O’Brien Plumbing Echuca owner Clayton Zanella back home in his office after a confronting trip to Fiji.
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Andrew Mole
Clayton Zanella reckoned he had pretty well seen it all.
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Until the O’Brien Plumbing Echuca owner joined a national group conference in Fiji, part of which was a day dedicated to helping out locals.
In this case, the Nadi Primary School.
Clayton said after arriving in Fiji they were swept off to their five-star resort accommodation, where the conference would be held.
Some of the huge crowd of O’Brien owners on the job at Nadi Primary School in Fiji.
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Supplied
This was the teachers’ shower - with no hot water.
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One of the Nadi students lending a hand and learning a few skills during the renovation.
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Clayton Zanella (centre) with his ‘apprentice’ for the day at Nadi’s school.
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An example of the toilets students were forced to ujse.
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Delighted students gave the project the big thumbs up.
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But just outside those luxurious confines Clayton and his colleagues were about to discover a whole other world.
A world where the only sporting equipment local children had was kicking a used tyre around a grassless oval.
In a school which Clayton said “had toilets of a sort” but none of which were connected to the questionable sewerage system.
“There was raw sewage spilling onto the ground, there was no hot water in the school, and it had 600 students,” Clayton explained.
“It was such a shocking contrast between resort and reality – outside the houses had mesh windows for goodness sake,” he said.
“But being with the O’Brien group we make sure the start of every national conference, wherever we are, starts with a day of giving back.
“And that’s what 150 of us plumbers and sparkies did – spent the whole day giving the Nadi school a serious overhaul.”
Clayton said the O’Brien Group has done similar projects, but not in the same conditions, in Australia as well, at schools and neighbourhood houses.
He said ahead of the group arriving in Fiji, their giving back project had been scoped in advance, so they had a container of gear headed into the country from New Zealand to get the job done.
“It contained the tools and materials we would need – here a drill skin would cost around $200, there it would be around $1200, so we brought everything we would need.”
What wasn’t planned for were the ‘holdups’ in customs, which threatened to take months to resolve until some informal negotiations saw the container released.
He said that was a stressful time, as without the container nothing would really get done.
“But once we did get it, we got straight to work, replacing toilets, connecting everything to the sewerage system, doing internal repairs in rooms, laundries and showers, ran in proper electrical cabling, installed lights and working power points, and established water efficiencies,” Clayton explained.
“A lot of the partners travelling with us did a great job with the paintbrushes as well – the whole place looked way better and certainly worked a lot better than the day before we got there,” he said. “And a large group of mothers have agreed to take on responsibility for maintaining the work done.
“We also left a pile of books and pens and pencils – as well as 80 rugby, soccer and netballs, which were a huge hit with the kids.
“Also rewarding was we had a few of the older students wanting to work with us, and one I helped was brilliant. You only had to show him anything once and he got it done perfectly; he was amazing.
“So we left all the tools and surplus materials at the school – and that was a pretty good feeling too.”
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