Seven Days

Dubbo Photo News - - News & Analysis - The week’s top sto­ries from around the re­gion by John Ryan

WIS­DOM? I THINK NOT

CON­VEN­TIONAL wis­dom these days is that not one per­son could keep up with ad­vances in tech­nol­ogy even if they spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just mon­i­tor­ing what’s new.

And even in this lit­tle part of the world, just try­ing to com­pre­hend what’s hap­pened in the past week so I can whack it into this 7Days col­umn is get­ting to be a big­ger and big­ger task – and that’s just not­ing and re­port­ing on things, with­out wor­ry­ing about any anal­y­sis of events.

This week we’ve had Artlands, a ma­jor fire, a plane crash, my com­puter crashed, the Mur­ray Dar­ling As­so­ci­a­tion held its con­fer­ence in town, we’ve had a ma­jor road safety cam­paign go so well it’s to be rolled out statewide, and so much more.

As some­one who’s been used to keep­ing an eye on ev­ery­thing that’s hap­pened in Dubbo dur­ing the past three decades, I’ve never seen any­thing like it – this at a time when the cor­po­rate me­dia out­lets are gut­ting their re­port­ing and edit­ing staff, it re­ally doesn’t make sense – you have gotta love lo­cally owned me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions, I know I do.

TAFETY

THERE’S a full ar­ti­cle ear­lier in the paper about the safety cam­paign launched at TAFE this week by roads min­is­ter Dun­can Gay and deputy premier Troy Grant, but the young ap­pren­tice, Ben Be­van from North­parkes mine, stole the show with his im­promptu com­edy rou­tines dur­ing a speech filled with very se­ri­ous con­tent.

It’s great to see so many govern­ment agen­cies work­ing to­gether, and with out­side busi­nesses, to make some­thing good hap­pen, and it’s only by this sort of real col­lab­o­ra­tion that we’re go­ing to get any sort of real and pos­i­tive out­comes in this crazily bu­reau­cra­tised world.

Take note, Dubbo Re­gional Coun­cil (DRC), I’m com­ing for you.

Still on TAFE and lo­cal Abo­rig­i­nal stu­dent Dy­lan Coe is en­thu­si­as­tic about the range of op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered by the ed­u­ca­tion provider.

The 23 year-old grad­u­ated from a Cer­tifi­cate IV in Hos­pi­tal­ity in Au­gust and then al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ously gained em­ploy­ment at Woolies.

“Go­ing to TAFE helped me build good cus­tomer skills and also pre­pared me for em­ploy­ment,” Dy­lan said.

“I re­ally en­joyed TAFE, it gave me a sense of pur­pose.

“It’s a great way to get peo­ple off the street and can play a huge role in help­ing out our com­mu­nity,” he said.

TAFE of­ten gets a bad rap so it’s good to see these pos­i­tive news sto­ries, and they need to be told.

THE CEIL­ING’S THE LIMIT

WHILE I think the Dubbo – Welling­ton amal­ga­ma­tion is a great thing, I hope that the legacy se­nior staff from the for­mer Dubbo City Coun­cil un­der­stand that they can learn from Welling­ton, just as Wello can learn from Dubbo.

Welling­ton Shire Coun­cil did a lot of good stuff on a minis­cule bud­get and, dare I say it, in many ways where they didn’t over­bur­den them­selves with crazy un­nec­es­sary red tape and bloated bu­reau­cracy, they would have done many things just as well and far more cost­ef­fec­tively that the be­he­moth that is Dubbo, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that floats on an en­vi­ron­men­tally dis­as­trous sea of paper.

So, lis­ten and learn, please don’t think you know it all be­cause, af­ter all, it is the ratepay­ers who pay for all this, and we’re not the least bit in­ter­ested in em­pire-build­ing egos and in­com­pe­tence.

Good news in Wello though, with scaf­fold­ing around the coun­cil cham­bers while the roof is be­ing re­placed.

Dubbo Re­gional Coun­cil As­set Man­ager Steve Parish said that the roof was in need of re­pair due to age which was caus­ing ma­jor wa­ter leaks.

“The area had been sub­ject to wa­ter leaks over a pe­riod of some years and it was nec­es­sary to do a full re­place­ment,” Mr Parish said.

“The work is be­ing done by lo­cal con­trac­tors who in­cluded the re­moval and dis­posal of cop­per roof sheet­ing in their suc­cess­ful ten­der,” Mr Parish said.

“The work in­cludes re­paint­ing of both the fa­cia and the eaves to the up­per level while we have scaf­fold­ing in place, as well as in­stal­la­tion of roof hatch and an­chor points for WH&S rea­sons,” he said.

Some­thing very good which coun­cil’ Ca­tri­ona Jen­nings is or­ga­niz­ing is a free work­shop of­fer­ing ad­vice on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions with the clo­sure of the NSW So­lar Bonus Scheme.

For any­one who grabbed hold of the up to 60 cent re­bates on send­ing power into the grid with a so­lar sys­tem, this event will tell you how to best uti­lize that so­lar in­fra­struc­ture into the fu­ture, like with bat­tery stor­age and all sorts of other things.

Even be­fore it was prop­erly ad­ver­tised more than 100 peo­ple had booked, forc­ing coun­cil to move it from an in-house room to a much larger venue.

The work­shop will be held on Tues­day 15 November 2016 from 5.30pm to 7.30pm in the Con­fer­ence The­atrette at the Dubbo RSL on the corner of Bris­bane and Winge­warra streets, Dubbo.

To book, go to www.en­er­gy­op­por­tu­ni­ty­work­shops.eventbrite.com.au

Mean­time, in­ter­est­ing whis­pers com­ing out of Nar­romine Shire with word that the new crop of coun­cilors are look­ing to do some spring clean­ing, so all the best to our west­ern cousins.

SE­NIOR CAM­PUS WINS

GOOD news for Dubbo Col­lege Se­nior Cam­pus across a range of ar­eas, and hope­fully that will con­tinue when the HSC re­sults are re­leased.

Year 12 boys Luke Gale and Clay­ton Couley re­cently re­turned from a tour of New Zealand with the NSW com­bined high schools un­der-17 rugby league devel­op­ment side, they’re both in St Ge­orge Drag­ons devel­op­ment squad.

Gale plays with the Mac­quarie Raiders and Couley is lock for Nyn­gan Tigers, so well done to these two young blokes.

Mean­time the col­lege has cho­sen it’s new stu­dent lead­ers for the 2017 year.

Nunka-wa-ru Pearce and Sharika-mar­rie Howard take on the roles as cap­tain of se­nior cam­pus.

Vice-cap­tains are Marty Jef­frey and Rosa Wil­liams-karam, so well done to all you young peo­ple for putting your hands up for these roles.

LUCKY FOR SOME

OKAY, so you missed out on back­ing the win­ner in the Mel­bourne Cup, take the op­por­tu­nity to re­deem your fi­nances and help the health of our river at the same time.

The In­land Wa­ter­ways crew are stag­ing a Las Ve­gas Casino Night at the Castlereag­h Ho­tel on the night of Satur­day, November 12.

Full de­tails are in an ar­ti­cle fur­ther into this paper, but en­try cost is just $30 and there’s a huge num­ber of do­nated prizes up for grabs at a charity auc­tion on the night, in­clud­ing a Pee Wee 50 minibike, a framed Wal­la­bies jersey signed by the 2016 team and a night on the Miss Mac­quarie house­boat for 9 peo­ple.

Tick­ets are avail­able at the Castlereag­h.

River health is vi­tally im­por­tant as with­out func­tion­ing ecosys­tems, all life would col­lapse.

The money raised from the Casino Night will be pumped into the IWRA’S River Re­pair Bus, and keep rub­bish out of the Mac­quarie among other things.

Great for the end point of the Mac­quarie, where the river ends up in the world her­itage listed marshes.

You only have to check out the pic­tures of the thou­sands of wa­ter birds at the Mac­quarie Marshes at the mo­ment to un­der­stand that clean wa­ter means bio­di­ver­sity and life.

GAOL GOALS

THE Old Dubbo Gaol just keeps on giv­ing to the com­mu­nity, while it keeps on tak­ing cash from tax­pay­ers and tourists alike, and so it should, be­cause we should as a na­tion value our her­itage.

The gaol’s lat­est wind­fall is $4,500 cour­tesy of the feds through the com­mu­nity her­itage grants pro­gram.

Those let­ters were meant to be in caps but I’m get­ting sick of hav­ing to do that.

“This project will help the Gaol to pre­serve ob­jects of na­tional sig­nif­i­cance in the lo­cal com­mu­nity by un­der­tak­ing a preser­va­tion needs as­sess­ment of the col­lec­tion,” ac­cord­ing to Parkes MP Mark Coul­ton.

FART­ING FOR ART

I’M not ex­actly an arty farty per­son but there were some real life, hon­est to good­ness peo­ple cy­cling around town this week in mock Hitler Brown­shirt uni­forms with F.A.R.T in­signia em­bla­zoned on them, and the same on the gi­ant speak­ers mounted to their bikes.

Let’s just say the con­ver­sa­tion I had with them when I stum­bled across their get-up was in­ter­est­ing to say the least.

Luck­ily I’d had a huge help­ing of baked beans just prior to our sur­prise en­counter and boy, were they sur­prised.

I Googled the acro­nym and came across Fe­cal Air Rec­tally Trans­mit­ted, Fa­thers Against Rad­i­cal Teenagers and Fre­quency Ac­tu­ated Rec­tal Tremor among oth­ers, but these guys be­longed to the Fed­eral Arts Re­sponse Team, and their mis­sion is to stage “Arts In­ter­ven­tions”, which means they “Go about seek­ing out weird art and books, any­thing cul­tural, and we de­stroy it,” ac­cord­ing to FARTER Jo Lan­caster.

Talk about hav­ing an ap­pro­pri­ately de­struc­tive sur­name to go with that job.

PHOTO: DUBBO WEEK­ENDER

PHOTO CAP­TION Dubbo Re­gional Coun­cil Welling­ton Branch is cov­ered in scaf­fold­ing while the roof is be­ing re­placed.

PHOTO: SUP­PLIED.

Dy­lan Coe (left) with fel­low TAFE stu­dents Adam and Jack Bow­den at this year’s Banga­malanha Con­fer­ence.

PHOTO: SUP­PLIED.

Dubbo Col­lege Se­nior Cam­pus cap­tains Nunka-wa-ru Pearce and Sharika Mar­rie-howard, vice-cap­tains Marty Jef­frey and Rosa Wil­liams-karam, arts cap­tains Ethan Hughes and Sascha Wind­sor, and sports cap­tains Isaac-skin­ner and Ally Mclean.

PHOTO: SUP­PLIED

Dubbo Col­lege Year 12 stu­dents Luke Gale and Clay­ton Couley toured New Zealand as part of ot the NSW CHS un­der-17 rugby league team.

PHOTO: OF­FICE OF EN­VI­RON­MENT AND HERTIGAGE.

In­land Wa­ter­ways are rais­ing funds for a River Re­pair Bus to keep rub­bish out of the Mac­quarie River and main­tain the pris­tine stan­dard of the her­itage listed Mac­quarie Marshes.

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