festival at 8.45am so as soon as I got there it was all hands on deck! The day started off with loading chairs onto the truck, transporting the chairs, unpacking the chairs, setting them out in neat rows and sticking VIP signs on the fist few rows - so as you can see, there was a lot of lifting involved! The first part of the day also involved placing decorative banners around walkways, driving back to the offices to pick up passes, cds and signage, standing at the edge of the roped area making sure late-comers new where they were going and making coffee and tea for VIP's (and carrying all those cups was the most difficult part of the day!). Once the launch concluded it was just time to dismantle all the signage/banners and re-stack and transport all the chairs again! Aside form the fact that one of the speakers called it the 2001 Kings Park Festival, the event went very smoothly.
Since then we've had the first Santos Live Sunday event which fell on Father's Day (apologies to my dad for missing Fathers Day!). I guess you could say that Sundays are the busiest days because we have a free live music program that is themed every week and the park is abuzz with family fun and entertainment. There is a lot to organise so it meant another very early start and luckily the rain held off! You've probably all seen those tear-drop shape banners around the place that promote all different things... well I can now officially say I appreciate them 10 times more after having to put them together! I literally lost count of how many got put together - there was too many poles involved! It was then my job to hold them down on the back of the 4wheeler we drive around the park in while they all tried to take flight in the wind - it was freezing! The day also invloved things like putting signage up around the park, opening up buildings for workshops and making sure they had tea, coffee and fruitcake, and lets not forget about the chairs - there was definitely more stacking and un-packing of chairs!
Looking back on all the work that went in leading up to the Festival, I can defintely pin down two things that I found most challenging. Firstly, most of the time it was my job to call various companies - whether it be gettting quotes for bus hire, quotes for catering, ringing someone to discuss the activities they could provide or persuading companies to donate prizes for competitions. I know it sounds lame, but when I would get asked to call someone, I would get really nrevous. Obviously this is something we all have to do several times a day so it was probably me just being pedantic! Nevertheless, it was something I struggled with and what I found it came down to was the fact that I wouldn't have a lot of background knowledge going into these phone calls. My superiors had most of the time dealt with these clients/companies/people previously so they know the situation, they know what they have done in the past, whereas I was still trying to wrap my head around the details. Therefore I didn't have the confidence when the people on the other end of the phone asked me questions. Sometimes they would ask me questions that I didn't know the answer to so I had to put down the phone and check the answer with someone, which I just found a little disheartening sometimes. So that was just one thing I found needed some work as I went along.
Secondly, on some days priorities became a challenge. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the Events Coordinator and Events Assistant are who I go to for my daily duties. However on some days, I would also be asked to do something by the Visitor Services Manger and the Business Development Manager, therefore leaving me in a little predicament as to what task should be the priority; who's job should I do first? In the end I just had to look at what they all asked me to do and figure out what was more pressing - which seems like the logical answer now, but at the time you feel bad for putting someone's job as a priority over someone elses!
That's enough for today - as my final word though, I recommend everybody check out the Tree-mendous Family Day at Kings Park this Sunday! There is going to be a rock climbing wall and a flying fox - I can't wait!
Until next time...
Kate Brown
14290138
Bentley Campus
The 1st of September meant an early start up at Kings Park to help get the opening event underway. Guests were scheduled to arrive for the launch of the Festival at 8.45am so as soon as I got there it was all hands on deck! The day started off with loading chairs onto the truck, transporting the chairs, unpacking the chairs, setting them out in neat rows and sticking VIP signs on the fist few rows - so as you can see, there was a lot of lifting involved! The first part of the day also involved placing decorative banners around walkways, driving back to the offices to pick up passes, cds and signage, standing at the edge of the roped area making sure late-comers new where they were going and making coffee and tea for VIP's (and carrying all those cups was the most difficult part of the day!). Once the launch concluded it was just time to dismantle all the signage/banners and re-stack and transport all the chairs again! Aside form the fact that one of the speakers called it the 2001 Kings Park Festival, the event went very smoothly.
Since then we've had the first Santos Live Sunday event which fell on Father's Day (apologies to my dad for missing Fathers Day!). I guess you could say that Sundays are the busiest days because we have a free live music program that is themed every week and the park is abuzz with family fun and entertainment. There is a lot to organise so it meant another very early start and luckily the rain held off! You've probably all seen those tear-drop shape banners around the place that promote all different things... well I can now officially say I appreciate them 10 times more after having to put them together! I literally lost count of how many got put together - there was too many poles involved! It was then my job to hold them down on the back of the 4wheeler we drive around the park in while they all tried to take flight in the wind - it was freezing! The day also invloved things like putting signage up around the park, opening up buildings for workshops and making sure they had tea, coffee and fruitcake, and lets not forget about the chairs - there was definitely more stacking and un-packing of chairs!
Looking back on all the work that went in leading up to the Festival, I can defintely pin down two things that I found most challenging. Firstly, most of the time it was my job to call various companies - whether it be gettting quotes for bus hire, quotes for catering, ringing someone to discuss the activities they could provide or persuading companies to donate prizes for competitions. I know it sounds lame, but when I would get asked to call someone, I would get really nrevous. Obviously this is something we all have to do several times a day so it was probably me just being pedantic! Nevertheless, it was something I struggled with and what I found it came down to was the fact that I wouldn't have a lot of background knowledge going into these phone calls. My superiors had most of the time dealt with these clients/companies/people previously so they know the situation, they know what they have done in the past, whereas I was still trying to wrap my head around the details. Therefore I didn't have the confidence when the people on the other end of the phone asked me questions. Sometimes they would ask me questions that I didn't know the answer to so I had to put down the phone and check the answer with someone, which I just found a little disheartening sometimes. So that was just one thing I found needed some work as I went along.
Secondly, on some days priorities became a challenge. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the Events Coordinator and Events Assistant are who I go to for my daily duties. However on some days, I would also be asked to do something by the Visitor Services Manger and the Business Development Manager, therefore leaving me in a little predicament as to what task should be the priority; who's job should I do first? In the end I just had to look at what they all asked me to do and figure out what was more pressing - which seems like the logical answer now, but at the time you feel bad for putting someone's job as a priority over someone elses!
That's enough for today - as my final word though, I recommend everybody check out the Tree-mendous Family Day at Kings Park this Sunday! There is going to be a rock climbing wall and a flying fox - I can't wait!
Until next time...
Kate Brown
14290138
Bentley Campus
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