Volunteering

The Young at Heart Playgroup, originally designed to connect young children with residents at the Maldon hospital, has been running for over seven years and now has more than 22 families, parents, grandparents and carers attending with their young children ... This year the playgroup has participated in the National Simultaneous Story Time and has started toddler-time sessions with visits from the Castlemaine Library.

Dorrobbee Grass Reserve is a beautiful reserve that surrounds the large concrete water tank on the hill just north of Dunoon. It is a special place of great cultural significance to the traditional custodians, the Widjabul Wia-bal people. The reserve is a traditional Aboriginal camping and travelling route maintained through cultural land-management practices, including cultural burning. The reserve is also a remnant ‘island’ of fire-dependent grassland and one of the last intact grassland ecosystems within the Big Scrub bioregion .

In anticipation of the return to a pre-Covid summer, the Australian Lifeguard Service is recruiting new Lifeguards to bolster its team of beach safety professionals ahead of the raising of the flags that signifies the start of the season, taking place in the September school holidays. It presents a fantastic opportunity to engage yourself in a rewarding role which will keep you fit and on the beach across the summer.

The Tarrangower Australia Day Committee has made the difficult decision to disband. In recent years, committee numbers have been dwindling, and efforts to recruit new members have had little or no results. The three remaining members have made the difficult decision to cease operations.

The report on the floods is in and it is a riveting and sobering read. With 21 findings and 37 recommendations, the NSW Legislative Council Select Committee has tackled the government’s response to the floods, the operations of the SES and the difficulties of getting grants from Resilience NSW.

Samuel Davis. A desperate 67-hour search to find an elderly Aurukun man has ended with a family member discovering him “stuck in the mud” in a nearby swamp ... Burt Wikmunea's disappearance prompted around 40 volunteers and SES members to assist police in finding Mr Wikmunea across four days.

A woman who helped save the life of her friend on a remote Cape York cattle station has been crowned the 2022 RFDS Local Hero Award winner for the Cairns region ... With Coen more than an hour’s drive away, and the nearest hospital at Weipa unable to be accessed due to flooding, Emma used the defibrillator machine on the property and performed CPR for an hour to help Peter bring his wife back to life.

Excellent reviews from tourists have resulted in a big tick for the Mount Isa Underground Hospital and Museum. The city’s top tourist attraction was picked for the Best of Queensland Experiences Program, which should lead to greater exposure through Tourism and Events Queensland.

Illegally cleared native vegetation is being restored along the Wilson Inlet foreshore. Locally-sourced plant material from the inlet foreshore is being used to restore the natural vegetation along the water’s edge which has been cleared without permits. The Shire of Denmark is collaborating with Wilson Inlet Catchment Committee in the project.

Narrandera Landcare had a rewarding National Tree Day planting morning at The Wetlands on Sunday when more than 40 volunteers helped plant the seedlings the group's volunteers started propagating late last year ... Over 600 seedlings were planted on the morning, adding to the 150 local schools had already planted this year.

Emma Pritchard. Aussie Hay Runners have partnered with Feed for Friends and the Rotary Club of Melton to transport 1000 bales of hay and several pallets of hard feed from rural Victoria to the Clarence Valley in support of local producers and small hobby farmers who have been adversely affected by the unprecedented flooding which devastated communities throughout Northern NSW earlier this year. A convoy of 31 trucks arrived in Grafton over the weekend.

Maldon residents Lauren Adele Stevens and her Dad, Ian Stevens, have once again headed off to Cambodia to continue working at Lauren’s Phnom Penh office with her local Cambodian team ... Alongside our WASH projects, Community Generation will commence a new project delivery of up-skilling and training local Khmer peoples with life-changing plumbing and maintenance skills delivered by fully qualified Australian plumbers,” Lauren said.

Serena Kirby. Festival of Voice organisers report good attendance for the start of this year’s extended program, traditionally held over three days of the WA Week weekend. This year’s program is spread across the month’s four weekends.

Kristin Nicholson. 50 years is an impressive length of time to be associated with one organisation. That's how long Barham’s Phil Mertz has been involved with the St Vincent de Paul Society, better known as Vinnies. Last month, Phil was recognised for his years of service. Phil began his association with Vinnies in the 1960s when he lived and worked at Hay.

Three state of the art High Clearance Vehicles are now in permanent operation for the NSW State Emergency Service (SES), expanding flood rescue capability by helping volunteers get to hard to reach places. The vehicles, known as Unimogs, have been handed over to the SES by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) after being used on deployment in military operations.

In an ambitious endeavour, a group of Central Victorian residents have come together to establish a Regional Community Vet Clinic (RCVC). The goal of this clinic is to support people who are experiencing dire financial situations to care for their companion animals, to run neutering programs and to support and promote the value of companion animals in the community.

Kendall Jennings. Unfortunately, my mind always takes a wander; I tend to overthink things and get stuck in my head. Hello, mental illness. One thing that has been on my mind recently is the decline in participation in community sport ... Over the past 12 months, I have realised that local football is not like it was 20 years ago.

John O'Donnell. After a walk along the Wilson River and Leycester Creek near their junction at Lismore, I called into the Winsome Hotel, thinking there might be a drink on hand, as it was close to lunchtime and there was no signage on the hotel indicating any changes in management.   No luck with any drinks, but I met Mieke Bell and she generously donated her time showing my wife and I what was happening on the ground floor after the floods.

Josie Emery. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a country town in possession of an event, must be in want of volunteers,’ so said Jane Austen ... in 1812 ... And 210 years later, Clif Edwards and Valentina Tansley are discovering the same universal truth as they work towards the unfolding of Maldon In Winter and Goldfields Gothic during June and July 2022.

Reclaim the Void: weaving country whole is a collaboration between Vivienne Robertson and the Leonora-based Ngalia Heritage Research Council (Aboriginal Corporation) ... Vivienne ... asked: "What is your deepest pain?" One of the Aunties replied: ”Those gaping mining holes left all over our country”.