Seven Days
MULTIPLE AGONY
IN the past month there’s been a string of tragedies in the city the like of which I’ve never seen.
Many of them haven’t been made public, but that doesn’t make them any less painful to those close to the people who’ve died.
Suicides, attempted suicides, a young child hammered by afflictions more often seen in the elderly, a young bloke dying of Ewings Sarcoma.
The latest death is that of 16 year-old boy Sam Fraser, out celebrating the end of school with his mates, swimming in the Macquarie River just off Bunglegumbie Road.
I am connected to almost all these deaths in some way – not as close as many other people, but close enough to feel spasms of grief for what they’re going through.
2016 has been a shitty, shitty year, and I just hope to whatever force is running this universe that 2017 is a whole lot better than this.
Another part of me wonders how the innocent families in Aleppo, the Syrian battleground, face day after day, year after year of slaughter, chaos and intimidation – even with all this doom and gloom hovering over us, we still have so much to be thankful for.
This Christmas, don’t focus on the presents and the beers, take the time to have a really close look at your family and friends, become a part of that moment, and revel in the blessings you’ve got.
BLESSED BE THE CROOKS, THEY’LL NEED IT IF THEY GET CAUGHT
IF thoughts could kill, a few crooks in Dubbo would be feeling more than crook at the moment.
Some pieces of human flotsam and jetsam have broken into the Rescue Squad’s shed and stolen a boat motor.
This isn’t the first time the VRA has been targeted this year, but this time they needed that motor to help search for the young bloke who disappeared under the water this week – imagine if that had been their brother or mate !!!!!
I for one hope that Karma with a big capital K comes and kicks them fair up where it hurts.
If anyone knows anything please let the cops know – it’s not like it’s dobbing in your mates because who’d want to mates with these pieces of crap.
BREAK AND ENTER
“TIS the season, it seems, to break and enter and steal stuff that’s not yours.
Last month a 61 year-old Dubbo lady awoke to find two men in her Cunningham St home – they threatened her before doing the place over.
Now one of these alleged thieves (I’m not alleging they’re men, because they’re not), was arrested at Mudgee Base Hospital.
He’s been charged with aggravated break and enter, or home invasion, and commit serious indictable offence whilst in company.
Love those semi-biblical terms the cops use to describe these charges, now let’s hope the court has the balls to dispense a quantum of biblical justice.
Imagine if that was your mum or grandmother who was scared out of her wits.
WATER WOES, NOW “WATER BOSS” GOES …
AFTER a month where he’s overseen some of the greatest disasters to hit Dubbo’s water supply in recent times, Dubbo Regional council’s tech service boss Stewart Mcleod has retired.
I find the timing of this retirement to be an absolutely remarkable coincidence.
A council press release nicely skirted all those unpleasant facts and spun the good spin, hailing his decades-long career as “remarkable”.
The most remarkable thing I remember, aside from many project cost overruns, was the “Dozergate” affair, where his department paid someone $305,000 over a 15 month period to hire a $45,000 worn out traxcavator to use at the council tip – to me it was truly remarkable that no-one ever had to man-up and take responsibility for that waste of ratepayer dollars, but then, this council doesn’t like admitting to systemic dysfunction, ever.
Don’t even start me on the Brisbane St roundabout that took eight months to build and nearly devastated some local businesses – or the Moffatt Rd, which had to be rebuilt twice before any vehicles actually used it. I could go on, and on, and on. Some people may think this commentary is a bit harsh, but I don’t think we should be sugarcoating these sorts of things.
Hopefully we’ll see a major generational change at the top levels of council in the next 12 months, God knows many people have been waiting 40 years for it.
This Christmas, don’t focus on the presents and the beers, take the time to have a really close look at your family and friends, become a part of that moment, and revel in the blessings you’ve got.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT A DROP OF COMPENSATION
I’M not generally in favour of compensation, but so many organisations, businesses and individuals lost out big time in the ongoing water disasters that I’m disappointed DRC isn’t at least going to give some relief on water rates – after all, we couldn’t use what we were paying through the neck for.
With the claims of maintenance not being carried out at the council reservoirs, we more than even need a truly independent audit into this whole mess, DRC as an opaque organisation just can’t be trusted to truly look inwards and release any negative findings about itself.
And if this whole contamination mess was proven to be avoidable, then the people found responsible should be penalised, not the ratepayers.
DIRTY DEEDS, DIRTY WATER
HOW about the oil slick in the Macquarie River near Wellington/geurie earlier this week.
I cannot understand when water supply is becoming the major issue of concern across the world, that we have governments at all levels falling over themselves to approve coal mines, Coal Seam gas and other industry that pose such a risk to our water security.
And most of these industries back in hidden subsidies from the taxpayer, yet mount ‘slick’ and well-funded spin doctoring campaigns to tell us how hard done by they are, how they need security of investment, and how they just want to make money to benefit all Australians.
Spare me that crap, what with oil slicks, erosion at Bell Junction and state agencies destroying native fish breeding cycles via cold water pollution, it seems like the people with the power don’t care about those who actually own all this stuff – and that’s us.
A lot of people are looking into how this local oil slick came about and there are some suspicions out there – we’ll keep a close eye on this one.
WATER FROM THE SKY
FOUR inches of rain overnight in some areas around town this week, an amazing fall which upset a lot of harvesting and building going on around the place.
Hopefully it won’t hurt anyone too much – the only reason I normally feel sorry for tradies is wondering how they’ll be able to find enough hundred dollar notes in circulation so they can get paid in cash.
This is such a good way to do business, and it means at least some of the economic outcomes don’t have the chance to get into the government’s system, which has a great ability at turning one dollar into 20 or 30 cents.
I think we need to do an holistic audit on this issue, instead of listening to academics spout about how many billions of dollars of taxes we’re missing out on.
Crack down on the multinational tax avoidance, that’d sort all our problems out, except our senior decision makers would be receiving too many cranky phone calls on their unlisted mobile numbers.
MDBA MEET
A WELL attended, non-public meeting with staff from the Murray Darling Basin Authority in Dubbo this week, to get feedback from proposals to rip 16 megalitres of environmental water from the Macquarie – needless to say that didn’t go down too well.
It’s great to see so many people ready to fight the bureaucracy on the water issue, we really need to be a united and activist community when it comes to water, otherwise we’ll get steamrolled by which corporate lobbyist throws the most cash around down in Canberra.
GOOD NEWS, DEEPLY BURIED THIS WEEK
NOT happy we’ve had to come almost 1000 words in to this week’s column before there’s anything good being offered up, but for all the doom and gloom life goes on for most, and as always, there are plenty of good people doing great things in Dubbo and surrounds.
Let’s start with some positive results from Dubbo College Senior Campus, where Wellington’s Nick Trappett had an outstanding year.
I’ve been very critical of our city having just one high school over three campuses for all sorts of valid reasons and nothing’s going to make me change my mind on that issue any time soon, but that’s not to say there aren’t some very good things being done.
The college has scored a win with its Transition to University program, and Nick, who was the college vice-captain, was able to use that lever to pull an ATAR of 93.8, being accepted into a law and media double degree at Macquarie University.
I think this program should be rolled out to all the high schools in the bush, it sounds like it can make up for a lot of the disadvantage suffered by students who go to school in the bush.
Nick got three band 6s, in legal studies, modern history and extension history and three Band 5 Nick worked with Education and Training Out West (ETOW) in the school’s Transition to University program, which provides support to students while they are at school, during their gap year, and at university.
The 18-year-old was one of 47 students who worked with ETOW’S Cathy Jones, Kerry Perrin and Anne Shortis under the program, with all 47 students gaining places at university.
Four of the program’s students including Nick, Tom Broome and Alex Frances from Wellington and Annika Mestrom from Dubbo were successful earlier this year in gaining entry to university through the Global Leadership program.
“The support I’ve received from the College through the Transition to University program has been incredible and I can’t speak highly enough of this initiative,” Nick said. Members of Team Zircon were all happy to have achieved entry to various university programs including medicine and engineering. Sharik Burgess-stride received an ATAR of 88.5, while Chayan Deb Nath achieved 92.7.
Reece Holland will study teaching and technology at the University of Newcastle, school captain Amelia Prince will study podiatry at CSU Albury, Abbie Gollan will take on nursing at the University of Notre Dame and Jack Mills has already started a four-year apprenticeship with Ramien’s Timber in Dubbo.
We’ve seen this past month that our one shot at life is extraordinarily precious, so hopefully these young people will be able to seize their day.
PERFECT PORTIA
MEANWHILE, St Johns College student Portia Gooch achieved an almost perfect ATAR of 99.90 – that’s the second highest possible score.
She scored 47 in Extension One English, 48 in Extension Two English, 96 in Studies of Religion Two, 96 in Legal Studies and 97 in Modern History which put her 9th in NSW
She also scored an amazing 97 in Advanced English which put her at 20th in NSW, but completed that subject last year as an accelerated year 11 student.
Overall, that gave her ATAR of 99.90, which won a scholarship from the University of Sydney where she plans to study Law and International and Global Studies next year. Lots and lots of talent around. Congratulations to my wife Kristi, who was Portia’s teacher for Studies of Religion Two (SOR), half the class received band 6s and the others all got band 5s – we’re very proud.
Sissian Abbey also received an All Rounder Award ATAR 97.10
SJC had 65 Band 6s across all faculties according to principal Kerry Morris, with SOR 2U (50 percent) and Visual Arts (33.3 percent) Band 6s, an outstanding achievement.
At the time of writing approximately 16 students achieved over 90 ATAR, with three more yet to be confirmed.
Mrs Morris said she was very pleased with the depth of the results and the holistic performance of the College across all faculties.
END OF CAREER
JUST as these kids are starting off their careers, there’s one retirement yarn this week that’s pretty amazing.
Rick O’dea finished up at Astley’s Plumbing and Hardware after almost 43 in the job.
It’s a pleasure, and a privilege, to interview someone who’s enjoyed going to work every day for such a long period of time.
Best of luck with your planned travelling.
NEW JOB, SWEET PASTURES
LOCAL bloke Duncan Bremner, a Prime News Dubbo reporter many years ago, has scored one of the sweetest rural jobs in Australia, this week it was officially announced that he’d be taking over as Cattle Council Australia CEO in the new year.
Well done mate, I think you’ve got all the skills, experience and vision to move this industry like it’s never been moved before.
This is a space I’ll be looking at very closely, the ag sector has so much potential in Australia but it’s been too many years of the same old people at the top far too scared to try anything truly innovative.
SPEAKING OF JOBS
I made up a Facebook post this past week which said I’d gotten a job running a busy national newsroom based in Brisbane so was making the move up to cane toad country.
After lots of lies, down the bottom I stated that the post was untrue, and that it was a mere social experiment to see how many people only read the headline.
Sadly, it became obvious that many of my media mates didn’t scrutinise things properly, although I would have thought that the claim I was going to be heading up a responsible newsroom should have sent the alarm bells and red flags into overtime – as if.
SINGING CHRISTMAS
GREAT to see the local Sing Australia choristers doing their bit to spread some Christmas cheer, God knows it’s been a crappy lead-up to the alleged festive season in this neck of the woods.
About 150 people turned up to sing along the other night, so great to see the community getting together on things like this.