Home Stay Sweet Home has broken ground
IT doesn’t get more community than the Macquarie Home Stay success, the first sod turned this week after eight years of planning and fundraising.
This is what can be achieved by committed local people working with all levels of government.
The Homestay will provide lowcost, convenient accommodation for people from across the region who have family in Dubbo Hospital, and Stage One will see 14 guest rooms, communal kitchen and other living areas.
The NSW government kicked in more than $3 million to the project, former state MP Dawn Fardell pleased that current member Troy Grant kept working with the Home Stay committee to push the project through.
During a recent hospital walkthrough, Troy Grant told Premier Gladys Berejiklian how he had to spend the night on the hospital floor after driving from his police station at Walgett when his daughter was born prematurely.
I’ve spent plenty of nights sleeping on the floor or chairs at the hospital to be with family members – and that’s bad enough even when you live in Dubbo, so this project will make an enormous difference to so many people.
Local company MAAS Group was named to build the first stage, so that means more local jobs.
And don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown at the Home Stay by the local Country Womens’ Association (CWA) branch, raised from the sale of their Dubbo HQ.
I love the CWA’S alternate title of Cranky Womens’ Association and love to see that organisation getting cranky with government when they feel the bush is being let down – these ladies certainly stand their ground.
Next week Dubbo will be the site of a major CWA campaign launch championing women and families living in regional and rural NSW as part of its annual Awareness Week from September 2 to 9.
This year’s campaign focuses on four key areas:
The rights of grandparents as primary carers of their grandchildren
Encouraging and assisting rural and regional women in starting their own small business
Advocating for greater financial literacy amongst rural and regional women
Building resilience amongst teenage girls in rural and regional NSW.
The launch will take place at the Railway Bowling Club on Saturday, September 2, at 10.30am.
More jobs
SPEAKING of jobs, how much money is being pumped into the local economy by what seems to be almost non-stop construction on a gigantic scale at Fletcher International Exports grain terminal?
I was out there doing a yarn the other day and couldn’t believe the size of the storage sheds that are being built.
It was great to see a crew from local fabricators Smythe’s Structural Steel on the job; apparently there’s a lot of local firms getting work out there, and that’s a great thing.
Since I’ve been writing a series of stories on Fletchers many people have commented that they’re driving past the plant and noticing for the first time just how many cars are parked out front, and realising just how many local people the company employs.
More, and more jobs
OUR biggest private company isn’t the only success story in town. How about Clive & Wally – Australia’s last eyewear frame manufacturer.
The company was previously on the brink of closing until Gino Trigatti stepped in to save the business with the help of a $60,000 grant from the NSW Government-backed Jobs for NSW.
Gino has used the Jobs for NSW grant to reinvigorate a business that was about to shut its doors, buying new machinery from Italy and France to compete on the world stage.
Clive & Wally now has nine staff but expect that will increase to 28 full time employees by 2020/21.
That’s a pretty amazing effort from a relatively small amount of seed money, but it shows what can be done with a helping hand from government to passionate and determined people.
More, and more money, money, money
PLENTY of companies out in the world, especially banks, say the right things to make themselves look good and then do the opposite, but not so Regional Australia Bank, who this week distributed $100,000 to local charities and not-for-profit organisations.
How good is this, a bank announcing six figure support and not just 10 figure profits?
Compare that with the Commonwealth bank which is being hauled over the coals for allegedly failing its governance duties to report tens of thousands of large transactions which could have been going to fund terrorism – and look at the bonuses all the top people at the C-bank have been rolling in these past few years.
How much better is our local bank?
Camouflaged but still seen
PLENTY of military stuff seen passing through Dubbo this week, and I noticed three ex-army Kiowa choppers on the back of a B-double even though they were trying to blend pretty well into the background.
Within days I saw a couple of Bushmaster armoured vehicles driving around central Dubbo in circles, or rectangles, as that’s the way the streets tend to lay.
I hope this doesn’t mean the army’s taking over to run the next phase of the council amalgamation.