| 49 T T Kim Newth Emma goes one better at awards Emma Diack won the Apprentice of the Year Award at this year’s Southern Wood Council Forestry Awards. D and K Contracting FORESTRY Fresh from being named joint winner of the inaugural Women in Forestry Excellence Award last year, Emma Diack has gone one step better at this year’s Southern Wood Council Forestry Awards to win the Apprentice of the Year title. Being the only female forestry apprentice in her cohort makes this recognition all the more remarkable. “It feels like an awesome achievement,” says Emma. “It goes to show that women can be just as good as men in this male-dominated industry. I hope that my success will help encourage other women to think about forestry as a career and to get involved.” Emma completed her apprenticeship working for her parents Daryl and Kerrin, who founded their Southland business D and K Contracting in 2008. Along with their forestry contracting crew, they run logging trucks that operate as D and K Cartage. After leaving school, Emma spent two years looking after the health and safety side of the business before deciding to join the forestry crew and commence her apprenticeship. “I’d watched Dad do it all my life and I just thought I’d like to give it a go and see how I liked it. Dad has been logging for as long as I can remember. My parents are both really stoked that I’m getting these awards.” Some of the pleasures of this career choice for Emma include being able to work outdoors in some beautiful parts of the country, learning how to operate different types of machinery, and meeting a wide range of people from truck drivers to planters and other logging crews. “It’s just a really diverse job.” D and K Contracting’s seven-strong harvesting crew is led by Emma’s father or, in his absence, a skilled foreman. Emma says working under supervision during her apprenticeship has enabled her to progressively expand her knowledge and skill. “We work for Rayonier in places like Island Bush as a ground based crew. I mostly load out logs onto trucks and do fleeting/sorting work. “I’ve also started working on the forwarder a lot more; it’s a bigger machine that goes out into the bush and brings back saw logs to the skid area. As well, I’ve been doing more health and safety work.” As part of her apprenticeship, Emma attended regular week-long block training with the Mike Hurring Logging Training School in Balclutha. “You do two or three days of bookwork and once that’s signed off you focus on things like chainsaw work or machinery so they know you are competent to use it. We also went out and visited sawmills to see what they do with the wood product.” Now that Emma has finished her apprenticeship, she plans to continue extending her operational experience on machines like processors and forwarders. She has also just completed her Health and Safety L4 training. “I’m still learning – the training is ongoing. My main goal in future is to have more of a 50/50 split between my time operating machinery out in the bush and time in the office doing paperwork/health and safety checks. “Whenever we move to a new block, you have to run through the hazards and make sure you have the right gear and so on. We’re out in the forest most of the time and have a container so you can do most of the paperwork on site.” “It goes to show that women can be just as good as men in this male-dominated industry. I hope that my success will help encourage other women to think about forestry as a career and to get involved.” Your industry training partner turning talent into capability &RPSHWHQ] LV D GLYLVLRQ RI 7H 3ĬNHQJD competenz.org.nz
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