Nova 100’s Jase & Lauren, co-host Lauren Phillips headed down the freeway to Geelong to smell the roses. Okay, not roses but instead the Corpse Plant at the Geelong Botanic Gardens which sometimes only blooms once in a decade.
Accompanied by Bec Maddern and Tom Hawkins the team encouraged Bec to describe the experience:
Lauren: Tell Bec what happened in your newsroom yesterday when you told them where we’re going to be live from?
Clint Stanaway: That we were doing an outside broadcast with Lauren Phillips, there was a chorus of laughter!
Bec: What! What’s wrong with them? They’re not as quirky and as interesting as us, that’s the problem. You’ve got to be sort of quirky, little off beat, you know. But hang on a minute. I think the crowd proved how popular this thing is Loz!
Lauren: Absolutely. There’s thousands of people here Bec, but I need to know you’re coming down for a sniff darl?
Bec: I can’t!.. So can you fully describe it to me in your best David Attenborough style? Like what’s the smell like?… I just think, I thought about this, and why I’m actually so obsessed with this stupid flower, and thought we have to report and we hear about grim, terrible things every day, and that’s life. And you know what? To have a little bit of fun about a flower that flowers once every 10 years that actually is not that pretty and smells disgusting is a good break in the cycle that we live in.
Lauren: I’m in the greenhouse now, and it actually smells a bit like a hot Pilates class, to be perfectly honest. I reckon a few of you blokes in a hot Pilates class would be reminiscent of the waft that is in here… look, Tom, if it doesn’t work out on Fox Footy, get a couple of these corpse plants in your garden, and you’ll draw a crowd again.
The crowds lining up to see the corpse plant flower have been extraordinary, as you can see in Jase and Lauren’s Instagram story below. Personally, the little boy’s face in the background of the main picture of Lauren’s photo says it all!