YOU CAN BOOK ECA SERIES 6 2025 NOW AT Humanitix: Emerging Concert Artists 2025 Tour
Wollongong Art Gallery | Wombarra | St Jude’s Bowral For more information, contact Felicity at: e: inspiremusicaust@gmail.com | ph: 0408 422 427
Ocean Whisperings
Concerts Across the Lawn returns this Saturday
Launching 2025’s Emerging Concert Artists series, mezzo-soprano Olive Cullen will be returning home to Wombarra to present works from Penelope, a song cycle by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, with lyrics by playwright Ellen McLaughlin. It’s an apt choice. Inspired by Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, Penelope is a meditation on memory,
identity and what it means to come home. Now based in Melbourne, Olive is the daughter of Dr Rowena Ivers, a long-time Wombarra resident.
Olive will present her program, Ocean Whisperings: Penelope and Other Stories, at Concerts Across the Lawn, Wombarra on Saturday, February 8. Book via Humantix.
Save the date to Clean Up
By Merilyn House
Clean Up Australia Day returns on Sunday, 2 March 2025.
Join Helensburgh Landcare volunteers as we clean up Helensburgh’s footpaths, parks and creeks. Register at the Old Mine Surgery, 78 Parkes Street, Helensburgh, between 10am and 1pm.
We will provide you with a bag to clean up an area of your own choice – your own street, the park across the road, local creeks, etc. If you know of
an area which can do with a clean-up but can’t help on the day, please let me know so we can send someone to that area.
Once you have finished, return the bag of rubbish. Please wear a hat, long pants and shirt, sturdy closed-in shoes, and bring gloves and water.
For further information, please email merilyn@helensburghlandcare. org.au or ring 0414 819 742
City of Wollongong honours remarkable citizens
Words Genevieve Swart; photos Tyneesha Williams
Anadvocate for victim-survivors of violence, 2025 Citizen of the Year Malika Elizabeth Reese will use her award to spread a message of kindness.
“I’ll be able to use it as a platform to speak out about how important community is and how we are all connected to each other,” Malika said after the City of Wollongong Awards at City Beach Function Centre on Thursday.
“We need to be kind to ourselves and to each other. I think we are lacking a lot of self-kindness in this world at the moment.”
Born in Los Angeles, Malika came to Wollongong to study at the university in 1990. She’s worked with the Illawarra Women’s Health Centre and Women Illawarra, and is known for sharing her
own trauma to help others.
Malika took part in the first Australian Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Recovery and Healing Conference in Wollongong and, when she went on stage to receive her award yesterday, pinned to her shirt was a badge for the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse.
“Speaking out against child abuse and domestic violence is really important to me,” Malika said, “helping to empower people to set down the shame and set yourself up, because I think shame is incredibly crippling and intergenerational trauma is rife through our society.
“It’s so important that we are kind to ourselves and heal.”
“We need to be kind to ourselves and to each other.
I think we are lacking a lot of self-kindness in this world at the moment.”
– 2025 Citizen of the Year Malika Elizabeth Reese
Malika is also a singer, teacher, writer, musician, storyteller, public speaker, funeral celebrant and the leader of Tender Funerals’ Community Choir.
“I just really like being of service,” she said. “I want to use my words and my voice to make a positive difference in people’s lives.”
Malika is developing ‘A Gentle Talk About Death for Little Ones’ as part of the MerrigongX artists program and looking forward to touring with ensemble show Church of the Clitori. Her next local performance will be in She’ll Be Right, an International Women’s Day Celebration at Port Kembla’s Servo on March 7.
‘Icing on the cake’
The chair of the Multicultural Communities Council of Illawarra (MCCI) since 2001, Ken Habak OAM said being named Wollongong’s Senior Citizen of the Year was “the icing on the cake”.
“After 54 years of working, volunteering here and there and everywhere, from the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils to churches to communities to police advisory committees, to ministerial, state and federal committees, I think that was an honour,” he said after the ceremony.
Ken was a school teacher in Lebanon and migrated to Australia in 1970, working at BlueScope Steel until retirement in 2009. During his time as
MCCI chair, the organisation has expanded to Canberra and the Shoalhaven, bringing together more than 80 ethnic and culturally diverse communities. He’s won multiple awards over the years.
“My first achievement was a Volunteer of the Year award in New South Wales in 2008. Then in 2010, I was honoured with an OAM, and now in 2017 I was honoured with the [NSW Premier’s] Human Rights Medal and tonight, this is the icing on the cake.”
Ken has been with MCCI for 24 years and is planning to retire at the AGM in November. But before then he’ll be celebrating the multicultural council’s 50th anniversary and the launch of a book about its history by CEO Chris Lacey during Harmony Week in March.
Young Citizen of the Year
Mental health first aid instructor Jack Brown, who founded suicide prevention charity Talk2mebro after losing his cousin to suicide in 2018, was named Young Citizen of the Year.
Jack was unable to attend Thursday’s presentation, but sent a letter of thanks to his family for being “so supportive during my dark times and times of struggle”.
“Thanks to everyone in the Talk2mebro organisation,” Jack wrote. “This is our award as a team.”
Click to read more on our website.
2025 Senior Citizen of the Year Ken Habak OAM
On the hunt for unseasonable ghosts these summer nights
By Amanda De George
“While autumn is the main mushroom season, fungi can have a ‘second flush’ in summer if it’s wet.”
– David Finlay
Thething with writing about nature is that you quickly learn how little you actually know.
I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the basics of Omphalotus nidiformis, aka the ghost mushroom.
Ghosties fruit in rotting or dead wood and at night, to the naked eye, emit a gentle, eerie bluish-white glow. Captured with a long exposure setting on your camera or your phone, that glow becomes an exceptionally vivid, otherworldly green.
And the best season for finding them is autumn, right? Well, not so fast.
I have a favourite log in our local patch of bush. It’s provided a perch for tawny babies, a place for butcherbirds to wedge cicadas in, before ripping them apart and feeding to their chicks and now, surprisingly, a crop of ghost mushrooms. What on earth is going on?
Luckily for me, David Finlay, a local expert on all things bioluminescent, phosphorescent and astronomical, is as passionate about sharing his knowledge as he is about finding these beauties.
conditions for a little out-of-season ghost hunting. The trick is to find the fungi in the day, when you can see where you’re going! They look kind of like oyster mushrooms with creamy caps that can grow up to 20cm, often with a slightly bruised, purple-brown colouration and white gills. They love to grow in rotting wood so old tree stumps and fallen logs are perfect habitat for them.
Personally I think they’re spectacular in the daytime, often growing in large clusters, but of course it’s night when the real magic happens.
“‘Ghosties’ is the perfect name for them because they give off a faint ethereal light,” David said. “When you first spot one glowing off in the bush you could be mistaken for thinking you’re imagining things.”
The supernatural green colour is only seen via long exposure images and there’s a real art to getting the perfect shot; something which I haven’t yet mastered. Thankfully, this is a skill David will be teaching later in the year.
Finlay shares his photos on Instagram
“It’s not uncommon to see ghosties if we have a wet summer,” David explained. “While autumn is the main mushroom season, fungi can have a ‘second flush’ in summer if it’s wet.”
Turns out our current wet, cooler than usual summer has provided great
“I love sharing these experiences with people, which is why I’ll be running more nature walks and photography classes this year to give people the experiences and skills to find and photograph ghosties for themselves,” he said.
In the meantime, I’m off hunting ghosts.
David
Common Ground
Steel City Strings is collaborating with community gamelan ensemble Suwitra Jaya for part of this concert inspired by folk music traditions from around the world including Australian composers Peter Sculthorpe, Gerard Brophy and Christopher Sainsbury.
Bowral Memorial Hall, Sun 9 March 2.00pm
Wollongong Art Gallery, Sat 15 March 7.30pm Berry School of Arts, Sun 15 March 2.00pm
For bookings scan the QR code or go to: steelcitystrings.com.au/events-calendar/
Tickets $15 – $65 Group of 5 or more $40 per person
Helensburgh Community Rooms
Renovated and well-equipped meeting rooms and office space in the village centre. Enquire now for availability.
‘Lighthouse project’ shines path for more communities
By Genevieve Swart
Rewiring
Australia co-founder Dr Saul Griffith has long described Electrify 2515 as a “lighthouse project”, even before it was awarded $5.4 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) last October. Now the local pilot to electrify 500 homes is set to shine a path for the nation.
“It’s a big, big moment for us,” said Electrify 2515 Community Pilot operations manager John Buchelin, who travelled from Austinmer to Canberra last week for a press conference announcing that the government wants similar projects in every state and territory.
“We were up at 5.30am and took Saul’s EV to Canberra, which was good fun,” John said. “The press conference was
with a community group called Electrify Canberra. They’ve been doing the lobbying directly with politicians in Canberra, making the case for why this program should be expanded and why ARENA should fund other communities.
“To see another community just as excited as we were about it was super, super exciting.”
John is keen to share local knowledge with the likes of Electrify Canberra, which is part of an Electric Communities Network supported by Rewiring Australia.
“It’s taken us two, nearly three years to get the pilot that we’ve got here in 2515. So we want to work with those communities and share our learning so that they can get it started quicker.”
Climate Change and Energy Minister
Chris Bowen has asked ARENA to consider funding more community electrification trials. It’s the first time that he has used statutory ministerial referral powers to ask the agency’s board to look at backing specific projects and the referral was part of a Labor deal with crossbenchers David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Lidia Thorpe and David Van.
January 28’s press conference highlighted the benefits of cheap, clean rooftop solar and follows years of advocacy by Dr Saul and the Rewiring team, who have been meeting politicians from all sides in a push to put ‘electrify everything’ on the national agenda.
“It was a very exciting thing to be part of,” John said.
“[Finance Minister] Katy Gallagher was there, Chris Bowen and then David Pocock representing the crossbench. There was a real sense of collaboration – that this is a good idea, this is worth investing in, it will help householders.”
Speakers cited household energy savings from Rewiring Australia’s 2021 Castles & Cars report.
“The report basically says if you go from from gas to electric and you’ve got solar, you can save up to about $2000 to $3000 a year,” John said. “If you were to then change your cars [to EVs] as well, you can save up to about $5000 a year.”
While ARENA has electrification projects in South Australia and the Northern Territory, Electrify 2515 is the country’s first community-led pilot.
Health
& savings inspire locals
Last week in 2515, another 50 pilot homes were approved to start the process of switching to electric cooktops, air-conditioners and hot-water systems, as well as installing home batteries and smart energy tracking devices.
Better health and saving money have been the pilot’s two big selling points for locals, John said.
“For people who are retired on a fixed income, it’s really about the savings. On the other side of the life spectrum, you’ve got the young families who are worried about their child’s health with the gas cooktops and the gas heating. We’re seeing the health aspect being a big motivator.
“The subsidies have been welcomed, but a lot of people [30 so far] have actually offered to donate the subsidy back so we can have more low-income households come in, which has been really, really positive.”
John said 25% of applicants are classified low-income (ie, households with an income of less than $78,000 a year), which is on par with census data for the 2515 postcode.
Over 400 applications have been received, but the team would like more strata households, more landlords and renters.
“Four hundred is really good, but we do need to do 500 homes and we do need to get lots of different types of homes for the research,” John said. “We still definitely need more applications.”
“400 is really good, but we do need to do 500 homes and we do need to get lots of different types of homes for the research. We still definitely need more applications.”
– Electrify 2515’s John Buchelin
Dr Saul Griffith with David Pocock and, above, the Electrify Canberra .volunteers
New podcast looks at acute ‘bed block’ in hospitals
Community Industry Group shines light on a critical issue
“It’s no secret that the Illawarra Shoalhaven has some of the worst delayed discharge statistics in the country.”
– CEO of Community Industry Group Nicky Sloan
Aspart of her Community Matters podcast featuring local leaders, CEO of Community Industry Group
Nicky Sloan has started a new series on ‘Bed Block’ to raise awareness of a critical issue.
“It’s no secret that the Illawarra Shoalhaven has some of the worst delayed discharge statistics in the country,” Nicky said.
One in five hospital beds in the Illawarra Shoalhaven is unavailable due to ‘bed block’ or ‘delayed discharge’. This is when elderly and disabled people are admitted to hospital, then treated and ready for discharge – but they need residential care and there are no residential care spots available. So they are stuck, living in hospital. Bed block also hinders the admission of local patients.
In Part 1 of her new podcast series, Nicky talks to Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District CEO Margot Mains about how hospitals are coping with the nearly 200 older people in hospital each night who need to move to, or return to, residential care.
“People are staying in hospital a lot longer,” Margot tells Nicky in the interview. “So on average now we are seeing older people who are awaiting placement or community support waiting for 66 days in our hospitals.”
Nicky said: “There is no doubt that Margot and her team are bearing the brunt of an issue which is largely due to an inadequate supply of residential aged care beds.”
As the Flame reported last year in ‘The little peak that could’, Nicky led a two-year investigation into the extent of the problem that inspired a groundbreaking meeting last year designed around a simple idea: bringing everyone together. Not just government, industry and not-for-profits, but all three levels and different departments of government.
It was the first time this had been done.
More than 30 people, including NSW Health Minister Ryan Park, attended the meeting in September 2024.
As the peak body for not-for-profit social and community services across southern NSW, Community Industry Group plans to draw more attention to the problem and the people tackling it in 2025.
“The aim of the podcast/vodcast series is to make Bed Block, and the reasons why it is such a major issue in the region, easier for anyone to understand,” Nicky said.
Future episodes will explore the experience from an older person’s point of view and from the family perspective.
Push to extend iconic track
By Jeremy Lasek
Support
continues to grow for plans to create an iconic walking track, stretching more than 150 kilometres along the Illawarra escarpment.
A former Kiama mayor, Neville Fredericks resurrected the proposal, first raised in the early 1970s, to connect the Royal National Park with Cambewarra Mountain in the Shoalhaven.
Last month the plan received the enthusiastic support of newly elected Shellharbour Mayor Chris Homer, who said: “I am a huge supporter of this project and having something which takes you through our bushland along the escarpment I think would be phenomenal.”
added their voices to the growing campaign to bring the escarpment track vision to reality.
Damon Smith, who lives at Broughton Vale, can look up to the escarpment where the walking track would pass. He is a member of the working group created by Neville Fredericks to move the project forward.
As a photographer and lover of nature, Damon gets daily inspiration from the bushland environment on his doorstep. He strongly believes the escarpment track will put the region on the map, nationally and internationally, for fellow nature lovers and hikers.
READ MORE
Chris plans to table a motion of support for the Illawarra Escarpment Track at the first meeting of the region’s mayors who form the Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation (ISJO), which he chairs.
Photographers show support Leading Illawarra photographers, Damon Smith and Chris Edmond have
“The more we explore this part of the world, the more we discover all these special places that people don’t know about,” Damon said.
“This wild country is relatively unknown except for a small number of locals.”
‘Breathtaking’ views
While Damon has walked in many of the most beautiful places in the world, he
Former mayor revives vision for iconic track
Damon Smith and Neville Fredericks in bushland near Robertson. Photo: Chris Edmond
says the Illawarra escarpment is “breathtaking”.
“The more exploring and walking I do in this area the less inclined I am to go anywhere else. My eyes are continually refreshed by what they see.”
Damon owns a small guest house, Wllderberry cottage, which provides a natural haven for guests who visit from all around the world. The proposed escarpment track would run along the cliff line behind Wilderberry.
Gobsmacked by amazing views
“People are gobsmacked when they visit. Typically, visitors say the views are amazing and they’ve never seen anything like this. They get great access to wildlife and bird watchers come from all over the world just to twitch.
“People are continually surprised by the sheer cliffs, waterfalls, rainforests and rivers – the reality is there is too much natural beauty to choose from.
“Here we are just two hours from Sydney and it’s largely unknown that right here are some of the wildest places on the planet.”
Mesmerised by the beauty To the north, Corrimal-based
photographer Chris Edmond walks sections of the soon to be completed Great Southern Walk every week, mesmerised by the beauty he beholds.
Chris praises the NSW Government for its investment to date providing a link between the Royal National Park and Sublime Point above Austinmer.
“The new boardwalks that are in place in the Royal National Park are made from recycled plastic and aren’t as slippery as the previous wooden boardwalks.
“They also make the walks more accessible for the not so fit walkers who can enjoy this magnificent place,” Chris said.
Through his lens Chris captures a stunning landscape, providing the sort of views and vistas which will be on offer as the track extends to the south.
“The escarpment track proposal is fantastic, and Neville Fredericks and his team deserve congratulations for reigniting what will be a truly wonderful, world-class track. I hope the NSW Government, local councils and landowners get right behind it.
“We have the opportunity to create something very special.”
“People
are continually surprised by the sheer cliffs, waterfalls, rainforests and rivers – the reality is there is too much natural beauty to choose from”
– Damon Smith
Photos below by Damon Smith and Chris Edmond
Source of the Men’s Well
By Marcus Craft
The Men’s Well meets at Northern Illawarra Uniting Church
“The first relationship that you’ve got to address is the one with yourself. So it’s more about how an individual can use the tools to help themselves.”
– Mark Beaton
Alocalmen’s support group that helps people deal with adversity is so popular it is expanding this year to include a women’s branch.
The Men’s Well (TMW), founded by Mark Beaton, “specifically deals with helping men manage their emotions and reactions in places of adversity which could be separation/divorce, estrangement from family, loneliness, isolation and low self-esteem”.
The group meets every second, fourth and fifth Tuesday of the month at the Northern Illawarra Uniting Church at 191 Princes Highway, Bulli.
“I charge no fee for what I do, it is not a religious group, it is a group for anyone to learn how to be ‘The best versions of
you’,” Mark says, referring to TMW’s vision statement.
“The men who come feel very comfortable and safe within this group based on the confidentiality that governs the meeting.”
A growing group
Mark, a retired ordained minister with The Uniting Church in Australia, says TMW has grown since its first face-to-face meeting in April 2024 and now has about 20 men attending at different times. It also has about 800 followers on Facebook and a YouTube page with 18 self-made help videos. One-on-one sessions are available for
people “who want something a bit more private”.
Mark first had the idea for The Men’s Well about two years ago.
“I was counselling a few guys just about marriage break-up – this was back maybe two years ago – and I seemed to be having some success in how they were responding, and I just thought to myself, it might be a good idea if I brought these guys together in a group.
“It ended up being about five of them. So I did that maybe a year and a half ago. And it really worked and I sort of facilitated it. I understood that I had wisdom around this from a few different areas, life experiences as well, and I just had a sense of being able to pin down their emotions and have them have a look at it and provide tools for them, which I sort of created to help them start to have a better relationship with themselves.
“And then I stopped it for a while because I moved churches and I retired. And when I went to another church, my wife said to me: ‘You really have a calling to do this work with the men’s group’.
“So I started again, this time at the Northern Illawarra Uniting Church.”
How it works
“It’s evolved a bit from when I started,” Mary says, “because it was really about men who were separated, divorced, estranged from their kids, going through the court system and bereaved. But I realised after a while that it was really about how they dealt with those issues, but emotionally, not what the issue was.
“So it changed around now to looking at giving them tools to be able to handle their emotions, their reactions, to be able to realistically deal with any adversity in life.”
The group’s approach involves an 11-step charter “about advice, about what’s important”, Mark says.
“And that’s related to the relationship they have with themselves.
“It just applies to people, not necessarily to men, it’s just about how to work through a relationship – and the first relationship that you’ve got to
address is the one with yourself.
“So it’s more about how an individual can use the tools to help themselves. And it’s not gender specific.”
Inspired to support others
Mark says witnessing the positive progress of TMW participants is what drives him.
“The enjoyment for me is to sit and watch some of these people improve in nine months, 10 months now, and really start to have a relationship with themselves, like a time where they can still have the self-loathing and the self-worth thoughts, but they have tools now to manage so they don’t go as low and they come back quicker.
“I don’t feel like I can take responsibility for that; I’ve been a cog in the wheel that has made them at least draw attention to it.
“It is all for others.
“There’s a famous Zig Ziglar [a motivational author] saying, which I’ve attached to the charter, and that is: You can have everything in life you want if you just help other people in the world get what they want.”
Local organisations, such as Northern Illawarra Uniting Church, and businesses, such as Purpose Physio and Wiseman Park Bowling Club, have contributed to the “financial upkeep” of TMW, Mark says. TMW is being registered with NSW Fair Trading and the group now has a governing committee.
For more details, contact Mark on 0430 209 195, mark.beaton2@gmail.com or visit The Men’s Well Facebook page.
Yellow Hibiscus blooms in coastal swamps
By Emma Rooksby, coordinator of the Growing Illawarra Natives website
“Swamp
Hibiscus, a shrub of damp swampy areas, is pictured above. It has striking flower buds below the open flower.”
– Emma Rooksby
Inflower right now is one of the prettiest local Hibiscus plants, the Swamp Hibiscus or Hibiscus diversifolius. And that’s really saying something, as Illawarra is home to the splendid Hibiscus splendens, which I featured a few weeks back.
Swamp Hibiscus, with its appealing yellow flowers with their maroon centres, is a sprawling shrub that reaches 1-2m high, though usually towards the lower height in this region. It occurs in swampy coastal areas, where it grows in and among a range of sedges, rushes and other inundation-tolerant shrubs and trees.
This shrub has the advantage (for appreciation by humans) of bearing its flowers at about head-height or a little lower, so they can be easily seen and enjoyed. And now is the perfect time to check out Swamp Hibiscus, when its flowers make it quite conspicuous.
Swamp Hibiscus, a shrub of damp swampy areas, is pictured above. It has striking flower buds below the open flower. (Photo: Emma Rooksby.)
Unfortunately Swamp Hibiscus isn’t super-common around Illawarra these days, in part because the coastal swamps it calls home have been largely cleared or filled in or otherwise developed.
That said, the coastal walking and bike track in Thirroul runs right by a big
patch of Swamp Hibiscus so it’s easy to spot there (just to the east of the track). And if you take a wander in Wollongong Botanic Garden, there’s a few patches of it in the so-called ‘sandstone collection,’ quite close to the administration building and the Towri Centre.
The shot below shows the sprawling shrubby habit of Swamp Hibiscus, albeit in a non-swamp situation, in Wollongong Botanic Garden. These plants are easy to spot as you wander through the Garden. (Photo: Tracee Lea).
If you live in a near coastal area and have problems with water pooling around your place, this plant could be one to try. It will make the most of the damp conditions and has even been known to survive as a semi-aquatic species (good for La Niña seasons).
It’s also a great plant to attract a range of insects. Almost as soon as the flowers unfurl, tiny insect pollinators appear. The below close-up of a flower reveals a range of tiny insects present on the petals.
Swamp Hibiscus is also present in the Philippines, Central and South America, New Guinea, Pacific Islands and Africa. The theory is it was an African species and has dispersed (thanks Wikipedia for referencing the article that advances this theory, and no thanks to publisher Springer, which has not provided an open access link to the article).
