Caine James, Operations Manager – Recreation Works
Infrastructure & Works | Maitland City Council
My interest in the turf industry, particularly golf course maintenance was something I had a passion for from the age of around 10 years old. This is the age I started attending a golf clinic on Sunday mornings at Belmont Golf Club in the Lake Macquarie area south of Newcastle. I remember playing 9 holes on a Sunday morning and thinking how good it would be to be a greenkeeper. When an opportunity came in year 10 whilst attending Swansea High School to complete 2 weeks of work experience, I wasn’t going anywhere other than Belmont Golf Club to work on the golf course. This experience convinced me that this was the career I wanted.
I received a phone call from the Superintendent in December 1992 to ask if I was interested in a six-week casual position to join the green staff for the preparation of the Lake Macquarie Amateur Open, which at the time was the biggest amateur tournament in the Southern Hemisphere. Six weeks turned into two years full-time at Belmont Golf Club, which gave me a great start to my career working with an awesome crew.
Council Apprenticeship
I was looking for an opportunity to complete an apprenticeship as I wanted to become a qualified turf tradesperson, which Belmont Golf Club couldn’t offer at the time. I was lucky enough to apply and successfully gain an apprenticeship with Newcastle City Council (City of Newcastle) in 1994. Newcastle Council owned and maintained an 11-hole public golf course (Beresfield Golf Course) as well as maintaining regional and district-level sports facilities.
My time during my apprenticeship was spent mostly working on the council’s golf course, which consisted of Bent/Poa Greens, a blend of Kikuyu/Couch/Carpet Grass fairways and Kikuyu tees.
There was a staff of 3 consisting of a Superintendent, a groundsman, and an Apprentice (me). When I arrived, greens were being cut with Scott Bonnar petrol walk-behind mowers, tees were cut with an old Jacobsen Tri king and fairways were cut with an old set of gang mowers. It was a great opportunity to work in this environment as I was exposed to everything from spraying greens to machinery maintenance and course set-up for weekends from day one. During the 3 years I worked on the Council golf course we upgraded machinery to introduce a John Deere fairway mower, Toro surrounds mower and a Toro greens mower. These changes in machinery improved the surfaces immediately. Then we started applying fertiliser on fairways, constructing new tee boxes, reshaping fairways, and extending irrigation. All this work was completed by our team of 3 which gave me great exposure to all aspects of turf maintenance early in my career.
During my apprenticeship I had the opportunity to spend 6 months working at Newcastle Councils No.1 and No.2 Sportsgrounds, this gave me exposure to turf wicket preparation, maintenance, and renovation. This experience gave me an insight into turf maintenance from another perspective, especially cricket wicket preparation. This goes against everything you learn about growing healthy turf – grow grass in clay, water it, roll it with moisture in it to compact it, then dry it out, now roll it some more, mow it and it’s ready! Cricket wicket preparation made me open my mind to the turf industry and I realised there is so much to learn in this industry, and I knew I wanted to make a successful career of it.
Once I completed my apprenticeship, I was employed full-time at Newcastle Council as a Senior field worker at Newcastle No.1 Sportsground, working alongside Supervisor Peter Terry, who is still currently in this position. During my 6 years working at this facility, we prepared surfaces for first-class cricket matches including Sheffield Shield matches, ING One Day Matches and a One Day International Women’s Match Australia v England. I was also lucky enough to prepare the No.2 Sportsground Wicket for the Australia U/19s National Championships in 2008/09, this turned out to be a great tournament with the likes of Shaun Marsh, Cameron White, and Sean Tait to name a few going on to first-class careers. We also hosted numerous AFL Pre-season matches featuring the Swans against numerous AFL opponents.
I also had the opportunity to play a significant role in rebuilding the wicket square during the 2000 season. This project was delivered by our team, including the planning, construction and grow in, with the result being a quality first-class wicket.
2007 I was offered the opportunity to move into an office-based role as a Recreation Project Officer at Newcastle Council. Whilst in this position I designed and managed the installation of numerous irrigation projects, the reconstruction of turf wicket squares and the delivery of several playground and floodlight projects.
Nuturf Australia
In 2008 I was offered an opportunity to become a Territory Manager at Nuturf Australia, supplying products, services and agronomic advice to the turf industry. My territory was the Central Coast, Hunter Region, Mid North Coast and New England servicing Councils, Golf Clubs, Turf farms and any other turf facility along my travels. This was my dream job as I got to talk turf all day every day. During my time at Nuturf, I received the best education you could possibly ask for, we had great people in the business who shared the same passion for the turf industry as I have. Nuturf was acquired by C.K.Lifesciences who also owned Amgrow, this provided me with the opportunity to move into the wholesale market managing the sales, custom fertiliser development and distribution of specialty products into the turf market in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
I worked in the wholesale business for 3 years before moving back into the retail market with Nuturf. I spent over 14 years in the Nuturf/Amgrow business before moving to TurfCare Australia for an 8-month period as Business Manager.
Maitland City Council
In January 2019 I moved back into Local Government to take up the position of Operations Manager Recreation at Maitland City Council where I remain today. This is a very diverse role as I manage a department of 60+ staff with 4 direct reports and 13 Team Leaders, each with a crew of 3-4 staff who maintain trees, gardens, parks, playgrounds, landscape construction, open space, roadside mowing, weeds & Biosecurity. I have a very supportive management team above me who value my knowledge and experience which allows me to provide the resources required to achieve continual improvement in all areas of the Recreation space in Maitland LGA.
“We are lucky to have such a leader in the turf industry at Maitland City Council. When Caine joined us nearly 5 years ago, I believed (noting I am an engineer with absolutely no turf background) we had the makings of a good sports turf management crew, however, Caine has implemented significant change, training, and polish to all of our staff working in this area to ensure we have a great turf management team. This has resulted in not only significant improvements and outcomes at our regional facilities, but the improved work practices of our teams are making a huge difference to all our sports turf facilities across the LGA.” Ashley Kavanagh, Works Manager Maitland City Council.
I also have 2 specialised Turf Management Crews who maintain our sports turf surfaces. A team of 4 are full-time at Maitland Regional Sports Complex and a team of 6 who maintain over 60 hectares of sports grounds, of which 30 hectares are irrigated.
The Regional Sports complex consists of the Regional Sportsground, a 1.6 hectare multi-use facility with a grandstand capacity of 1100 which was rebuilt in 2017. The ground is currently the training base for the Newcastle Jets Men’s A-League team and the Maitland Pickers Rugby League Club. The surface was initially turfed with Grand Prix Couch in 2017, with sand slit drainage, sand grooving and irrigation installed.
In 2020 an IAAF standard synthetic athletics track with all supporting athletics infrastructure was constructed on the old outer fields. I was asked to provide input into the development of the specification for the construction of the 8,000m2 infield. The profile is 300mm deep local dune sand amended with organics. Irrigation and drainage were installed during construction and the surface has a 1% fall from the centre in an East/West direction. The grass type selected was TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda. The decision was made to use this grass after reviewing the data from several trials, it’s also the only turf variety with the Smart Approved Water Mark.
Turf producer Musturf completed the project for us supplying and installing the turf which was of exceptional quality. The establishment period was amazing with root development greater than 50mm in a 4 week period.
The surface has performed extremely well over the past 3 seasons. We have shaved the surface twice to soil surface using a topmaker, with full coverage back again within 4 weeks. Topdressing happens 2 weeks after the topmaker and the surface is cut at 12-15mm.
Due to the performance of the TifTuf on the athletics infield, I made the decision to change the turf variety of the Regional Sportsground from Grand Prix to TifTuf. We were having issues with the lateral growth of Grand Prix couch which was impacting the recovery from wear and transitioning from the ryegrass oversowing program back to the couch. With the support from my Manager Ashley Kavanagh who backed my reasoning for the change in turf species, “Caine’s technical knowledge and ability to demonstrate the reasoning for Council to invest in changing the grass variety that had only been down for 5 years over to TifTuf was a decision that was well worth the investment. The positive feedback from user groups, our community and most importantly our staff who maintain the facility is amazing. The results are speaking for themselves”. In October 2022 we sprayed out the surface and then removed 70mm from the surface of the Sportsground.
TifTuf vegetive material was supplied, which was spread and grooved rolled and then solid rolled into the surface. 12 weeks later we had a 100% cover of TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda which looked fantastic. We have oversowed ryegrass into the surface this season and the surface has been rated as one of the best surfaces played on by a number of visiting A League clubs as well as the Newcastle Jets. Adam Nial (Team Leader of the Turf Maintenance crew) is very happy with the amount of TifTuf he is seeing below the rye and in recovering divots.
The feedback from the users of both surfaces has been amazing, with the quality of the surfaces always a topic of conversation amongst them. We have several sports ground projects coming up in the next couple of years and the decision is to replicate the specification of the Athletics infield into these new fields including surfacing with TifTuf.
I feel blessed to have had the career I’ve had, and I feel privileged that Maitland City Council have given me an opportunity to bring my passion, knowledge, and experience to take their existing fields to the next level and develop new standards in the development of new fields.
