Healthy habitats. Supporting blokes.
This year the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) rocked up to partner with Inland Waterways and Mid-macquarie Landcare to explain the importance of Hollows for Habitat along with plenty of other messages.
Just as Inland Waterways has been re-snagging sections of the Macquarie River to create homes for native fish to shelter in protection while they breed, so too do many native animals need protection in the form of hollows in trees – either natural or man-made – to replicate ‘home’.
With the comp attracting more than 1500 anglers this year, not to mention all the family and friends who also tagged along, this education message is spreading.
So many comments I heard this year were about how the work of Inland Waterways has made fishing like it used to be 40-50 years ago, when you could go down to the river and reasonably expect to catch a fish.
If that’s the improvement from a standing start against plenty of entrenched opposition less than 10 years ago, I can’t wait to see what the next few decades will bring. seen just why this message is so important to get across.
Did you know that 96 per cent of tradies go bust in the first 10 years?
Beau doesn’t want local tradies to become statistics, frustrated, angry or even sick when thinking about their financial statements – he wants them to open up and talk, to ask questions about what they don’t know.
“I didn’t get to the top of my game without asking everyone I could questions about everything they could help me with,” Beau said.
“I think the hardest thing is trying to reach out to people and see it’s not a sign of weakness – Australian men, blokes, don’t want to say they’re not over every aspect of their business, they don’t want to be perceived as being weak.”
Beau’s staging a workshop on April 16 at the Western Star Hotel from 6-8pm and dinner will be provided.
Perry’s dad Mark is urging all local tradies to show up, he thinks the message will be of huge benefit.
“It’s tremendous,” Mark said. “Every little thing helps and to have someone with a profile like Beau Robinson running this workshop, how good’s that.”
Mark pointed out we’re a tradie town, a hardworking town, so it would be great to attract all of those tradies to come along and listen to what Beau has to say.
“Those stats blow me away and until you’re told about it, until you recognise it, you just don’t know what a huge problem it is.
“We’ve got to discuss this range of issues and openly discuss it now, not when it’s all too late,” he said.
Mark wishes that workshop had been around for Perry to attend – he’s seen first-hand that many kids who go on to trades are so focused on building things that the bookwork and administration takes a backseat.
“Unfortunately, society’s like that, we don’t seem to identify issues and problems until we’re affected by them, or someone we know is affected by them, and that’s one of those things,” Mark said.
“It takes me back to Perry. He loved school for sport and woodwork and he ended up being a builder and he started his own company, and this is my boy who didn’t like that bookwork, didn’t like that academic side of school, but he loved doing what he did as a builder. He was achieving something that he liked to do and he wanted to perfect at that.
“To get there, just before he died, he’d achieved his clerk of works. He’d come so far because he was focused on something he loved doing.
“But we need to be mindful that any of these issues can affect tradies,” he said.
Anyone wishing to attend can call Beau Robinson on 0409 18 99 55, or email evelyn@actioncoach. com
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z Additional reporting by
News staff. Note: John Ryan is also a councillor on Dubbo Regional Council, and is also a paid employee with Landcare. He writes here in his capacity as a journalist.