Today was my second guiding shift. Of course I overslept and missed my start by enough time for the other dude on duty to take the first group out on his own. I was punished with visitor count duty until my turn came up, which was a good chance to practice whatever I thought I might say.
My first group was a friendly little quartet: two lovely young ladies visiting from Brisbane and Sweden (FYI I asked if they had trees in Sweden, and she said yes they do), and a polite local couple, all of whom were visiting NAC for the first time, so I kicked things off with a warning that I'll probably just make everything up and my fellow guide, who I'd asked to follow me around and give me some feedback, would sort things out.
He showed me right up on the next tour - we took about twenty people around and I was impressed with how exactly the same material sounds completely different when being presented by somebody else. He is enthusiastic, knowledgeable and knows how to control a crowd.
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| Somewhere in this frame is where I left my dignity |
Fortunately for me, a NAC crowd is a very forgiving audience. I left him at his last stop early to go and pick up my second group, but I didn't get any takers. I set a start time for the next tour, coffeed, tried to befriend the magpies, and went back to the meeting point to discover a 25-person tour group all to myself. I took a deep breath and plunged in.
So here's my new formula (warning: contains spoilers)
- A potted history of NAC at the starting point, and a little about the architectural features of the Village Centre building.
- A short trip to the interactive map near the meeting point gives more people time to catch up with us if they decide to join us late, and a chance to demonstrate that there are parts of NAC that we can't see from the Village Centre (most of it). It's also a good place to start talking about fire planning.
- Out on the north deck, I can supplement some information about the conservation and research value of NAC with some general highlights like the two mature forests, the events terrace, the Wide Brown Land Sculpture, the ceremonial plantings, STEP and the Pod Playground (today I learned to do so either in that order or the reverse order so that I am keeping their eyes and bodies moving in only one direction). If nobody's eyes are glazing over I talk about soil and more about fire prevention.
- The south deck is a great place to talk about water, because the 37Ml dam is right below, and it's possible to point at the massive earthworks and reveal that there are some nice big tanks underneath them. The amphitheatre and the Margaret Whitlam Pavilion are unmissable features, and I do my best to encourage people to get up to the top of Dairy Farmers Hill to see the best view in NAC. Some people want to know about a couple of success stories we've already had. Everybody is interested in either the ACTEW AGL Canberra Discovery Garden because they're local and it's good to know what works in a Canberra garden, or the Bonsai collection because, well, they like trees. If I'm lucky, the local magpie family sings me all the way through the south deck speech.
New things I learned today:
- That NAC is funded by ACT Government - it's a local project, not a federal project.
- Yeah I need to learn about the Buchan Blue, STEP, and the Camden White Gum.
