sue January 26th, 2009
It was wonderful to see the Australian flags flying from several houses and many cars as I travelled to Burrum Heads this morning. A large crowd enjoyed a breakfast feast (I stuck to just a cup of tea due to my dieting efforts but those snags sure smelled nice), and then were entertained by the Village Voices choir. In between we listened to the official speeches. Now its off to the Pier Park celebrations in the Bay this evening.
Australia Day is a day of celebration of all things Australian and it is interesting to listen to the debate about changing the date. I think the debate is one worth exploring. Once one starts to travel a bit overseas it becomes much more obvious how lucky we are to live in this, our wide brown land and I think it is important that we take a moment from our busy lives to say thanks and appreciate just how lucky we are.
Burrum Heads Australia Day crowd
Our flag flying high
sue January 20th, 2009
Hello everyone and I trust that you all have enjoyed a safe and happy holiday. I have enjoyed having these past 3 weeks to concentrate on house and garden activities and just catching up on things that I have wanted to do and ‘haven’t had the time’.
After the trip to Woodford I have been based at home cleaning, weeding and reading in that order. Graham and I are going horse riding tomorrow arvo at Susan River so if I survive I will report on the experience later this week. I have taken the plunge and am trying out contact lenses. My deteriorating eye sight is age related and wearing glasses has been a reasonably recent necessity. My partner and sister both use contacts so I thought why not! Well the biggest challenge has been learning to get them in correctly… well I will rephrase that…. getting them in at all! I am improving today being day 4 but it is still a challenge to get this tiny piece of delicate plastic situated onto my eyeball. Now today is my first day with one lens for short distance in one eye and a lens for long distance in the other. Yes I can see but everything is not crystal clear. I will try this system for a couple more days to see if the old grey matter adapts. It works for Graham so I live in hope. If I don’t adapt I may give up and go back to glasses as when wearing contact lenses just for distance I will still need reading glasses and then of course sunglasses. My regular glasses had 3 different strengths for short, long and in between and were tinted and non glare and I could see very clearly. The whole experience is interesting and I just hope my brain adjusts to this long and short eye thing as once in, the contacts are no trouble at all. Aren’t the trials of ageing wonderful!!!!!!
Next on my list of things to do for myself was getting thinner. My weight has slowly been creeping in one direction which isn’t down! For Christmas I received my wish of a Wii Fit and I love it. A huge range of interactive exercises and games and it keeps track of my weight and I’m enjoying using it. The feedback is great and even jogging on the spot is interesting as you watch the little guy in front of you and enjoy the scenery via the television. For someone like me with a competitive streak and an ability to get bored doing anything repetitive like exercising the Wii Fit is great. Lastly I’m giving the Tony Ferguson program a go and so far it is easy to follow. No hard sell and a logical approach to food intake. So maybe in a couple of months there will be less of me and I will see OK without glasses! Time will tell.
So enough about me and to work issues. Council has our Corporate Plan out for comment now and I encourage you to have a peek and let us know what you think. Two residents have commented to me personally so far. One resident is worried that the environment is not emphasised enough and the other thought the aims were all good but possibly a bit broad. Please take the time to let myself and/or Council know if you think we are on the right track. The plan is available here http://www.frasercoast.qld.gov.au/council/Public%20Submissions%20page.shtml or from the link on the Council home page.
Over the next few days I will try and tweak this site and try and set up another email address for correspondence. I think it best to commit to adding a comment to the blog section regularly so am planning to promise to post a comment 3 times a week as a minimum. A comment every day is just too hard to do I’m afraid. If you think this is a good idea or not, do let me know. The blog is supposed to help me communicate with you all so please let me know if you think categories need changing or anything else to make the site work a bit better. Till next time I hope this finds you in good health, Sue
sue January 6th, 2009
I was honoured to receive a CD from Geoff Piper and Robyn Minchinbury recently containing their photographs of Dundowran Beach. Robyn and Geoff, both Dundowran residents, describe themselves as amateur photographers but on viewing their work I believe they would compete easily with professional photographers. Robyn and Geoff decided to take photographs at Dundowran Beach each and every day for an entire year. They have selected the best shots for each day and the compilation is a masterpiece. The photographs depict our beautiful local beach in all shades, colours and weather. Some photographs focus on the native vegetation and wildlife adjacent to the beach while others capture the many interactions that the human species has with this coastal strip. There are 366 photographs (November 2007 – November 2008) accounting for the leap year, and these photographs collectively paint an amazing portrait of our wonderful local natural habitat.
Thank you Robyn and Geoff for undertaking the project as the results will give pleasure to many and be an excellent historical record of our local area for years to come. If you would like a CD of the photographs in high res and suitable for many uses, they are available from Geoff and Robyn for $10. You can view the photographs via picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/piperwg/DUNDOWRANBEACH#
Robyn Minchinton and Geoff Piper can be contacted to order copies of the CD via their email addresses as follows.
Robyn Minchinton via r.minchinton@bigpond.com 07 4128 8333 and Geoff Piper via piperwg@bigpond.com