FYNBOS FESTIVAL

Plant sales at the Fynbos Fees

I will try not to write a long and boring account of this years Fynbos festival, as I am sure that most of you were there. In short the festival was a great success. Despite the weather, which was rather cold and windy, we had a great turn out and the festival ran smoothly without a single hitch, for this thanks must go to all who were involved, we feel that the festival was extremely well organised. The talks and demos that were given were all really informative and extremely well attended, we will definitely be doing talks next year, our book stall also expanded this year and we had some beautiful and fascinating books on sale. This year we also had a lot more eco stalls and the feedback from the stallholders was that the various environmental groups got good publicity and exposure. The festival this year brought in a total of about R88 000 with a net profit of about R37 000 in comparison with last years Total of R97 000 but net profit of only R35 000 so in fact we made more from selling less which is fantastic, especially given the economic crunch that we are suffering this year.<\p>

INTERESTING TALKS AT THE ENVIRO CENTER

We have had two Fascinating talks at the Moriarty Environmental centre this year, the first entitled 'Seeing Beyond light" Presented by Jean Bailie was all about the use of the electron Microscope. This fascinating technology is incredibly expensive and very few people will ever have the pleasure of working with this type of Microscope. It was a real treat to see and hear about how these machines function and what scientists are doing with this technology.

Colin Ralston lecturing in the hall

Colin Ralston held a very interesting PowerPoint presentation on extremophyle Bacteria. This lecture focused on the incredible bacteria that are only found in the most extreme living conditions. Some are found in completely anaerobic conditions and are the only organisms that can live in systems totally devoid of energy from the sun. Some of these bacteria live in underground water that last saw the surface of the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago and yet these little guys can live and flourish where nothing else can live. We would like to thank Jean and Collin immensely for sharing of their time and expertise with us. We will definitely be hosting similar talks next year so watch this space for details.