Bob fears loss of link to local news
The radio is one of 92 yearold Bob Allen’s most important links to the world.
Macular degeneration, which he has had for the past 18 years, has left him with only about five per cent vision.
That’s enough to get him around his house in Warragul and continue a few hobbies, especially woodworking, but reading a newspaper – particularly local news about West Gippsland where he has lived all of his life and the wider Gippsland region – is out of the question.
For that he has relied on Vision Australia Radio broadcast from Warragul and put to air by more than 50 volunteers.
But Mr Allen and several hundred thousand others across Australia are worried the radio service may soon stop.
The Warragul station 93.5 broadcasts over a wide region from Sale to Berwick and Warragul to the coast.
One of the volunteers at Warragul Jenny Pearce said VAR stations throughout Australia are under threat due to re-arranged federal government programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and flow-on effects on Vision Australia.
Ms Pearce said the Vision Australia board was due to meet late this month to decide if its regional radio services should continue.
VA is struggling financially anyway and has no money for radio unless separate funding is provided, she said.
His radio and the local information it gives through readings from the region’s newspapers, books, websites and history as well as a morning program, Gippsland breakfast bytes, introduced at Warragul 93.5 earlier this year have become more important to Mr Allen since his wife, Anne, passed away about 12 months ago.
He had farmed at Hallora all of his life until moving to Warragul five years ago.
His radio left on a coffee table next to his favourite chair and tuned to the local VAR is used every day by Mr Allen to keep up to date with things.
With his very limited vision sound on the television doesn’t make much sense to him.
He prefers the radio to keep him company and informed.
Otherwise active, other than the limitations due to his poor eyesight, Mr Allen potters around in a woodworking workshop he has at home and once a week at craft sessions at Vision Australia’s premises in Warragul.
He describes the volunteers at VA, those that put the radio programs to air and run other activities as “a great bunch”.
Ms Pearce said there is something special in bringing the special radio services to blind and vision impaired people and to others that, for whatever reasons, don’t read well.
She said she and the many other volunteers would be devastated if the service cannot be continued.