Group of Australians tour the Creekside Orchard in Melfort. (Angie Rolheiser/northeastNOW Staff)

By Angie Rolheiser

Rotary Friendship Exchange

Group of Australians hosted by Melfort Rotary Club

Aug 21, 2019 | 2:00 PM

A group of 12 Australian Rotary Club members made their way through the Melfort area over the past couple of days.

The group was able to experience life in Saskatchewan including a visit to Bourgault Industries in St. Brieux, the Star City Hutterite Colony, and Creekside Orchard in Melfort.

Wayne Claggett with the Melfort Rotary Club said the guided tours are an important part of the exchange.

“It’s all about friendship, you know yourself that if you go on a tour, if you can get down with the personal people and people that live there you will get a more of a closeness,” Claggett said.

Claggett said the tour also went as far as Hudson Bay and they visited the community of Love as well as the Wapiti ski hill. The group had a guided tour of the Melfort museum and a wild meat meal which included wild boar, elk, deer, and moose meat.

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On Tuesday night, they also had an opportunity to have a plane ride where they flew over the Saskatchewan forks and farmland, as well as reservations and the Fort A La Corne diamond mine site. The Creekside Orchard visit capped off the Melfort tour.

Creekside Orchard owner Mel Annand said he was happy to showcase the orchard to the Australian guests.

“The Rotarians were very interested in some of the science and the background of the orchard,” Annand said.

Members of the Melfort club were in Australia earlier in the year so this group came back to complete the exchange.

Australian group leader Thea Allan said coming to Saskatchewan was quite different from what they are used to.

“We don’t have snow in Australia like you have here,” Allan said. “To know that you have three or four feet of snow, we just can’t comprehend that.”

Allan said the Australian visitors were most surprised by the Star City Hutterite Colony be cause there are no closed communities in Australia.

“One of the things that I particularly like about coming to the North American continent is that the green is green,” Allan said. “At home our green is sort of a greyish colour, our eucalyptic trees are not lush green like your birches and poplars.”

The tour will continue over the course of the next few days in Prince Albert.

The Melfort Rotary club continues with their student exchange program this year with two young men going to Slovakia and France while a student from Brazil will study here in Melfort at the high school.

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angie.rolheiser@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @Angie_Rolheiser