Hi Abigail.Lyn, Welcome to Garden Web. Please see addressing newbie and newer member issues for instructions on getting your Member Page email link set up as well as your zone and location set up. An email link is necessary to be reached for trading and a location is beneficial in many ways. Some folks will not reply if there is no location shown. Sue

A good resource for camellia advice in your area may be the folks at Roslyn Nursery in Dix Hills, NY, which has long carried many of those varieties and they are very knowledgeable about growing camellias in your climate. See link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Roslyn Nursery

Like their rhododendron cousins, camellias have a very shallow, dense and matt-like root system. They dislike being planted too deeply and they dislike being smothered in mulch. 4 inches is excessive. It's not a matter of the camellias preferring the mulch. The roots grow into it because they can more easily access necessary oxygen, water and nutrients. Were the mulch not present, the roots would have done the same colonization of the surrounding soil. The recommendation for mulching around these plants is to have the greatest depth of mulch at the dripline and then feather the mulch gradually back to the base/trunk. And once again, 4 inches is on the excessive side. 2-3 inches is sufficient.

I guessed you're in Oz given the Camellia in August clue and Google tells me this is an Australian cultivar. Pics show variable petal numbers, so, as long as your plant is correctly labelled, I'm sure you'll get doubles in due course.