OCLife20200416

FREE COMMUNITY MAGAZINE | LOCAL MEDIA IS BEST

16 APRIL — 22 APRIL, 2020

ORANGE PROPERTY MARKET

— YOUR GUIDE TO THE BEST PROPERTIES AND BEST AGENTS — STARTS ON PAGE 17

DAT E W E N

DAT E W E N

Anh Do

Leaving Jackson

The Happiest Refugee Live!!

Saturday 10 October at 7.30pm

Tuesday 15 September at 8pm

DAT E W E N

DAT E W E N

DAT E W E N

Fables from Afar

The Robertson Brothers

The 91-Storey Treehouse

Dance Theatre of Orange Tuesday 27 October at 6pm

DAT E W E N

DAT E W E N

DAT E W E N

Banff Mountain Film Festival

1970: The Year in Music

A Tribute to Mario Lanza

Friday 18 September at 7pm

Thursday 10 December at 7.30pm

Mark Vincent

Saturday 6 February 2021

Saturday 22 May 2021

ELL C N A C

ED

Melbourne

International Comedy Festival

THIS IS CORRECT AS OF 9.04.2020 Bookings: 02 6393 8111

www.orange.nsw.gov.au/theatre

Orange Civic Theatre

Monday 29 March 2021

ELL CAN C

ED

Bonachela Lane Saturday 13 June at 8pm

OFFICIAL MEDICAL ADVICE

Coronavirus: You must take action to save lives in your community.

Stay at home unless absolutely necessary. Banks, supermarkets/groceries, petrol stations, medical services and suppliers will remain open. You must avoid non-essential travel.

If you can, work from home. Use phones for meetings and stop handshaking.

Tap to pay where possible instead of using cash.

Gatherings of 2 people max are being enforced, with the exception of households, work and education.

You must stay 2 arms lengths away from others and wash your hands for 20 seconds.

Exercise away from others.

Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra

2 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

CUT OUT AND KEEP

contents contents ADDRESS: PHONE: EMAIL: WEB: FACEBOOK:

Sponsors Sponsors

ADDRESS: Suite 3/241 Lords Place ORANGE PHONE: 02 6361 3575 EMAIL: reception@oclife.com.au Suite 3/241 LordsWEB: Place www.orangecitylife.com.au ORANGE 02 6361 3575 FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/orangecitylife

reception@oclife.com.au www.orangecitylife.com.au www.facebook.com/orangecitylife

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT CITY ILIFE If you kept yourself busy over Easter doingORANGE the sort of things did, your house

To further help Orange

ToCity further helpour Orange Life keep team City employed and keepemployed Life keep our team bringing you our magazine and keep bringing you our each week, we’re inviting magazine each week, we’re community minded inviting community minded businesses to sponsor businesses sponsor us through to this difficult usperiod through this difficult in our history.

Any business interested period in our history.

Any in sponsoring us, please business interested in sponcontact our office on soring us, please contact our 6361 3575 or email office on 6361 3575 or email reception@oclife.com.au reception@oclife.com.au The following The followingbusinesses businesses havegraciously graciously agreed agreed toto have sponsorus usuntil until June June 30th. sponsor 30th.

We are extremely grateful We are extremely grateful for for their support. their support.

ASHCROFT’S

Friends! or your car are probably smiling a bit more than normal. I was able to do a few jobs around our home that would otherwise, wait, and wait and wait for me to

A lot has happened over the last few weeks and it’s fair to say that the world as we know it will be different from here toathem. feel quite chuffed and my wife loves me a bit more than normal on, and forget quite while toIcome.

Many arefollowing now facing hardships that they would never have dreamed of just a few weeks back. my efforts.

That’s my opinion anyway.

People in safe employment last month now find themselves on unemployment queues, previously successful businesses are nowOver facingthe ruin.last week or two, we have received quite a deal of encouragement And so it goes on. from readers who have sent emails, made donations or just rung to say how My wife and I, like so many other business owners at this time, are scrambling to meet Government regulations, while much lovecommunity and appreciate what I’mout not tooother proud say I’ll take as much trying to keep up with expectations andwe stilldo. come at the end.to For some, this must seem mission impossible. of that as people are prepared to give. Here’s a couple of typical comments In our case, and with the unbelievable co-operation of our fabulous team, we’re going to try and defy the odds. weI received My wife and have come -up with a strategy that we hope will enable us to keep all our full-time employees in work, keep producing Orange City Life each week and hopefully come out at the other end. This strategy also relies on others April, our Director of First Impressions was on her way to Coles Supermarket who we rely on, such as our printer in Sydney to survive as well. when lady who April didn’t know but who knew who was, thanked us for Defying the oddsahowever will require a number of changes, sacrifices and a lot she of understanding.

CHANGES — From this issue, Orange City Life will look very different to what you’ve become used to. Many of the our paper and said in this time of crisis it’s what gets her through. types of stories and features we’ve included in recent issues simply can’t be done under the present distancing and isolation rules.

Another email said: Your publication is scrutinised cover-to-cover each week; To help us all through the Coronavirus crisis, for now at least, we’re taking a completely different approach. particularly enjoy the "good news" stories and uplifting reports of local business We’re going to try to meet the changed needs that many readers now have as a result of isolation or being housebound. achievements.

Lasttoweek's bighave crossword wasand "an absolute winner" We’ll also and makecitizen more use of our available space ensure you plenty to read enjoy each issue.

Orange City Life will now provideNEARLY you with more entertainment, more more ideas on to keep yourself in our household. finished it but had tothings look to updo, remainder viahow internet. busy, all while trying to lift your spirits and put a little sunshine into your day. To that end we’re including more puzzles, you again. and we’reThank also including a serialised Novella titled Sunshine (pure coincidence) that given the extra time we all have, we hope you will read and enjoy. We’ll also bring you quite a bit of helpful news from local businesses who are keen to keep We received many more like this and it was very heartening, so thanks to all serving you, and we’ll be encouraging you to send us items to include. those who daysminimum with such the last week SACRIFICES — To keepbrightened our costs to anour absolute we’ve comments also had reduceover the number of pages we or print and suspend several regular features in OC Life that we regularly pay for, among these is our TV Guide.

I know a lot two. I’m inspired to do even better for our community so watch this space. of people love our TV guide but given our present circumstances, the cost of providing this is beyond us, if we are to win this battle. Despite allagain, this, there ample magazine copies of OC Life being distributed thesure usualyou’ll pick upfind spots right Once it’sarea still smaller than you’re usedintomany butofI’m across Orange. plenty in here to keep you entertained for a while and draw you away from all UNDERSTANDING — It’s a shame that it takes a disaster like this to bring home to people just how important our the bad elsewhere.

I hope sosupporting anyway.local businesses is so important. Without dwelling small businesses arenews in the scheme of things, and why on it too much, my hope is that locals will knock themselves out to spend every dollar they can with local businesses as there’s plenty ofkeep puzzles, competitions andable and do it at local businesses. We all we battle Once throughagain this crisis together.

Please spending as much as you’re need every dollar we can get right now because at the end of the day we’re all in this together. great reading for you to enjoy, and of course plenty

OF ORANGE

Spirit

WE CAPTURE THE

OF ORANGE

the beauty!

During these times we encourage our readers to take each day as it comes. Find beauty in the everyday, something that you would usually take for granted. Stay safe, take care of your health, take care of your mind, we’re all in this together.

BOB HOLLAND bob@oclife.com.au

Published by Regional Life Group Pty Ltd ABN 28126968287

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General disclaimer: Whilst every care is taken in preparing this publication, we cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions. The publisher accepts no responsibility for letters, notices and other material contributed for publication. The submitter accepts full responsibility for material, warrants that it is accurate, and indemnifies the publisher against any claim or action. All advertisers, including those placing display and classified or advertorial material, warrant that such material is true and accurate and meets all applicable laws and indemnifies the publisher against all liabilities that may arise from the publication or such material. Opinions expressed in the publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. The editor, Bob Holland, accepts responsibility for election comment. Articles contain information of a general nature – readers should always seek professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances. Complaints: Regional Life Group Pty Ltd trading as Orange City Life has a policy of correcting mistakes promptly. If you have a complaint about published material, contact us in writing. If the matter remains unresolved, you may wish to contact the Australian Press Council. © Copyright 2018 Regional Life Group Pty Ltd. Copyright in all material – including photographs and ads – is held by Regional Life Group Pty Ltd or its providers and must not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Publisher. Printed for the publisher by Spotpress Pty Ltd, 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, 2204.

CONVENIENTLY LOCATED IN ORANGE CENTRAL SQUARE

#TogetherApart

Bob 26

General disclaimer: Whilst every care is taken in preparing this publication, we cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions. The publisher accepts no responsibility for letters, notices and other material contributed for publication. The submitter accepts full responsibility for material, warrants that it is accurate, and indemnifies the publisher against any claim or action. All advertisers, including those placing display and classified or advertorial material, warrant that such material is true and accurate and meets all applicable laws and indemnifies the publisher against all liabilities that may arise from the publication or such material. Opinions expressed in the publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. The editor, Bob Holland, accepts responsibility for election comment. Articles contain information of a general nature – readers should always seek professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances. Complaints: Regional Life Group Pty Ltd trading as Orange City Life has a policy of correcting mistakes promptly.

If you have a complaint about published material, contact us in writing. If the matter remains unresolved, you may wish to contact the Australian Press Council. © Copyright 2018 Regional Life Group Pty Ltd. Copyright in all material – including photographs and ads – is held by Regional Life Group Pty Ltd or its providers and must not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Publisher. Printed for the publisher by Spotpress Pty Ltd, 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, 2204.

ORANGE SQUARE MEDICAL CENTRE

A giant thanks from OC Life to our regional Farmers, Producers and Chefs who continue to supply top notch goodies for the Orange community to indulge Always look for in, keeping our bellies full and our spirits high.

Bob and Jackie Holland Publishers – Orange City Life

Happy reading everyone and go well!

Spirit

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16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 3

OCLife

"Made in Orange food "

How’s this for a great initiative?

— JONATHAN ROE —

It has been an extraordinary few weeks for hospitality businesses here in Orange — and all over Australia — as they reinvent themselves to keep trading despite strict restrictions to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

A

nd not all have survived.

Pubs, clubs and restaurants have been forced to close their doors, while others are hanging on thanks to takeaway sales and even home delivery.

Byng Street Café owner Jeremy Norris has come up with an innovative approach to support local ‘foodie’ businesses through this tough time, and one that could well be here to stay.

‘Made in Orange by local foodies’ is a brand he has created to celebrate all things foodie here in Orange. The bright orange stickers adorn products created by local cafes, restaurants and caterers which are now available for sale through Ashcroft’s IGA in the Summer Centre.

“We were just trying to think about how we get through worse case scenarios, how we get through the other side if we had to shut the business,” said Jeremy, who also operates

the Bloom Café at the Bloomfield Medical Centre and coffee cart at the hospital.

“I've always thought of the idea of a label like this in Orange would be something good. The idea is that local foodies, anyone that has a restaurant or food business, they can make something, say a beef bourguignon or coqa-vin or lasagne, we put a Made in Orange sticker on it and IGA have given us free shelf space to sell it all.

“Sugar Mill and have been doing chicken and tarragon pies, which is one of my old favourites Mum used to make... we're doing homemade pasta, hand rolled lasagnes, and we've done three different types of some sausages - really good sausages — and the products look great!”

Rochelle Ashcroft of Ashcroft’s IGA said that when Jeremy approached them with the idea, they jumped at the chance to support other local businesses.

“We said absolutely! We're more than happy

...The idea is that local foodies, anyone that has a restaurant or food business, they can make something...

to support Jeremy and anyone who gets involved in this idea and hopefully this helps get them through,” Rochelle said.

“We are just happy to help and try and sell them in our stores. And this is something that could potentially be a long-term thing anyway, after this disaster is over.”

Jeremy definitely sees potential for the ‘Made in Orange’ label once life returns to normal.

“Out the other side of this, once it is all over and the tourists start coming back and all the Air BnBs are full again then this will be a platform where people coming to Orange can order something and have a ‘Made in Orange by local foodies’ product in their fridge when they arrive,” he said.

“I think a lot of businesses will come out a lot stronger after this, because they will have another side to their business that will probably stay there. It will definitely change a few things.”

Look out for for @madeinorangebylocalfoodies on Facebook and Instagram

Let’s have som Photo Fun…. e

Dazzling Dress-ups

Win a Family Feast Gift Voucher from McDonalds We have two McDonald’s Family Feast Gift Vouchers to give away thanks to McDonald’s Family Restaurants here in Orange.

To win one of these fabulous Family Feasts, just send us a photo of your child all dressed up in a dazzling outfit. We’ll choose two entries from those we receive to win one each of the Gift Vouchers. Your Dazzling Dress-up can be whatever you want it to be - a superhero, a cartoon character, a stunning outfit, something totally weird, in fact anything dazzling - just use your imagination.

To enter: Email your photo(s) and details to Dazzling Dress-ups at reception@oclife.com.au Entries close 5pm Friday 17th April.

Judging will take place Monday 20th April and we’ll announce the winners in OC Life 23rd April issue.

4 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

SPONSORED BY

OCLife

OCLife THROUGH MY EYES

Comment with Bob Holland

FLYING AT LAST! It’s taken 15 months but at last, Orange has some colourful flags flying on the flag poles along Summer Street, all thanks to the efforts of Put Orange First, a group of local business people who are trying to do good things for the business community of Orange, particularly our retailers.

On one hand I’m absolutely delighted to see the flags flying but on the other hand, I feel absolutely dejected by what it’s taken for the group to get this far. I played a part in getting Put Orange First off the ground in the first place, and although I’m still a keen supporter of what they are trying to do, I’m afraid I’m far too old, far too impatient and far too much a get things done person to wait around for things to happen. I’ve stopped attending Put Orange First meetings and decided to do what I can personally and only those things where I don’t need someone else’s help to get things done. I’m sure other business owners are doing the same thing. If it takes 15 months to get a few flags flying in Orange, how long will it take to achieve anything that’s really important?

“

- Helicopter views while en route to the Grand Canyon.

It is said many land packages (let it be known, in the complete middle of nowhere) are up for sale and have been for many years, at an incredible price of just 50 cents. Roadtrip anyone?

~ Melise Coleman

claim to care about business owners, we might be in a far better position than we are now to wage war after the coronavirus fallout is known. If there is one good thing that could come out of the coronavirus, my hope is it’s a better appreciation of the role small business owners play in the scheme of things and how important they are to our society.

Here in Orange, and everywhere It’s a well-known fact that setting else, small business owners deserve up business in Orange requires a better respect from everyone. lot of patience and more often than not, the hoops that are involved My personal opinion is that the and the hurdles put in people’s way co-operation and enthusiasm are considered over the top, that’s the Put Orange First group has compared to other cities like Orange. received from the Orange Business I don’t want to elaborate on that here Chamber and from our Councillors but one thing I do want to say is this. has been pathetic, sections of both Put Orange First set out to do the Business Chamber and the something really good for the Councillors appear clueless as to business community of Orange and what business owners really needed just about every step of the way they and that was before the Coronavirus have hit hurdles, hurdles that simply made life harder again for many and shouldn’t have been put in their way. caused the likely demise of others.

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16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 5

OCLife WE'RE ADAPTING TO COVID-19

IS DOING BUSINESS

ABOUT TO CHANGE

FOREVER? — JONATHAN ROE —

W

ith the nation’s workforce in lockdown, businesses have had to rapidly change the way they operate. Countless offices around the country have swapped face to face meetings for videoconferencing over software like Zoom. Here at Orange City Life most of us are working from home and communicating solely through email and phone calls.

All these changes have been a steep learning curve for many working Australians and business owners, but when we are allowed to freely associate once more, will offices just operate as they were?

“I do not think things will go back to what they were in December,” said Inland Digital’s Managing Director Lawrence Breen.

Office digitisation and collaborative work solutions are Inland Digital’s bread and butter, but even they have been surprised by the speed of change brought about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We're in the technology game ourselves and we’ve all had to learn to do things better remotely for our clients,” said Lawrence, who believe video conferencing will be more widely utilised by businesses following the end of social

distance measures as they see the benefits.

“For organisations it is going to reduce the cost of sales,” he said, as an example. “Because instead of jumping in a car and driving all the way out to Condo to have a chat, now with this new skill set everyone has, we might just jump on Zoom and do a virtual demonstration for a client.

Lawrence has worked with large organisations spanning the state that still regularly require staff to travel for monthly face to face meetings, but now he believes that may be a thing of the past.

“We were showing them what they can do on a smart board is exactly the same. There's no travel, there's no accommodation costs, there's no risk, so it is cheaper, less people on the roads, more productive because you are not losing travel time… but now we have all been forced into that. Look at what's happened with Zoom in the last couple of weeks!”

And anecdotally, in conversation with a television executive the other day, he said he finds their remote meetings to be more productive and is keen to see them continue.

The next few months will be a trying time for many

local businesses, but Lawrence believes there is also an opportunity.

“While it is quieter and we know it is going to be quieter for the next couple of months, it is an opportunity for business owners or team leaders to stop and have a look at how they currently do things and then use technology to improve those processes,” he said.

“People who do repetitive admin tasks, like invoice processing, bank recs — all that sort of stuff can now be fully automated, I think all business owners are now looking for any process that can be automated for a cost reduction and it frees staff up to focus on generating revenue, not just admin. I really think that is a big opportunity.”

Business will return to some sort of normal after this crisis is over and now is the time to prepare for it, said Lawrence.

“I think businesses will be more agile and more efficient coming out the other side,” he said. “I think we are all going to be more productive. We are going to use technology to be better at what we do… When people come back into their businesses when this is all over, they'll be saying, ‘Hang on! Why don't we do it this way!” And that will definitely be a change — and a change for the better.”

FOODCARE:

STILL HELPING TO KEEP FOOD ON THE TABLE FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT — JONATHAN ROE — The coronavirus pandemic has forced thousands of Australians out of work and put incredible strain on those business owners lucky enough to continue trading.

Many are finding themselves unemployed for the first time in their lives and are struggling to make ends meet.

But FoodCare Orange want people to know that they are here to help keep food on the table.

FoodCare Orange is a volunteer-run not-for-profit organisation that provide affordable fresh food, grocery and household items to people on low incomes.

“We buy groceries from Food Bank in Sydney which we sell significantly cheaper than supermarket prices,” said committee member Lee Cook.

“Our stock is limited, and it is a bit of a lucky dip. So, you can't do a whole shop with us, but you can do some basics and you can get them from half to two thirds off what you'd pay in the supermarket.

“We get fruit and veg from the supermarkets as well that is at the end of its shelf life and that stuff we give away… we almost always have bread to give away... it might be day old, but it's bread and sometimes we have eggs, occasionally we have meat. So, it is a good deal for people who are scratching or in any sort of difficulty.”

For those in serious financial difficulty, Lee said vouchers are available from Vinnies, the Salvation Army or Housing Plus

6 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

that can be redeemed in their March Street shop.

“At this stage we haven't seen a big increase in our turnover with the virus, but we did just want to let people know that the shop is still operating,” said Lee. “And there would be a lot of people who wouldn't know about FoodCare and realise they can actually get much cheaper food and basics than the supermarkets.”

In order to comply with social distancing requirements, the shop itself is closed to the public. Instead, people fill in a shopping list, which is available on their website, and the volunteers pick and pack the goods.

“We have changed the way we operate in that we are now giving people a list to select from rather than having them in the shop,” said Lee. “We are encouraging people to look at the website and preferably download the form, so they are not hanging around longer to fill in the form… They can get it filled in at home, bring that form down, hand it over with their money and shopping bags and we'll deliver the goods to them across the counter.”

FoodCare Orange, located at 142 Marsh Street (next to Meals on Wheels), is open 10.30am to 1pm Tuesday to Thursday.

Transport can also be arranged for those who need it.

For more information visit www.foodcareorange.org.au or call 0447 577 884.

WE'RE ADAPTING TO COVID-19 OCLife

CHURCHES MAINTAINING

J

COMMUNITY ONLINE

ust months ago, it would have seemed unimaginable to most Australians that they would not be permitted to attend places of worship. But COVID-19 pandemic and the strict social distancing measures being undertaken to combat its spread has completely disrupted all facets of daily life.

Religious services and meetings may be suspended during this time of pandemic, but it has not stopped church congregations finding new ways to connect online “I myself am encouraged by how many people have been connecting,” said Greg Blanche, preacher at the Orange Evangelical Church.

The Orange Evangelical Church suspended all its church services and meetings four weeks ago and have turned their focus to providing streamed worship sessions and sermons, while encouraging online interaction among their members.

“We've been uploading sermons and interviews, people doing bible readings and praying and encouraging people to watch those together,” said Greg.

“Last Sunday, we put up links and sent them out to all our people and played it on

— JONATHAN ROE —

Zoom live, so that people could watch it all together and afterwards to chat on Zoom.

They are the sorts of things we are doing to help continue to connect people and continue to be a church as much as we can in this strange time.”

Greg is also continuing to coordinate his small, weekly bible study sessions using Zoom.

“Our bible study, when we would get together in person, we would normally have five or six, well we had seven last time on Zoom. So, it is almost life as normal, we’re just not in the same space,” he said.

The sudden transition to online service has been a steep learning curve for Greg and the other church leaders, and they are working to make sure those with less access to the internet still feel part of the congregation.

“We are concerned for those who don't have access to internet as well, particularly our elderly people,” he said.

“So, we've been connecting people, so they actually catch up one-to-one on the phone and stuff like that. And we're making a lot more phone calls, lots more one-on-one Zoom meetings, that sort of caring for one another.”

Father Mal Dunnett at Holy Trinity

Anglican Church has also been busy transitioning his congregation online.

“We are using Zoom and WhatsApp and getting people connected through all the bits and pieces and it seems to be working,” he said.

“The Parish council sends out different bits and pieces and we have Holy Trinity news so that’s everything and anything that is going on. We are trying to get people to respond to that, to be part of those bits and pieces and it seems to be working really well.”

Although they too have faced a few technical challenges getting some elderly members of their congregations connected to their virtual service, Mal said they have also seen their services reach people who may not previously felt comfortable attending a service.

“What we are finding is, we have family members who are calling saying, ‘I've got to get Mum or Dad hooked on and so they are logging on as well, so it actually helping in other ways,” he said “I think some people are actually more comfortable seeing it on the screen on their computer or logging into their smart TV than they are actually sitting in church and I think it will actually change things down the line.”

Let’s Show You Off — MELISE COLEMAN —

Hitches, socials and hatches have been sorely missed from our magazine. Though we know that necessary implications have put a stop to gathering together in one place, we also know some have chosen to elope, or continue with a smaller wedding and we certainly know that babies are still being born… so.. what are we getting at?

We want to see them! We want to show off your newborn baby, your small but significant wedding, or Grandpa’s 80th (social distancing of course). Think of us as Aunty OCL, we are nosey, and we want to show you off to the rest of the community.

The best kind of social distancing is when you can read all about it in your favourite local Magazine.

Please email your images with appropriate captions and information to reception@ oclife.com.au Let’s have some fun Orange.

COMMUNITY

BINGO — MELISE COLEMAN —

The latest craze to hit the socials is the #bingochallenge, how fun! We thought we’d put a local spin on it. How would you go? Would you hit the OC Life bingo straight away or do you need some time to be able to be able to cross some of the squares off? We will be posting the same image online so be sure to screenshot and show us how you are tracking.

B I N G O!!

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 7

Country Andrew GEE MP Your Your Voice FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CALARE

LATEST COVID-19 NEWS Got some time on your hands and looking to upskill or retrain?

Under the Australian Government’s new Higher Education Relief Package: • There will be 20,000 places available in short-term university courses.

• The courses will start at the beginning of May and initially will run for six months.

They will all be delivered as online learning.

• The Australian Government will also guarantee funding for universities at current levels, even if there is a fall in domestic student numbers. This means that universities will retain the $18 billion budgeted this year regardless of any fall in enrolments.

• Universities will decide on what courses they offer, but the elgible areas of study include: nursing; teaching; counselling; english; maths; foreign languages; agriculture; allied health; other health; IT; architecture and building; science engineering; medical science; and environmental studies.

Tenancies

The NSW Government has announced details of a rental relief package, based on general principles agreed by the National Cabinet last week. NSW commercial tenants significantly impacted by COVID-19 STAY AT HOME RULES will have greater protection from Under the NSW Government Health Order, you evictions with the state government must stay at home, unless you are going to: set to enact the National Cabinet • work (where you can’t work remotely) Code of Conduct as part of a $440 • school or an educational institution million land tax relief package.

• shop for food and essentials • get medical care or supplies • exercise.

You may only leave home with a reasonable excuse, including to: • avoid injury or illness or escape a risk of harm • deal with emergencies or on compassionate grounds • access childcare • provide care or assistance (including personal care) to a vulnerable person or to provide emergency assistance • attend a wedding (limited to a total of 5 people) or funeral (limited to a total of 10 people, excluding the person/s necessary to conduct the funeral e.g. funeral director) • move to a new place of residence, or between your different places of residence (a holiday is not an acceptable reason)

$130 billion JobKeeper payment

• donate blood

Last week Federal Parliament passed legislation for the new JobKeeper payment. Under the JobKeeper Payment, eligible* employers impacted by COVID-19 will be able to access a subsidy to continue paying their employees.

The Government will provide a fortnightly payment of $1,500 per eligible* employee until 27 September 2020. Already over 750,000 businesses Australia wide have registered for the payment. *For information on elgibility visit: https://treasury.gov.au/coronavirus/jobkeeper

• undertake legal obligations • access social services, employment services, services provided to victims (including as victims of crime), domestic violence services, and mental health services • continue existing arrangements for access to, and contact between, parents and children for children who do not live in the same household as their parents or one of their parents.

• if you are a priest, minister of religion or member of a religious order, go to a place of worship or to provide pastoral care.

” Can I visit my girlfriend/boyfriend/ partner?

”

File photo.

Residential tenants and landlords facing financial hardship due to COVID-19 will also receive increased support. Where a household has suffered a loss of income equal to or greater than 25 per cent due to COVID-19, there is a new obligation to enter into negotiations with their landlord or managing agent, prior to seeking a forced end to the tenancy.

For information on eligibility visit: https://preview.nsw.gov.au/covid-19

Working from home?

The ATO has put in place temporary arrangements for eligible employees to claim working from home expenses at a simplified rate of 80 cents per hour.

Those eligible will only be required to keep a record of the number of hours they have worked from home, rather than needing to calculate specific running expenses.

These arrangements have been put in place for expenses incurred between 1 March 2020 and 30 June 2020. For further information visit the ATO at: www.ato.gov.au/General/COVID-1 or ring their hotline on 1800 806 218.

NSW Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller, was recently asked this question and his response was that people can visit their partners, because that is classifed as 'care', which is a reasonable excuse for leaving home under the NSW Government order. Commissioner Fuller provided the following clarification: "Mental health is under care...but don't take the whole family with you. Don't take your grandparents."

ORANGE ELECTORATE OFFICE - we are still open Mon-Fri 1/179A Anson Street PO Box 673 Orange NSW 2800

8 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

(02) 6361 7138 @ andrew.gee.mp@aph.gov.au www.andrewgeemp.com.au

For regular updates and news, follow me on Facebook and Instagram @andrewgeecalare

y

r

Calare Community Care Update

Calare Community Care

Introducing

COVID-19 initiative

We have had a number of service clubs and organisations join us over the last week. Many invidiual volunteers are also putting up their hand to assist. Thank you!

The updated list of participating clubs and organisations includes: • Mudgee Lions Club • Orange Canobolas Lions Club • Wellington Lions Club • Wellington Friends & Family Neighbourhood Watch Program • Geurie Lions Club • Centacare Bathurst • Rotary Club of Rylstone Kandos

Tell us about your business or service

Register for a regular phone check-in

• Rotary Club of Oberon • Rotary Club of Blayney • Rotary Club of Mudgee • Rotary Club of Mudgee Sunrise • The Neighbourhood Centre • Oberon Community Support Network (Oberon Council) • Vivacare (Vivability Bathurst) • Relationships Australia (NSW)

Last week we launched a COVID-19 initiative for the Calare electorate, called Calare Community Care. As part of this initiative we are working with local service clubs and volunteer organisations to provide a regular check-in phone call for people in the need in the community. We are also bringing together all the various community services available to community members in their local areas, so that we can assist with connecting people to the care and help that they need during this difficult time.

If you would like to register yourself (or someone that you are concerned about) for a regular check-in phone call from a local volunteer, please register via the link on my Facebook page. You can also email me at andrew.gee.mp@aph.gov.au or phone my office on 02 63617138. Similarly, if you have a service that you are offering to help people in our electorate to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, be it a delivery service, mental health care service, food donations or the like, please get in touch with us.

ANZAC DAY As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government made the difficult decision to cancel public gatherings, which will include this year’s Anzac Day services and marches.

These temporary changes to the way in which we would normally go about Anzac Day do not mean that we cannot remember our service men and women, and indeed, I would encourage each and every one of you to think of simple ways that you can reflect and acknowledge this important day in our nation’s calendar.

I would certainly encourage everyone to pause at 11:30am for a minute’s silence to commemorate the landing of our troops at Gallipoli 105 years ago. This sends a clear message that, despite the hardships we are facing, we continue to respect our servicemen and women. You may also like to consider the Light Up the Dawn initiative that the RSL is championing this year, in the place of the traditional dawn service. Find out more via rslanzacspirit.com.au.

Join the Australian Government's COVID-19 WhatsApp channel for guidance and information on: • The latest news • Case numbers • How to check your symptoms • How to stop the spread • Support for yourself, your family and friends Authorised by Andrew Gee, MP, National Party of Australia, Suite 1/179A Anson Street, Orange NSW 2800. Produced and printed using parliamentary entitlements.

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 9

OCLife

NO TIME TO WASTE GETTING YOUR ENTRY READY WASTE2 FOR THIS YEAR’S ONLINE WASTE TO ART! ART

L

ast year’s Waste to Art Competition in Orange was the biggest yet and organisers are hoping to see just how creative people can get again this year as the competition goes online.

Isolation measures due to the coronavirus pandemic have meant the competitions’ exhibition venue, the Orange Public Library, is closed to the public. But organisers are keen to see Waste to Art continue and are working on plans to take the exhibition online.

“We are figuring out what online platform will work best at the moment, but I think it is really important to hold the competition this year because everyone is stuck in their houses and this is a way of the community still connecting to each other— and also a boredom buster,” said Waste to Art committee member Kate Willoughby.

YEAR OF STEEL —ALUMINIUM JONATHAN&ROE — CANS COMMUNITY ART COMPETITION

Celebrating the re-use and recycling of waste across the NetWaste region through arts and crafts.

Waste to Art, an initiative of Netwaste, is a community art exhibition and competition where all the creative works are made from reused and recyclable waste materials.

Entry is open to primary school and high school aged children, community members and professional artists, in 2D, 3D and Functional categories.

This year’s theme is steel and aluminium cans, but the works can be made using any recycled waste product.

Kate said that with so many people stuck at home, she is expecting to see creativity shine.

“It’s when you get really creative, you’ve got time to be innovative with the materials that are in front of you, the waste materials, because you have a lot of time and energy and enthusiasm for it!” she said.

“We hope that due to the artworks being made from An initiative of NetWaste

waste/recycled materials, that the message about using everything we have in times of ‘lack’ will highlight to people, just how many resources they actually do have that they didn’t realise were there! And how adaptable and innovative we all can be in times of crisis!”

Given the situation we are all in, Kate said the prizes will be arranged to support local businesses in this tough time.

“We’ve got a budget for prizes, but we want to make it so that there are businesses in town who will benefit, just so the local economy will get a boost,” she said.

For an entry form or information on the Waste to Art competition you can contact Kate on 0414 081 669 or email Orangeeco@hotmail.com Information can also be found on her Facebook page ‘Orange Eco’.

ORANGE CITY MECHANICAL

6360 3101 // 3A STEPHEN PLACE, ORANGE NSW

10 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

Overcoming isolation

- the Oak Tree Way

With the current Coronavirus restrictions, society as a whole is experiencing isolation like never before. But seniors in particular are among those most heavily impacted, as families and friends do their best to keep their older loved ones safe and maintain their physical distance.

The secure, community nature of our retirement villages offers a welcome reprieve, no doubt contributing to the steady enquiries Oak Tree has received since the pandemic spread.

For anyone who has been weighing up retirement options, they’re finding that now is the time to take action and secure their future.

The benefits of connectivity We know we generally feel happier when maintaining social connections, but did you know it actually benefits you mentally and physically?

Interactions keep both our bodies and brains active. Engaging with others can help reduce the risk of heart disease, dementia and Alzheimer’s to name a few, while helping to stave off feelings of isolation, emptiness and depression.

At Oak Tree, it’s reassuring to know that you can still have your own personal space, but that help from

Call 1300 367 155

the village manager or a caring neighbour is never far away in times of need. Even in your own villa, you’re still connected as part of our village community. Being surrounded by likeminded people, it’s comforting to know that we’re all in it together.

For your friends and loved ones further away, we can help you connect in new ways via technology, allowing you to stay in touch even when you can’t physically be together. And with all the regular maintenance taken care of,

Safety first The health and wellbeing of our villages is our top priority. Physical inspections are still welcome at this time with some additional safety protocols in place; otherwise, video tours or online virtual tours may be a possible alternative.

Speak to our friendly team about the best solution for you.

To learn more about Oak Tree Retirement Village Orange or for a personal tour call 1300 367 155 or visit www.oaktreegroup.com.au

you’ll have more time to correspond with your nearest and dearest than ever before.

109 Ploughmans Lane, Orange

While you concentrate on what’s important, staying safe in your villa, all the village operations are being taken care of around you by the village manager, while the gardener looks after all the lawns and landscaping so you don’t need to worry.

oaktreegroup.com.au 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 11

PaulTIERNEY PaulTIERNEY PaulTIERNEY

Let’s TalkMoney Money Let’s Talk Daniel McGregor withwith Daniel McGregor Let’s Talk Money

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MUSIC SWEET FOR COMPANY SMELLING POO

with Daniel McGregor SAVE YOUR RETIREMENT… MUSIC FOR COMPANY I’ll keep it clean.

Need something to keep BUCKETS ARE THE ANSWER! you going in these lonely SAVE YOUR RETIREMENT… days? … stay tuned.

It’s amazing how a few weeks can feel like a few months… It feels as though we’ve been living through this save coronavirus nightmareTHE for a long ANSWER! time already!

How to HUNDREDS BUCKETS ARE

ed something to keep replaced. But … online these days is just too to ignore.

All you so sweet that he’d just head up to his The saying is actually a peachy u going in these lonely holiday house onlike the coast for a bit have to do is type in one idea, bit different to that, but ys? … stay tuned.

of r&rand during the ‘stay ‘The awesome 80s’ you’re set home’ edict got my dear ol’ dad to thank replaced. online – not only that,But but … duck these down days an entire day, maybe longer. he’d I can’t watch any morefor free-to-air I’ve been a music ‘fan’ since the is M1just whenever he was needed for too peachy From VantoHalen, to the Vapours, to to ignore. All you TV. I just can’t. I’m forcing myself work too.

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This community haspocket, always wealthtrain.com.au and book an of theirsupporting super savingswetoneed cash, helping money them you can putalltowards ories of going from a school kid a beer or a glass of wine while we try and potentially supporting and following correct to your retirement savings a to meet their income needs. rain came, I jumped decisions.

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This current faves, a relatively new stuck the buds Thereit’sisabout no mistaking the their money recover when that track when the going gets yourself of everything, spending wisely doing it a bit tough, making these types of changes that many actually need the “well, a gutful of theand small pocket of the in my this week,“Every working Emily continued, day the situation salone again my ears had my phone it comes to advice, then hea super fund call centres to move financial futures on the right ‘alone time’ person was some of my fave Aussie band called Ocean Alley – and and getting value for money.

Buy what’s on sale or can be a lifesaver… seriousness of the coronavirus things go back up again… which tough.

I can guarantee you this if a famous is doing it, then community with perceived sweet changing andNovel. we can Am only Itake it day home.isWeird.

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Drop that by 10% and there’s $144 a month… seriousness things go back up again… which tough.

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Am right now will have a huge medium and long term Can ‘buckets’ couple ofIsongs I might add tothe with my (many) morning you go two months?

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Somethat members sequence?

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Moments like my extended playlists next week Stay on safe! coffees.

My computer and work setbuy cheaper cuts of meat, make usethey of leftovers consequences maths lesson isn’t going Most their Peculiar Mama…’, Onion Skin bychange theMany people while are down. for a while! will be finding elling you. you hear it? and thumbing GiveCan @orangesupportingorange a looks like in 5, 10 and 20 ye like this happens, there is no will include ‘Mad World’ by Tears these are a good opportunity SPEND LESS ON YOUR MORTGAGE upnoses (seeatlast isand aces. attitudes. Hey, ignorant, selfish, ill- themselves and don’t let anything in the fridge cupboard theweeks’ experts,column) politicians Boom Thisor type of strategy ensures simply sitting in follow Instagram and let’s support our Crash Opera (‘these here are at days, Daniel ese tenonbucks a month for Fears, the songperson,

by John Lennon now.

If your mortgage rate doesn’tfrom currently be selling outinterest of growth go to waste (Australia the fourth highest level need to to remind myhas clients why their medical pros.

Interesting to see thatoutand informed and oblivious your Oh, and the music … it’s goin’ on crazy times’), The Doors ‘People et youcommunity. access to a billion have a shares 2 in frontand of it,property) then you’re throwing money of foodmoney wastageisininvested the world!).

Always shop with assets a NSW thought his poo smelled poowhere doesn’the smell sweet – it stinks. says ‘Strange Days Indeed, (i.e. the way it is. here on pollie the outskirts of Millthorpe, Are Strange’. I know a mate who’d Stay s s, maybe more, and there’s drain a list NEVER shop on an be empty stomach.

I help Most Peculiar Mama…’, Onion Skinlike byto find If you’d out and more about people how INDEPENDENT financial advice could youdown manage cash flow,every pay offweek! the mortgage faster, get the most out while theythe are down.

Many will finding I’m telling you. Can youadd hear it? I go Again ‘Here on my own’ by ds if you pay for it. I’ve still got I’m out of space for the week! guarantee of that if you do these things youinwill Boom Crash Opera (‘these here are super and invest wisely, then get touchsave on 0411 484type 464 orof head to wealthtrain.com.au This strategy ensures themselves simply sitting in D These days, ten bucks a month The list Whitesnake. is endless.

The above are just ideas. At the end of the day, lots of money! undreds of vinyls and CDs crazy times’), and The Doors ‘People Daniel McGregor is the man behind Wealth Train and is a member of the Independent Financial Advice and Education.

This advice may not be suitable to you because it willthe getmusic you access to a Music billion – you’re never lonely, even it’sAllyour money and it’s provided never my job toadvice tell people SPEND de of place, and contains general advice whichLESS does notON takeCOFFEE into consideration any of your personal circumstances. strategies and information are general only.

Are Strange’. I know a mate who’d songs, maybe more, and there’s Daniel McGregor and Wealth are authorised representatives of a Independent and Education AFSL 520963 how they should or shouldn’t spend their money.

ATrain coffee a day, 5 to days week at $4Advice a pop will cost y computer won’t ever be when you’re alone.add Turn‘Here it up.I Loud.

If you’d like find out moreFinancial about how INDEPENDENT financial advice could help you manage cash flow, pay off the mortgage faster, get the mo go Again on my own’ by no ads if you pay for it. I’ve still got My job is to show them the consequences. Right an individual $20 a week and couple $40 week, of super andainvest wisely, then get in touch on 0411 484 464 or head to wealthtrain.com.au Whitesnake.

The list is endless. now, many people can’t afford to be spending $80 a month for an individual and $160 a month the hundreds of vinyls and CDs

of dollars a month

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Church during lockdown?

In the line

Hear the difference

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Daniel McGregor is the man behind Wealth Train and is a member of the Independent Financial Advice and Education. This advice may not be suitable to you because it

Do you have one of those annoying Christian friends

much and I hope the above is food thought. for a couple, $1,040 a year fordoes an individual and Music –Perhaps you’re never lonely, even in pride of place, and theIt’s music contains general advice which not take into consideration any of your personal circumstances.

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Imagine the cost of more can change.

On our way up theyou’re coast foralone. a holiday, my it up. Loud. on my computer won’t ever be when Turn HEARING CENTRE been curious to go, but in the end it was all a bit too

WE ARE OPEN

(until advised otherwise)

11am - 6pm

conscious spenders. You will reap the rewards of spending money on the things which add value to your life, while at the same time saving something from each pay cheque to put towards funding the financial future you want and deserve.

If you need a hand with creating your financial plan and you value advice that’s independent, we can catch up online or over the phone for now!

Help with Grant Applications CROSS PEN Help with Grant Applications CROSS E ARE O W purposes sed otherwise)

husband and I joked about toilet paper shortages. Our much. Or you used to go to church but had a bad amusement continued with my in-laws as we light experience and never ended up going back. heartedly continued to joke about “panic buying.”

You’ve heard that church have Then weprobably read about 3 confirmed casesgatherings in orange and been cancelled because of what COVID-19.

But did you the gravity and seriousness was happening hit that usknow - It got real.many churches continue to “meet” online?

ThenChristians, events started be cancelled, second best to my thechurches real thing, but ioh, it’s to ws Yug jigsaFor group and program shortly followed community is kids’ so important to us that we’ll and make it r retail of board games, miniatures, paint, youth . pied occu yone ever then we received the message that weekly church keep to ty plen happen however we can.

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MONDAY WEDNESDAY

(until advi purposes

than one coffee a day and on weekends as well as weekdays! • Diagnostic Hearing I know coffeeAssessment is now a national addiction, but a few less coffees a week makesAid a material • Excellent Hearing difference to Fittings the household budget.

SPEND LESS ON TAKEAWAY • Superior level of client We are bombarded with ads for takeaway and service KAY MCINTOSH home delivery.

• Valuable ongoing AUDIOLOGIST A recent study

by Suncorp found that individuals support spend an average oftechnology $22 a week on takeaway • Latest meals, being most popular among young people Bluetooth connection

Knowhow can be the difference between success and failure To discuss your grant application how the difference Knowhow canandbe I can help you succeed call Amanda Spalding between success and failure

Stay safe!

Daniel

If you’d like to find out more about how INDEPENDENT financial advice could help you manage cash flow, pay off the mortgage faster, get the most out of 1/256 Anson Street, super and invest wisely, then get in touch on 0411 484 464 or head to wealthtrain.com.au.

Orange NSW 2800

ToDaniel discuss your grantWealth application and how McGregor is the man behind02 Train and1884 is a member of the Independent Financial Advisers Association of Australia. This advice may not be suitable to you because 6360 AMANDA SPALDING which does call not takeAmanda into considerationSpalding any of your personal circumstances. All strategies and information provided are general advice only.

Iwww.orangehearingcentre.com canit contains helpgeneral youadvice succeed CONSULTING

SATURDAY 11am - 4pm l or message us https://oechurch.org.au/ Daniel McGregor and Wealth Train are authorised representatives of Independent Financial Advice and Education AFSL 520963 a cal Give us11am - 4pm TUESDAY: THURSDAY FRIDAY 16 — 22 -APRIL, Closed 12 11am 0417 288 246 6pm2020 SUNDAY 11am -6pm 11am -3pm MONDAY WEDNESDAY aes@amandaspaldingconsulting.com 11am 6pm SATURDAY 11am - 4pm See you in- store 11am - 4pm

AMANDA SPALDING CONSULTING

PROUD ORANGE BUSINESS

OCLife

Cadia Valley Operations visiting the Canobolas Clontarf Academy.

PROUD TO BE PART OF THE

LOCAL COMMUNITY

Every year Cadia distributes funding to community groups and organisations which provide ongoing infrastructure and support for local communities in the Blayney, Cabonne and Orange local government areas.

Recent donations include: •$ 60,000 to the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Service to fund a Biodiversity Officer role and support the work of the Land Council.

• $56,759 to the Orange Health Service towards emergency and rehabilitation equipment, as well as protective face shields.

• $50,000 to the Canobolas Clontarf Academy, as part of a three-year commitment to supporting local Indigenous boys in their education and future careers.

• $27,500 to Orange360’s Village Tourism Strategy.

• $25,000 to Orange City Council towards the track widening of Gosling Creek Reserve.

• $25,000 towards an expansion at Uralba Retirement Village.

• $15,000 to the Bowen Community Technology Centre which provides internet and computer access for disadvantaged students and adults.

•$ 12,600 towards new equipment for the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service.

•$ 10,000 towards the Fairbridge Children’s Park in Molong.

•$ 8,200 towards patient shelters for the St John Ambulance in Molong.

•$ 7,500 towards a new shed for the Riding for the Disabled in Orange.

•$ 5,000 to the Brothers4Recovery drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.

For the remainder of this calendar year Cadia will focus the local funding contributions to assist in providing support to those industries, business and community groups that have been affected by CoVID-19 who do not have access to other financial support. For more information about Cadia Valley Operations contact cadiavalley@newcrest.com.au or visit www.cadiavalley.com.au. #cadiacares

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I like to travel every now and then. You know, see new and exciting places or things. Well, anyway, I recently visited a jungle area where we (the touring group and I) were talking with some natives. I noticed one native gentleman wearing a unique looking necklace, and curious as I am, decided to question him about it.

“What is it made of?”

I asked.

“Alligator’s teeth,” he replied.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” I said. “I suppose they mean as much to you as pearls do to us.”

“Oh no,” he objected.

“Anybody can open an oyster.”

Cadia visiting the Bow en Community Technology Centre.

SAVE YOUR RETIREMENT! CHANGES. CHOICES. DECISIONS. It is completely normal to feel unsettled right now, but how you handle fear and the money moves you make have never been more important.

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Book a free financial checkup with Daniel McGregor, your local independent financial adviser.

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or call 0411 484 464 Daniel McGregor (1253135) and Wealth Train (1258202) are authorised representatives of Independent Financial Advice and Education AFSL 520963

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 13

HistoryTALKING with HELEN McANULTY

Nobody told me there’d be days like these.

Strange days indeed…

John Lennon. 1980

When it was suggested to me that the Oral History Group contribute to an article about how they faced difficult times in their lives, I was tempted to begin with a quote from some famous thinker about hard times.

But none that I researched seemed to fit the present difficulties which we are all facing world-wide, so I settled for John Lennon.

Certainly, in our lifetimes we have encountered nothing like it, but almost exactly one hundred years ago the population of the world was facing another similar pandemic the, so-called, Spanish flu of which 14 people in Orange died. But the rest of the community survived!

And thrived!

The Oral History Group is in temporary recess at the moment but still vocal on their phones or on email. Some even use snail mail! So, I have been able to put to them the question: “Tell me what

difficulties you have faced in your long lifetimes and how did you get through them?”

ONE OF THE FIRST RESPONDENTS WAS MEG. “The thing that shaped my whole life,” she said, “happened in 1946 when I was six and caught rheumatic fever. I was kept in bed lying down, not able to sit up, so as not to strain my heart to give it a chance to heal.

“It finally did, but not for such a long time. The doctors said that once my temperature went down for 48hours I could get up.

“After initial fevers subsided and I improved, each morning my temperature would be normal and I would be so excited, then each evening it would have risen and I was devastated, because there was still infection.

“This went on for twelve months and, being a child, I could see no end to the torment.

It taught me at a young age that, in life, you just had to put up with some things and there is no escape. I have carried this idea through life to some degree, sometimes for the best, sometimes not.

“I used to read, write stories

and poetry, and play with a box of buttons on a tray pretending they were a class of children and I was a teacher. Some buttons were good and a few buttons, which I didn’t like, were always the naughty ones. Poor buttons! Fortunately, I had a vivid imagination which I needed.

“I had few toys as it was just after the war and most children then had very few. I listened to the radio serial The Search for the Golden Boomerang and looked forward to The Argonauts Club each day. I think it was at that time that I developed my love of classical music because I often listened to it.

“Each Sunday afternoon, a girl who was a year older than I from a neighbouring farm, came to play with me. I suspect her mother made her come, and I will be eternally grateful to Mrs P. for being so thoughtful.

Dorothy was the only little friend I ever really saw.

“The following year my temperature returned to normal and I was allowed up but still stayed home while my mother

taught me on correspondence.

“The real difficulty came when I was eight and returned to a school of 650 children. I shall never forget my first day, and the NOISE! I felt I was drowning in it. I felt I couldn’t think! I was not used to other children and they were not used to me! I did have trouble making friends and was always so pleased to get home to my only real friend, my kitten.

“Looking back, it seems those years of isolation did impact upon my childhood and in other ways upon my whole life. They taught me resilience in times of difficulty but also convinced me that solitude can be companionable. Important life lessons.”

GLENNA HAD A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE. “My father was a clever man who could turn his hand to just about anything. However, he was also very intolerant and could not work with others, either

above or below him. When I was about six, he ran out of money and had to sell the family home.

We then moved into a factory premises he owned in Bexley.

“Dad installed two caravans, one each for bedrooms and there was a workbench along a nearby wall which fulfilled many needs. We also had a sofa between the two caravans.

Halfway up the factory was a gas ring which was Mum’s only source of power for cooking.

“The bathroom was at the front of the building. It consisted of a handbasin, shower and toilet but it was only half roofed. If you needed to use the toilet when it was raining you just got wet!

Mum lasted about twelve months, then packed me up and we moved to the country.!”

Glenna survived the privations of that period of her life and became a successful teacher.

These are just two of the stories of difficult times in the lives of the oral history group and there are more to come.

Copyright, Helen McAnulty. March, 2020.

Isolation tips — Emily Thompson

DEATH NOTICES in Orange City Life

Letting people know about the passing of a loved one is never easy, but people do appreciate hearing of such losses, each having their own reasons for this.

You can now share your sadness in a thoughtfully presented Death Notice in Orange City Life.

Notices will be presented with dignity and at low cost $25 for words only and $50 if you include a photo.

It’s worth noting that a lot more people read Orange City Life than any other local publication, and it’s Free.

To place a Death Notice in Orange City Life, you have two options –

1.

Ask your Funeral Director to arrange it.

2.

Call us on 6361 3575, email reception@oclife.com.au or visit our office at Suite 3/241 Lords Place, Orange for more information.

We capture the Spirit of Orange 14 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

We’re in self-isolation, due to two of our family members being immunosuppressed. For now, it’s frustrating but not the end of the world. I have friends dropping off coffee and bread every few days, the kids are able to log in to school to do their work each day and my wonderful gp did my regular appointment over the phone so I could avoid the clinic this week. I am determined to use this time well, and to make this a positive experience for my husband and I as well as the kids. How you ask?

Project Gutenberg offers free eBooks, lots of wonderful classics that I’ve “been meaning to read”. However first I’m going to reread my absolute favourite- Dracula. It’s still the only book that has ever scared me. Speaking of books, my local book shop is currently happy to do phone orders and post them out, I’ve just bought the new Marian Keyes book from them.

Coursera offers free short courses. I’ve done a sustainability course through the University of Illinois, a course about how to be more organised as a teacher (that I didn’t finish. I’m a very, very, very creative teacher, but certainly not an organised one), and I’ve just enrolled in an art appreciation course through MOMA. They got me in with their van Gogh painting.

Speaking of van Gogh…

Virtual museum tours

are available through google arts and culture- both an app and a website. From your couch you can explore Yellowstone national park, Pompeii, head backstage at the Paris Opera and stroll through the Van Gogh Museum. There is a projector option- you can use your phone or tablet to project life sized paintings in front of you. It’s breathtaking. Yes, I have Starry Night projected in front of me as I type this.

MasterChef recipes are all available online. Despite watching every episode of MasterChef to ever air, and trying a lot of the recipes out myself, I’ve never made a croquembouche tower. Today is the day I will change that, or more likely, burn down my kitchen while trying.

Move over salad, it’s a dessert-for-dinner kind of day.

Uber eats & Menulog are there for you if you don’t feel like cooking. I live in country NSW and still our Menulog options are great. I can only imagine the joy of living in a city and being spoiled for choice. Throw in duolingo for some language exposure and you’ve turned ordering noodles into a cultural learning opportunity. Try and beat that, school curriculum.

Netflix & Stan are your bffs this week. Honestly, has there ever been a better time to be at home for a while? We have long been Netflix subscribers, but have recently joined Stan too. We are enjoying the extensive comedy shows available on both, a wonderful, lighthearted distraction.

And this is the thing, you might need a bit of a distraction today. Washing hands, practicing social distancing and self-isolation if you are sick or immunocompromised are the best defenses right now. But it doesn’t mean you have to be locked in a state of panic with 24hour rolling news coverage. Fear and uncertainty over the future isn’t going to improve anything. Read a book, bake an overly complicated French dessert. Build a pillow fort with the family and settle into the couch. Just don’t forget to project a Van Gogh onto the wall behind you.

Emily Thompson also writes at

www.thegoodenoughparentblog.com

PROUD ORANGE BUSINESS

Orange Credit Union has supported our members and community for over 55 years and we will continue to be here for you during these unprecedented times.

Our core focus and priority is the personal and financial wellbeing of our members. We understand this is a difficult time for many of our members, and are here to continue to support you any way we can.

We’ll keep supporting your banking needs through our branch, and have our team on a reduced staff rotation to best manage your in branch enquiries. We are proud of our dedicated team who are here to help you to navigate the financial options available to you, whether that be in branch, email or over the phone.

We encourage you to use our online banking facilities at your convenience. Where possible we recommend you also use contactless payment options when shopping for essentials.

Our Orange Credit Union Visa Debit card may assist members wanting to make online purchases or on Digital Wallet. If you

need our Visa Debit card, please apply via our website, in branch or over the phone.

At Orange Credit Union, we recognise everyone’s situation is different and offer a personalised approach when it comes to financial assistance. We can work with you to offer a relief package that is best suited to you and your family.

If you are experiencing financial concerns, we encourage you to get in touch.

Need to talk?

To request financial assistance, please visit us online at www. orangecu.com.au and follow the links to COVID-19 Financial Assistance.

Alternatively, you can send an email to ocu@orangecu.com.au or call us directly on 02 6362 4466.

Our team will spend the time with you to assist you in using any of our online channels or ATMs. Getting in touch with the team at Orange Credit Union is easy.

We’ll keep helping you, any way we can.

• Call us on (02) 6362 4466 • Send an email to ocu@orangecu.com.au • Drop in and visit our branch • Visit our website www.orangecu.com.au, for more information or to log in to internet banking • Download our App (available via the Apple Store or Google Play)

OCLife

Wine tasting goes online With cellar doors restricted to takeaway and online sales, local wineries are taking the tasting experience online.

Printhie launched their ‘virtual tasting’ live video series a couple of weeks ago and See Saw Wines are also putting together a program of master classes, live tastings and even private tastings with vigneron Justin Jarrett.

“It will be a combination of live tastings, so we will tell people in advance grab a bottle of our 2018 chardonnay in the next week and there will be a live tasting you can follow on. But some will also be more personal; so say you buy a flight of our three Chardonnays you could then sit there and do a taste comparison led by Justin,” said See Saw Wines marketing manager Lisa Lovick.

As well as selling tasting packs, Lisa said they will be taking this time to put together some masterclass videos for anyone interested in learning more about the wines of the Orange region.

“We do mini informative videos on our Instagram anyway, but the masterclasses will be more in depth and a good opportunity for people to learn something new,” she said.

“We are not in it to charge people money all the time, it’s just about content and engagement and hopefully once the dust is settled, they’ll actually come to the cellar door, because we are going to build one!”

For any wine lovers out there, most of our region’s cellar doors are offering free delivery, so it has never been easier to support our local producers.

LOOKING FOR A LOCAL BUILDER IN YOUR AREA?

• Pay a fixed price, even if we hit rock • Guaranteed build times or we pay you rent • Choose from a range of facades and colours

For your FREE design consultation please contact one of our friendly staff on 1300 017 582 or book online bellriverhomes.com.au Builders Lic. 61247C. V90568

V90568_BELL_PRESS_Orange_Design_Consult_HPFC_Revised_2.1.indd 1

27/6/19 1:11 15 pm 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

with AMANDA SPALDING

How to get the BEST out of OUR COUNCILS

COVID – 19 Community Perceptions and the Role of Local Government

76% of employed residents have had their work impacted in some way by COVID-19.

Television and online are the most common ways that residents are getting information about COVID-19.

There are differences between perceptions of Metro Sydney residents and residents of regional NSW.

NSW Community Pulse March 2020 I have frequently mentioned community satisfaction surveys in these columns. It is important for policy makers and service providers to know how community perceptions have been affected by the current COVID - 19 environment we are all living in. Orange City Council should be congratulated for responding to community concerns about touching the parking ticket machines at the Ophir Car Park and have made parking free.

Micromex Research is a community engagement business that regularly takes the temperature of the NSW community through research using an online panel and publishes the findings regularly as a Community Pulse, as well as undertaking community and customer satisfaction surveys for clients.

The February 2020 Community Pulse can now be used to measure the impact that COVID – 19 is having on NSW communities. The Micromex Quality of Life benchmark is based on 11,700 responses for multiple Councils since 2016. The online panel consists of 1,728 participants who are demographically and geographically representative of the adult population of NSW with 53% of them being from Metropolitan Sydney and 47% from Regional NSW. It has been a rocky six months for NSW residents. Community perceptions of quality of life have fallen since before bushfires, floods and the virus.

In March, 85% of residents were concerned or very concerned about COVID-19 and 81% concerned or very concerned about Australia’s economy. Whilst level of concern for some areas has diminished, residents are still able to consider categories beyond COVID-19, with concern for cost of living and climate change remaining consistent with February data. Access to medical services has also remained consistent while concerns about the accessibility of public transport is significantly down, unsurprisingly.

Women and residents aged under 50 have higher levels of concern around the health and economic aspects.

76% of employed residents have had their work impacted in some way by COVID-19.

Television and online are the most common ways that residents are getting information about COVID-19.

There are differences between perceptions of Metro Sydney residents and residents of regional NSW.

How concerned are you personally about?

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

The following questions were asked:

Metro %

• At the moment we understand that our community is facing significant uncertainty –please indicate which of the following things, if any, are currently negatively impacting on your quality of life?

• How, if at all, do you think you personally may be impacted by COVID-19 in the future?

Q3a.

Q3b.

Current and Future Impacts Current and Future Impacts

At the moment we understand that our community is facing significant uncertainty – please indicate which of the following things, if any, are currently negatively impacting on your quality of life?

How, if at all, do you think you personally may be impacted by COVID-19 in the future?

100%

Regional %

Role of Local Government NSW residents believe that the primary responsibilities of local governments are to support local businesses and community members during this period, particularly the elderly and vulnerable - whilst ensuring that the LGA contains to be maintained and cleaned with the continuation of essential services.

83%▲ 80%

72%▲ 62% 64%

60%

61% 43%

40%

36%

40%

33%

38%▲ 27% 16%

20%

Comments received about the role of local government included:

60%▲

54% ▲

54%▲

15%

7% 5%

0%

Current Impacts

7%

2%

Future Impacts

Base: N=1,728 ▲▼ = A significantly higher/lower percentage (by group)

All have been impacted or expect to be in some way, shape or form.

43% of NSW residents already have experienced increased mental health issues. This incidence is expected to increase.

All have been impacted or expect to be in some way, shape or form. 43% of NSW residents 11 already have experienced increased mental health issues. This incidence is expected to increase.

As we know the Federal Government has responded to these concerns by increasing funding to mental health organisations.

• Practical support and communication • Working to check that local people and businesses are abiding by the regulations • Ensure that the elderly and those in isolation get the support they need • Community services like meals on wheels and mobile libraries • Support local health services and continue council services like garbage collection • Continue to provide the services they can without violating social distancing rules • Reducing stress by removing parking fees and having flexible payment options for rates • Maintain the cleanliness and functionality of our LGA. 88% of NSW residents agree/strongly agree that it is important for local governments to plan and engage with the community regarding future needs. One arguably universal observation is that community well-being and quality of life has been under strain for a significant period, and that people want to be talking and planning around a Post CV-19 future. Agreement is relatively consistent across all demographics.

To see the full Micromex survey presentation, go to - https://www. amandaspaldingconsulting.com/articles/.c/micromex-community-pulse-march-2020-1

I have received feedback that many people find these columns informative and I am happy to receive comments from readers about this column and other issues you would like me to cover so please either contact me at Orange City Life or aes@amandaspaldingconsulting.com

16 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

18 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 19

20 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

OPEN HOUSES ON FACEBOOK LIVE 10 Emerald Street 10.30am 6/1-7 Hartas Lane 11.00am 2/38 Sampson Street 11.30am JUMP ONTO MCCARRON CULLINANE FACEBOOK PAGE TO JOIN THESE

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18.35ha lifestyle block with building permission • The Forest Reefs/Millthorpe area has always been popular so here is your opportunity to own a great lifestyle block • Approximately 45 acres in size with a 1.56ha (3.85 acre) building envelope.

• The block is approximately 2.5klms from Forest Reefs and approximately 9klms from Millthorpe • Will be fully fenced, power to the block and has a 500sqm surface area dam (approx.) when full.

• Call us for an inspection. In conjunction with Blowes Real Estate

Jim Oates 0427624755

Brian Cullinane 0418 637 338

10 EMERALD STREET, ORANGE

• Great North Orange location, close to shopping centre, child care, gardens and sporting complex • Open plan living areas plus a separate lounge, large kitchen with plenty of storage and bench space • All bedrooms are spacious and have built-ins with ensuite and walk in robe to the main.

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‘OAKEY PARK’ OAKY LANE ORANGE

Historic wool growing property on 1585 acres

‘Oakey Park’ has an outstanding record of quality fine wool production over many years.

Furthermore, in addition to the sheep flock, the property has always carried fifty to sixty cows – with potential to increase production.

If you are looking to purchase an acreage offering excellent production potential and utmost privacy your

Jim Oates 0427624755

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inspection of ‘Oakey Park’ is highly recommended.

Country: Undulating to hilly Soil: Areas of red basalt balance grey loam to rocky out crops Pasture: Mainly native with phalaris, rye and clover Timber: Red, yellow and white box with scattered kurrajong. Ample shade remaining

Brian Cullinane 0418 637 338

P.O.A

6/1-7 HARTAS LANE, ORANGE

• Set in a quiet complex close to Greengate shopping centre, Duntryleague golf course, schools, parks and restaurants.

• The open planned lounge/dining adjoins a modern kitchen • Both bedrooms are very generous and have built-ins.

• There is a reverse cycle split system, plus wall mounted electric heaters and the bathroom has been renovated • The fully paved courtyard is low maintenance and very private

2

143 FARNHAM ROAD, STUART TOWN • Approx. 17 acres - 45 minutes Orange and 5 minutes form Stuart Town

• Spacious north facing kitchen with dishwasher, gas stove and pantry

• 4 Bedrooms with built in robes and walk in robe

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• 2 living areas with wood and R/C split system Air Conditioning

• New bore 40ft depth with electric pump

• Bathroom and second toilet in the laundry

• Some older sheds, cottage and garden shed

Jim Oates 0427624755

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Brian Cullinane 0418 637 338

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• This well maintained spacious two bedroom unit is priced to sell don’t hesitate to call and make your appointment to inspect • Agent declares interest

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$248,000

1

45 MOLONG STREET, STUART TOWN

• Charming 3 bedroom Brick Veneer home located in peaceful Stuart Town • Built in robes in 2 of the 3 bedrooms, lots of room for the family with a kitchen/dining room and family room • Year round comfort with gas and wood heating plus an air cooler • Set on a block size of 1686m2 you can relax on the

Jim Oates 0427624755

$349,000

$518,000

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3

1

front porch while watching the kids play • Convenient old 2 bedroom flat and outside toilet • Double garage • Bore – 130ft depth with electric pump 350 g.p.h and 2 rainwater tanks • Don’t miss your opportunity to surround yourself in this serene and calm property

Brian Cullinane 0418 637 338

$199,000

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Brian Cullinane 0418 637 338

Jim Oates 0427 624 755

Marie Fox 0412 166 132 APRIL 16 — ­ 22, 2020 21

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FIND MORE HOGSTERS!

— BOB HOLLAND —

Good Products

This week we thought we'd tell you about a couple of products for keeping your paved and tiled areas looking great.

WIN 5 X $2 SCRATCHIES For further time-wasting entertainment during these times of home isolation, we’re inviting you to see how many hidden Hogsters you can find throughout this issue of OC Life.

To be in the draw to win 5 x $2 Scratchies just tell us how many you found. You don’t have to say where, just tell us the number. To make it more interesting, the Hogsters you’re looking for this competition are different to the one we use in our regular Find Hogster competition.

CT 18 Superwash This product is a powerful, multi-purpose, bio-degradable cleaning gel that's safe on any surface. It's a concentrate and you only need a small amount to do sizeable jobs. Basically, it's a cleaning gel that breaks down and removes the toughest dirt, mud, grease, oil film, grime, soot and bugs leaving a streak free, sparkling clean finish on all surfaces. I discovered it years ago and now always keep a bottle in the garage. I use it for cleaning the driveway, washing the car etc. but it's also a favourite of my wife's as well. She uses it to wash our tiled floor surfaces because it's so easy to use and leaves the tiled areas looking fabulous and without any streaks. You might like to try it. Buy it from Repco and take a tip, the 5 litre size is considerable cheaper than buying it a litre at a time. Trust me, you will use 5 litres over time.

The one you’re looking for this looks like this

Berger Jet Dry Stone and Paving Sealer I only discovered this product a few months back. Our paved front steps and porch were looking a bit dull and I was hoping to brighten them up a bit. This product was recommended to us by Bunnings and I'd have to say, applying it and the end result was a pleasant experience and surprise. When you open the tin, you discover pretty much a milky, watery thin liquid and it hardly inspires you. You slap it on with a brush and being so thin, you feel you can't be very neat with the application. No need to worry, somehow, and despite how it looks after you've finished, in a short space of time it dries and looks wonderful. It's a bit hard to believe. But it gets better, it actually stays looking good for quite some time despite the constant wear and elements. It's a Berger Product and we picked it up from Bunnings Paint Dept.

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ROAD CARGO 4 0 5 A IN LA CASC $2,800,000

MILAH 95 WEE

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cnr lords place + kite street 02 6362 1233

AL

PROUD ORANGE BUSINESS

OCLife

UPSKILL FROM THE LOUNGEROOM — MELISE COLEMAN — One thing we can do is to make the most of the extra time we’ll inevitably have over the next few weeks/months and what better use of your time than learning a new skill? We did some researching for you and found some suggestions regarding online courses you can do from the comfort of your own home.

OOO Who doesn’t love a little freebie and what better than free education? Well, TAFE have made 21 of their short courses available and fee-free. These accredited courses include: eMarketing for Small Business; Engaging Customers Using Social Media; Writing and Presentation Skills; Computing Skills; Team Leader Skill Set; and Administration Skills for Team Leaders.

These courses can be completed in just days or weeks, and offer practical skills and experiences across a range of industries.

More information, including a full list of courses as well as different programs and degrees, can be found available at www.tafensw.edu.au or by calling 131 601.

If money is a concern and you don’t necessarily want a certificate in a course ‘YouTube’ is great to upskill in all kinds of areas, from cooking to photography, computer skills and much more.

OOO

Sharing the Love of a Great Hobby — JONATHAN ROE —

Here at Orange City Life, we love meeting people with a passion for what they do, whether it is art, woodwork, knitting, sport — whatever activity it is that brings you joy.

N

ow a lot of you out there may be finding yourselves with a bit more time on your hands at the moment — maybe time to get around to that passion project you’ve always wanted to work on but couldn’t find enough hours in the day.

So, to inspire you, we thought we’d take a look at how others are finding creative ways to fill in their down time.

Kristian Fraser moved his young family to Orange about ten years ago to escape the grind of the daily commute in Sydney. Although still busy with fulltime work as a data analyst and two school-aged boys, the move has meant Kristian has been able to find more time for his own projects.

“One of my first jobs as a kid out of school was a cabinet making apprenticeship,” said Kristian. “I actually completed my apprenticeship as a cabinet maker, but then the business I was working for folded and I lost my job.”

Looking around for work, Kristian found himself working in sales for a hardware store and on a career path that kept him off the tools. But that desire to create has never left him.

“I reckon it was basically only moving here to Orange that I really had the space and a consistent place to live where I could set up a workshop,” he said.

“So about nine years ago I started buying the larger machines, your table saws and your routers… I already had the hand skills and definitely had all the hand tools from my apprenticeship and so I started revisiting it all and making furniture for myself again.

“I've made helps of stuff for home; it is all furniture for my own house. I really enjoy getting out there and building, my wife really enjoys me getting out of her way and there's a little bit of a benefit at the end, we have some nice furniture.

“I enjoy the designing, I enjoy the problem solving, the process and the outcome. I have a desk I made, it is a

beautiful table, and I sit at it every day now.”

The move to Orange also meant more outdoor space for Kristian and his family, space he is making the most of.

“I sell produce as well, but I would describe it more as a hobby than anything else,” he said.

“We bought a big block of land, stuck a house on the front of it and I thought this is a lovely patch of grass, let's do something else with it… I really just put something in the ground and if I have excess things, I'll then wander over to the Agrestic Grocer and say 'do you want to buy some extra bits and pieces?' It kind of just grew.

“I'm actually a physical kind of guy generally... I sit down behind a computer for work, but your body wants to move. You get on your hands and knees and do weeding primarily because it is just good exercise it gets the blood pumping and all that stuff.”

And somehow, on top of all this, Kristian is finding time to also learn classical guitar.

“Playing badly! I've been learning over the past year and a half. If I can't go outside and if I can't go in the garage, I go into one of the spare rooms and just play the guitar for a little while.

It is ridiculously busy, but five or ten minutes each day doing this or that is just enough to keep it all going “Learning is central to how I keep on going it is life. I started as a retail salesperson and now I'm a data analyst.

I've gone through marketing, I've gone through software development and project management all that sort of stuff… My mentality is, if I can't reinvent my skills once every five years then those skills will either become too specialised or redundant. An extension of that attitude is me learning guitar, doing my cabinet making, doing my vege growing — I'm also learning website development through TAFE online. So I feel you should never stop moving, always push forward, otherwise life gets really boring.”

PAID COURSES

For those wanting to get or update their RSA Certificate: The NSW RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) NSW course is available using Online training at: https://www.eot.edu.au/online-courses/ RSA/NSW/ Free mental health courses and modules are available with the option to upgrade to a certificate, something definitely worth checking out: https:// www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/education-training/ health-professionals/emental-health-in-practice/ free-accredited-online-learning-modules The world may seem like it’s on standstill, but that doesn’t mean our brains and skills should be. Let’s come out of this as better versions of ourselves.

Would you like to share your hobby with OC Life readers?

We’d love to hear from you.

Contact Jonathan on 63613575 or email jonathan@oclife.com.au

soduku The objective is to fill a 9x9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3x3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9. A cell is the smallest block in the game. A row , column and region consists of 9 cells and the whole game consists of 81 cells.

Go team!

3

6 7 2

8

9

1 4 8

7

2 5 8 5

9 2 6

1 7 3

4

ANSWER: Classified page

6

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© Auspac Media 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 25

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ANZAC DAY 2020

A Tale

The following story has been given to us by Rod Chellas who has compiled information about the World War Two service of his father-in-law, Cudal local William Harry “Bill” Dean.

Bill was always very reticent to speak of his years in the Army and it was only after his death, that his daughter Joy and her husband Rod spoke to Bill’s army mate Roy Shean and Roy’s wife Freda and they were able to get some idea of his years spent in the service of his country. The following narrative is from a recording of that meeting with Roy and Freda just a year or two prior to Roy’s death on June 19th, 2010.

W

illiam Harry “Bill” Dean was ‘called up’ into the Army in August 1942 at the age of 23. It was there that Bill was to meet the man who would be by his side through almost all their years fighting for Australia; Roy Shean from the nearby town of Manildra. The two became very good mates.

Roy Shean and Bill Dean met on the Mail Train from Manildra to Bathurst where they were to go into camp for three months training in 1942. Being a couple of young bush boys, with not much experience of the world, and coming from nearby villages, they soon struck up a lasting friendship. After their training was completed, they were sent by rail to Melbourne, and from there they sailed to Fremantle. In Roy’s words “There had been about 1200 refugees on the ship before us and the smell below was dreadful. We spent most of our time on deck to get away from the stench.” The crossing was very rough around the Great Australian Bight and there was a lot of seasickness amongst the men aboard.

Upon docking at Fremantle, they were transported to Midlands, between Perth and Fremantle. They spent another three months in camp there before being sent to Geraldton.

At Geraldton the recruits were split into groups of “about a dozen or so” and the groups were set up in tents on the coast between Geraldton and Broome “about 10 miles apart.” They were to spend “the best part of two years there” watching for any enemy activity around their section of coastline. They were fed “watery soup and dry bread once a day.” It was very windy on the coast and almost every night their bedding was “covered in sand.” In those 20 plus months they had no leave. Research shows that whilst there, Bill and Roy served with the 13th Brigade, Australian Army.

After their stint guarding the coast they were sent by train, from Geraldton, Western Australia to the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. The rail journey took a fortnight, with two and a half days being spent crossing the Nullarbor “in a Dog-Box train.” The only times they left the train were 26 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

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of Two Anzacs for a one-night stopover in Melbourne, then being granted a ‘little bit of leave in Sydney’ and then continuing on to the Atherton. Once they had arrived there they were put into “Jungle training” in preparation for going to New Guinea. They trained there for a few months then were transported to Cairns. By then it was late 1944.

When the ship was leaving Cairns for New Guinea a band on the docks played “Now is the Hour when we must say Goodbye” and it was very emotional for all the troops! They docked at Aitape, on the North Coast of New Guinea on Christmas Day 1944.

The troops, on arrival at Aitape, stayed on board the ship for about a week before disembarking in barges. When the water got too shallow for the barges, they had to wade ashore. Here they were set up in a “rough camp for a month or so.” Then they began their mission to clear the Japanese from between their current camp position and Weewak, about 150 miles away. Their first objective was to take over an airstrip so the Japanese couldn’t land their planes. “We were there for a month or two” before accomplishing that task.

Roy then spoke of Leiutenant Albert Chowne his and Bill’s commanding officer. He said if they were out on patrol and killed any enemy soldiers Chowne “cut their ears off.” On one particular afternoon Lt. Chowne decided to go out on reconnaissance and chose Roy and Bill to go with him. He took them behind enemy lines and while Lt. Chowne was in the enemy huts looking for any records that may have been there, Bill and Roy were posted on either side of the enemy camp “watching out.” While they were in the enemy camp shells were dropping between their current position and their home camp. When their mission was complete and they were returning to their base, they came upon “lots of dead Japs in a foxhole.” “They had been killed by the mortars while we were at their huts!” Thankfully Roy added it was the only time he and Bill were ordered to go behind the enemy lines with Lt. Chowne.

Roy then told us of one very traumatic engagement… “We were taking hills one at a time advancing slowly on the Japs. Two other platoons had had a go at a particularly difficult hill, but the Japs had pushed them back. It was us that took that hill because we had ‘The Mad Fella’ (Lt. Chowne) as I called him, leading us, nothing would stop him. The poor bastard got killed taking that hill”.

Of the 30 Australians who fought in that mission only nine survived, of course Roy and

...Being a couple of young bush boys, with not much experience of the world, and coming from nearby villages, they soon struck up a lasting friendship...

Bill were two of those nine. As I think about that one particular battle, where they lost their ‘Boss’ and twenty other mates, I get an idea of why Bill and Roy were very reluctant to speak about their time in New Guinea.

Lieutenant Chowne was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery that day. It was the first VC awarded to a soldier from the 6th Division, which had also fought in Greece and Crete earlier in the war. Another of the soldiers was awarded The Military Medal.

“We got ‘mentioned in dispatches’ but didn’t get no medals.” Roy added.

The 6th Division kept on advancing through the jungle and were not far from Weewak when Roy got a serious skin disease that covered his whole body. This happened about “one or two weeks before the War ended.”

That was when he and Bill were finally separated. Roy was sent firstly to Lae then to “Pindi to a skin hospital.” He landed there “the day the war ended.” He spent “three or four

months at the hospital” then was shipped back to Australia to Bogan Gate “as a guard.” During that time he had no idea where Bill was “or what he was doing.”

“Over there we played footy together. Bill and I were together from the day we got on the train in Manildra until my skin complaint took me away, like I said, a week or so before the war ended. He was a great mate. We had 9 or 10 months together in New Guinea”.

In actual fact they had been together from August 1942 until August 1945.

Roy went on to tell us of the terrible conditions they endured, apart from the fighting. They were continually wet as it rained often and was extremely humid, never allowing anything to dry out. Their boots and socks were continually wet and “half the time your boots were full of leeches.” Each man was provided with one ground sheet. It was used as a tent at night, leaving nothing to sleep on but the bare ground. The ground sheet was

also used to wrap their clothes in, as they held them above their heads while they forded rivers. One hand held their wrapped clothes aloft while the other hung on to a rope that had been stretched across the river.

He told us “The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” as the natives of New Guinea were known during the war “were on the side of whoever was winning. As soon as a bullet was fired, they would be gone. They would carry our gear but disappear at the first sign of trouble.” One day some of the natives pointed down the track and said “Japan Man… Japan Man.” The troops carefully advanced and found about “A dozen Japs” some around a campfire, some clearing trees. “We shot the lot of them!” Roy said.

Often, they were required to man a machine gun covering the track. If you were engaged in that activity it was two hours on, then four hours off to sleep.

Food for the troops was dropped in by parachute from low flying planes. On a number of occasions soldiers were killed when a crate landed on them as they stood signalling where to make the drop.

Joy asked this question of Roy. “Did you feel it was your job to be there, or that you didn’t want to be there?”

Roy answered “About half and half. We never got a decent meal the whole time we were on the move.” He said the best meal they had on the six months they were advancing towards Weewak “was a kind of porridge we made from condensed milk mixed with crushed ‘dog biscuits’“ They never saw a slice of bread the whole time they were there. But in the camp before they pushed towards Weewak they did get a “big old stew cooked in a copper pot, that they added water too, when it got a bit low to make it go further. And if you had a few bob you could buy a tin of fruit at the canteen.”

Roy returned to the subject of Lt. Chowne and said he was killed only 20 or 30 miles short of Weewak. He added that when he got back to Sydney, he visited Mrs Chowne (who herself was in the Army) at her home.

We thanked Roy very much for what he had told us that day. Telling him that Bill never spoke of his time in the Army, and that it was nice to have an insight into what they had endured especially in New Guinea. Roy told us he himself was very reluctant to talk on the subject at first and it wasn’t until his later years that he was able to speak with some ease about it. He added that he and Bill never socialised a lot after the war but always caught up at least once a year. More than likely on Anzac Day.

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 27

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MORE INSPIRING WORDS FROM MEMBERS OF THE COUNTRY WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION. THANKS LADIES, KEEP THEM COMING!

ORANGE PROSTA TE CANCER SUP PORT GROUP

Has canceled the April Meeting • Will review Will try and keep memb the situation monthly ers informed of any ite ms that effect men wi th Prostate Problems

A Lockdown Ballad

Further information phone

Charlie 6361-1830

I’m normally a social girl I love to meet my mates But lately with the virus here We can’t go out the gates.

You see, we are the ‘oldies’ now We need to stay inside If they haven’t seen us for a while They’ll think we’ve upped and died.

They’ll never know the things we did Before we got this old There wasn’t any Facebook So not everything was told.

We may seem sweet old ladies Who would never be uncouth But we grew up in the 60s If you only knew the truth!

RE: COMMENT

NCE? – HELP OR HINDRA L OCL 9 – 15TH APRI

nd): My team Editor (Bob Holla ys keeping me at OCL are alwa what one of ’s on my toes. Here an Roe sent th my writers, Jona mment last co me following my knows a lot ly us week. He obvio t Covid-19. ou ab more than me

I didn’t mind the change of pace Because our lives were full But to bury us before we’re dead Is like a red rag to a bull!

So here you find me stuck inside For four weeks, maybe more I finally found myself again Then I had to close the door!

It didn’t really bother me I’d while away the hour I’d bake for all the family But I’ve got no bloody flour!

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.

Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”

US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Now Netflix is just wonderful I like a gutsy thriller I’m swooning over Idris Or some random sexy killer.

At least I’ve got a stash of booze For when I’m being idle There’s wine and whiskey, even gin If I’m feeling suicidal!

So let’s all drink to lockdown To recovery and health And hope this bloody virus Doesn’t decimate our wealth.

We’ll all get through the crisis And be back to join our mates Just hoping I’m not far too wide To fit through the flaming gates!

Author unknown

30 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

Just on your point of Coronavirus vs COVID-19 in your comment last week, there is a difference between them. There are four strains of coronavirus that cause the common cold but this new strain that we are referring to as the novel coronavirus or just coronavirus is officially known as SARS-CoV-2. The disease caused by this coronavirus is known as COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019).

While they are thrown around interchangeably and in most cases it doesn’t matter, there is a difference and sometimes the two terms need to be used that way. Like you treat a patient with COVID-19, but you are developing a vaccine for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

But you know with language, some words just stick so this will probably always be the coronavirus just as we say SARS, for the virus SARS-CoV.

There was sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll The pill and miniskirts We smoked, we drank, we partied And were quite outrageous flirts.

Then we settled down, got married And turned into someone’s mum, Somebody’s wife, then nana, Who on earth did we become?

Jono writes:

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Michael Middleton writes:

ANIMAL DISEASES AND HUMANS Animals have been, and will continue to be, an important part of many people’s lives. But I think caution is needed with how animals are managed (alive and/or dead) – and the latest outbreak (from Wuhan?) exemplifies the problems that can arise when (apparent) poor management doesn’t ensure good health/hygiene conditions. It bemuses me that TV ads continue to show people with animals in their house, beds, licking faces, kissing on face etc etc.

The risk of cross-infections increases the more we flaunt basic, sensible hygiene standards, and such potential, cross-infection won’t happen, just inside our homes.

What did your cat come across last night [and bring back home] when you let it roam around outside for some uncontrolled ‘time out’?

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

WILLIAM MORRIS a leading figure in the 19th century arts and crafts movement.

My basic Vet Science / OHS-WHS work & training, and a myriad of associated life experiences brings to mind (to mention a few): SARS [another version of Coronav?]; Hendra virus (bats-horses-humans); Brucellosis (can present as Undulant fever in humans); Leptospirosis (can be found in cattle urine – What are the chances of some Indians catching lepto, if they are drinking the urine from their sacred cows as a way of combating the current c-virus [reported]?); Toxoplasmosis, Ringworm, Salmonellosis (cats); Hydatid Tapeworms + some round worms (dogs); Psittacosis (birds). For more on animal-human linked diseases check out Zoonotic Diseases – the list is very extensive.

A recent CWD article listed cat and dog ‘versions’ of corona virus– accordingly, can anyone say with authority that we won’t catch C-V from our [possibly] infected cat or dog?

The current pandemic may not be the last of its type, but we do have the chance when we review our emergency management plans (required by Law), to look at how we are managing our animals, and the potential effect on our own health… and maybe changing our practices.

And here of course, you should talk with a Vet.

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Easter thoughts Kester Hamilton writes: Well Easter has come and gone, and I’m sure like me you found it an unusual one. We still gave our kids Easter eggs, but the hunt wasn’t the same without the cousins and friends. With everyone already at home the days off were less obvious, and we would have video-called the out of town family anyway… But the biggest difference this year for our family was not meeting with our church family to celebrate the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

And while it’s been an unusual Easter for many of us, it does in many ways bring back into focus what Easter is all about; God’s plan to deal with sin and death and restore the world to a state without sickness, grief or pain – the New Creation.

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Lady bowlers still smiling!

Jean Kennedy sent us these photos from a St Patrick’s Day function at Orange City Women’s Bowling Club.

The ladies had a great time despite being told that day that their much-loved bowls had been suspended immediately and indefinitely. She also pointed out that social distancing was not in effect at this time.

Jean encourages us all to stay healthy and look after one another - we will all beat this CV and be stronger people because of it.

We modern ‘Westerners’ have been very successful at pushing death further and further from our vision. Sure, we all know that we’ll eventually die, and on personal levels we’ve all experienced sickness and death on one level or another. But for most of us, most of the time, we have been ‘immune’ to having to think about it much. However, COVID-19 has rudely shoved before our consciousness our vulnerability and mortality in life altering ways. We know that many of us could be immanently threatened.

That our work in building up our medical knowledge and developing healthcare systems might make our lives a little longer - but it is a precarious delay at threat of being overwhelmed.

Daphne Schmich and Laurel Duffy

We don’t like it, we have tried to push it away, but death is the realest thing there is in this world and the most universal experience of not just humanity but all of creation.

It is against this black background that Easter really shines as wonderful. Despite not meeting in a church building last weekend all around the world people have been reading the historical record of Jesus’ execution – his death as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” - and then in turn on Sunday his resurrection from the Dead. Jesus had promised before his crucifixion “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11) You see, God has always been about life. In Romans 4 Jesus’ messenger Paul describes God with these words “God who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist.” These ideas are a continuum of the same drive within God; Life. Where there had been a void of life he brought into existence… everything. And at the termination of life God has moved – at cost of his Son – to reverse and do away with death. To establish life eternal.

Many people think that Christianity promises some sort of bodiless spiritual existence ‘In Heaven’ after we die.

But that is not the promise of Easter. The promise of the empty tomb is that In Christ God will raise into new deathproof bodies all those who trust Jesus. At Christ’s return He has promised to remake this physical world – no longer to be plagued with diseases or abused by greed – a new earth fit for newly resurrected people to enjoy. The guarantee or ‘first fruits’ of that harvest is the raising of Jesus to life again in April about 30 AD. You might have experienced different responses to the COVID-19 crisis, but regardless this is God’s promise to you in the face of your eventual death. In Jesus he offers you life. Why don’t you read the story of Easter yourself?

You can read through the book of Mark in about an hour and it’s easily found online. Churches aren’t getting together but send them an email and I’m sure they help you connect with someone who could answer some questions for you or chat about these things.

Marie Haigh-Cole, Robyn Mullen and Di Greatbatch

ham Yoka Smith, Jan Wlson, Maria Cudars & Sue Cling

Sue Moloney, Jean Kennedy

and Lynne Madden

Pat Molloy, Robyn Wright, Clair Portass and Di Parsons

Robyn Doyle, Jan Lockie, Marianne Boers and Dorothy McKellar

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 31

OCLife

HEADER

Easy, Fast, Economical and Nutritious food Jacki’s Salmon Fritters

You’ll remember a few editions back we interviewed local Nutritionist, Jacki Jasprizza on her cookbook which went to print at the end of last year.

The cookbook embodies eating well on a budget with nourishing ingredients to support your immunity (what better time than now).

We were so impressed by ‘Jacki’s Gastronomical Gossip Cookbook’ that we had to share some recipes with the community (with Jacki’s permission of course, thanks Jacki!) So, here’s a couple of tasters….

Edwards Zingy Versatile Savoury Mince

200g drained pink salmon (skin and bones crushed through) 1 egg beaten 4 shallots or ¼ onions finely chopped 2 raw potatoes peeled an grated (excess fluid squeezed out) Mix all together and shape into patties.

Heat 1Tb oil in a fry pan and coat.

Add the patties and fry until golden on each side.

Serve with a nice autumn salad and a wedge of lemon or some chilli sauce.

[Great source of omega 3 fatty acids which is great for your heart, body and mind.]

e of i, “This recipe is on - A note from Jack easy d cheap as chips an my favourites, its t ac n’t have the ex to modify if you do h eg. n use any tinned fis ingredients, you ca o you at and instead of pot Sardines or tuna i.” hin cc ato, pumpkin or zu can use sweet pot

— MELISE COLEMAN —

500g lean mince (can be anything eg. Chicken, turkey, beef, roo) 1 onion diced 1 sachet taco mix 1 tin tomatoes 1 grated carrot 1 grated zucchini - A note f rom Jacki, 1 tin drained red kidney “This rec loads of pa ipe has ntry stapl beans/lentils/chickpeas es and gre for every at on e including 1 tsp powdered stock families, it yummy, com s f orting and 1 cup water adaptab le.”

(You can add an extra bit of chilli to taste and if you want you can go full vego, just omit the mince and double the beans/lentils) In a fry pan, brown the mince and onion. Add the taco mix and cook through for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, grated carrot and zucchini, beans, stock and water. Simmer for 5-10 mins.

Serve on a bed of rice/pasta or on a jacket potato. Or in a wrap/tortilla with salad. You can also make a shepherd’s pie or nachos.

For $20 you can get your hands on a copy [trust us, you’ll want to], enquiries to Jacki 0427 621 318 or markjacki@bigpond.com

The two photos below contain five subtle differences.

Can you find them all?

SPOT THE

32 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

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OCLife

Sunshine

ORANGE CITY LIFE IS PLEASED TO BE ABLE TO BRING YOU A SERIALISED VERSION OF THE ACCLAIMED NOVELLA, SUNSHINE, FROM MILLTHORPE’S

KIM KELLY

It’s 1921 and the Great War has left in its wake untold tragedy, not only in lives lost but in the guilt of survivors, the deep-set scars of old wounds and the sting of redoubled bigotries.

In the tiny hamlet of Sunshine, on the far-flung desert’s edge, three very different ex-servicemen – Jack Bell, an Aboriginal horseman, Snow McGlynn, a laconic, curmudgeonly farmer, and Art Lovelee, an eccentric engineer – find themselves sharing a finger of farmland along the Darling River, and not much else. That is, until Art’s wife Grace, a battle-hardened nurse, gets to work on them all with her no-nonsense wisdom.

Told with Kim Kelly’s inimitable with and warmth, Sunshine is a very Australian tale of home, hope and healing, of the power of growing life and love, and discovering that we are each other’s greatest gifts.

Stave III

JACK To the east of Sunshine, where the river dipped south, snaking lazily along from its source towards Brewarrina, Jack retired nightly to his camp, well out of sight. But he could see the lantern light of that McGlynn bloke who lived up on the corner to the north, a hazy grey-gold orb swinging out along the old falling-down wharf, right on that fingertip bend. What that feller did out there every evening, standing at the end of that wharf, was anyone’s guess, but stand there he did, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for what seemed hours, and he’d always have his rifle with him, slung across his shoulder, its slim barrel a black scratch against the purpling sky.

No matter the time of day Jack saw him, he had that rifle with him; a .303, it was, army-standard, its longtimbered shape a relic of all Jack himself had come to reject and despise. He’d only heard the bloke use it once, though. A couple of weeks back, just as the corellas were roosting at dusk, he went out to his spot on the wharf a bit earlier than usual and fired up into the overhanging trees. Firing and firing, maybe twenty times or more. It had looked like he took out a couple of birds with the effort, but the thousand others there, uncaring, settled back onto their branches minutes later. That ain’t how you get rid of corellas, Jack had shaken his head. They’re very smart birds, so Jack knew: you have to show them you mean business, teach them where you don’t want them to roost, and you don’t do any of that with a random barrage. You have to be persistent, regular, get under the trees with a stockwhip, and keep cracking it until they get the message – which might take weeks. Jack thought about maybe going over to him and giving him that bit of Darling River wisdom, maybe instigating something of a peace treaty with it, but the recollection of the way McGlynn had stared at him down on the bank that day – a blank and possibly violent stare, accompanied by that clear-off flick of the wrist – made Jack think the better of it. That bloke was a few teacakes short of a church fete, Jack was sure he knew that, too.

More to the point, this McGlynn had been quick to

dob him in to Greavy, the policeman having ridden out again a few days later, looking for him: ‘A complaint has been received.’

‘What complaint?’ Jack had asked: Here we go.

‘A complaint that tribal behaviours have been observed on the strand of the river here.’

‘Tribal behaviours? What the bloody hell is that?’

Jack had been genuinely confused at the idea; he wasn’t tribal anything – all that had been smashed and bashed and outlawed long before he was born; whatever of it remained had been pushed far into the desert. ‘Have whitefellers forgotten how to catch a fish and cook it on a fire?’ he asked, only half joking. ‘’Cause that’s all I’m doing here, and you know it.’

‘I know it.’ Greavy had looked away and told the scrub somewhere westerly: ‘I warned you this would happen.’ And so he had. ‘McGlynn’s his name,’ the policeman added with a nod towards the old homestead that was now his place: ‘Snow McGlynn.

Tough bugger, he is, no mucking about – argued for yards and farthings with the bullocky who carted his load from the railway, no g’day or how you going to anyone in town.’

Jack had snorted at Greavy for every lack of g’day he’d ever been subjected to himself: ‘Don’t take it personally.’

‘Mate.’ Greavy had then looked at him with some pleading in his eyes. ‘You can’t stay here.’ He’d said: ‘You’ll be looked after at Brewarrina, on the station.’

‘I don’t want to be looked after.’ Jack had tried to make him hear the disgust and resentment that consumed him at the thought. ‘I am a man. I look after myself. On my own land.’

‘Jack, this isn’t your land.’ The policeman was sympathetic but necessarily a stickler for these kinds of basic legal truths.

‘Shoot me, then.’ Jack had thrown up his hands. There had been no challenge in his words; only a kind of equally basic surrender; an unyielding surrender: ‘Shoot me like the feral pest you reckon I am.’

‘I don’t reckon that, Jack.’ Greavy was nothing if not sincere. ‘But I can’t make others reckon as I do, and I don’t make the law. You’ve got to go.’

‘No.’ For Jack, this was life or death.

‘Righto,’ said Greavy. ‘Have it your way, but you should know, I’m leaving town at the end of the month,

transferred down to Dubbo, got myself a promotion, and —’ ‘Good for you.’

‘And I don’t know that the new bloke will be more or less inclined to arrest you and make you go. You know what the Super is like – enthusiastic about making his district a tidy one.’

Mongrels. Jack had turned his back then: You’re all mongrels.

Jack looked heavenwards now into the starspeckled sky. He’d have gone anywhere to learn tribal behaviours, to know something of that life, to know initiation, ceremony, the meanings of the dances he’d heard talk of from the old feller drovers over the border in Queensland, to know the words they spoke when there were no whites around. That lack of knowledge, that lack of a tribe, didn’t make him any less black, though, did it; couldn’t change the colour of his skin, the colour of nut-brown ale; nor the yearnings that beat in his heart: for this land.

From where he sat, above the smouldering coals of his fire, he looked straight at the Seven Sisters, that cluster of bright blue stars that told him where he was, and that his mother was with him. She told him stories about these stars when he was a boy: stories of courageous women leaping into the sky; of courageous women making courageous sons, and running as far and high as they could go to get away from men who didn’t deserve their attention.

‘Wish I could remember all the details as my mother taught me,’ she’d say to him, words whispered at this very river’s edge: ‘so you can know where we come from, really.’ His own mother had not been tribal: her mother had been a servant at the homestead of a longgone squatter called Isiah Bell, a sheep grazier. She’d been the wife of one of Bell’s black drovers, and when she was widowed, by then the mother of three little girls, she was summoned into the house. She bore that squatter five more children, and at her breast fed his white babies too, before she died, still a young woman, worn out from expending all that courage.

‘Where?’ he’d ask his mother, nag her, when he was small: ‘Where’d all this happen? Where was the homestead? Where did you live when you were a little girl?’

But she’d only meet his questions with silence, or the sudden, no-backchat swipe: ‘Be quiet.’ She’d tell him sometimes hours or days later, looking into the

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 33

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FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

river, at this bend or walking along the bridge back into Bourke, or gazing up at the Seven Sister stars anywhere: ‘This is your home. You don’t need to know much else about it, son.’

When Jack looked at these stars, he saw them all: his mother and her sisters, his grandmother, all the dark-skinned women that had made him back to some pin-prick point in time too long ago to be perceived.

This was their land.

They had travelled with him along every road; they had travelled with him into the army – where, in his first training with the Light Horse, he was taught that this celestial wisp of Sister stars was called the Pleiades, and would be, of course, one of their significant navigational guides when riding at night.

He’d asked his troop sergeant what Pleiades meant and the man had squinted at him: ‘Don’t know, don’t care and don’t ever waste my time with stupid questions like that again.’ It took Jack three more goes at asking others the same – because unanswered questions had come to annoy Jack like nothing else – until finally a chat with a chaplain at camp in Egypt informed him: ‘Pleiades? Well, that’s an Ancient Greek name, and in that mythology means the daughter of Pleione – Pleione having had seven daughters with Atlas, the titan who holds up the world.’ The chaplain had gone on about the names and stories of the stars, lost to time now, just as Jack was lost in the revelation then. He asked the chaplain: ‘So, the Pleiades were seven sisters?’ And the chaplain had frowned at him as if he were a bit slow in the head: ‘Yes. Seven sisters.

All of them lovers and mothers of gods.’ He’d learn over there, too, that in the time of the Pharaohs, the sisters were believed to be seven sacred cows that gave sustenance to the world, but no matter their names, and no matter where they appeared, they brought his mother with them; his mother had seen him through it all, and through things no mother should ever see. She’d seen him home: and he wasn’t moving off this land for anyone.

Casting eyes and thoughts down at the wharf again, he saw McGlynn’s lamp was gone – good – and an odd kind of recognition curled through a corner of Jack’s mind like smoke: that he’d come here to die anyway.

He’d come back here not just to remove himself from the town, and its ever-present threat of arrest; he’d come here to remove himself from all mankind, from all the earth.

In the still, cool dark of night, his melancholy solitariness settled over his shoulders in an almost comforting way. If that bloke McGlynn had his routine of rumination out on the wharf as all trace of sunlight disappeared, then this was Jack Bell’s equivalent: gazing into the glittering stars, counting his loves and his losses and, inevitably at some stage every night, remembering his most recent devastation: Tricia, his wife.

At the first glimpse of remembering, she always, always came to him as the girl of seventeen she was when they’d first met at a Rockhampton buckjumping show. She was one of the main attractions – Texas Cowgirl Tricia Cortez. She stepped straight off the advertising poster and into his heart, with her long black plaits and her tasselled suede tunic and chaps; she was billed as the wild western daughter of an Apache princess and a Mexican outlaw, but she was really Patricia Curtis, an all-caste special blend of Aborigine, Chinese and a couple of indeterminate mongrels thrown in. They were both orphans by then; they were both young and beautiful; they fell into each other immediately, that spring of 1913. She was as skilled as he was in the saddle, and at any speed, over any terrain, but as an athlete she surpassed him: she could hold a headstand on the back of her horse

34 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020

at a canter and tumble-turn from it to the ground just about as easy as walking. She walked like a ballerina and ate like a man; he loved to run his hands across the muscles of her belly and wonder what kind of a creature she really was: she was that perfect. She was a star. His star come to earth just for him to love.

And soon enough she was pregnant, and thrilled about it, and eating like two men. By gee they were happy. He was working in the Rocky cattle yards, and the pay was poor, always a bit poorer for such a brown-skinned kid, too, and their house was a tin shack at the ragged end of town, but they were happy as a man and a woman together could ever be.

He’d serenade her nightly, playing slow tunes on his harmonica from the back step, sending his love out across the sky; she’d say, after a while, ‘Get in here, Jack. Come here, come to me.’

Their daughter, Mary, was born on the thirty-first of July 1914, just a week before the world lost its collective head and went to war, but all Jack could see at that time was that she was as perfect as her mother – and that suddenly he really did have another mouth to feed.

By chance, a couple of months on, as he was heading home from work, heading for his little family and worrying that his pay was just a bit too impossibly poor, he got caught up in a crowd by the sea wharves, a hundred men all gathered around a bloke on a box telling them: ‘The Empire Needs You!’ An army bloke, he was, in khaki uniform, a fistful of emu feathers fixed upon his hat, and he grabbed Jack by the arm as he passed and murmured in his ear: ‘The Light Horse is colour blind, you know, if you’re good enough. Are you good enough to serve your King?’ In those days, Jack was up for just about any challenge. Was he good enough? My oath, he said to himself. He was as good as any man – and twice as good on the back of a horse.

And soon enough he learned that army pay was colour blind, too. He’d have to leave Tricia and Mary, but the money, so much money … surely it would be worth it?

‘Five shillings a day?’ Tricia’s eyes were wide with disbelief.

‘Five shillings a day plus one extra deferred and collected when I come home,’ he’d told her, still disbelieving of the deal himself. At the cattle yards he’d been getting just shy of seven shillings a week and not much chance of more unless he took to droving again. Either way, he’d have to leave his little family; either way, the job would have its dangers – gored by bayonet or bull, what was the difference, really? The difference was staring at him in shillings.

He had to go.

Beneath all these considerations, there was a glimmer of hope in there that the quiet, under-thecounter colour blindness of the army might lead to other opportunities. As a boy, Jack had been especially keen on reading, just about anything he could get his hands on, which wasn’t a great deal, as Reverend Henry, the clergyman at whose parsonage they’d lived by his mother’s servitude, was as mean with his books as he was kind in every other way.

Apart from the Bible, which to Jack had ever seemed a stream of gibberish, like eavesdropping on a conversation between people he didn’t know and whose visions he didn’t much care about, Reverend Henry gave him only a handful of old, battered volumes: from the Processes of the Steam Engine, to The Sunday Book of Verse, and the various pamphlets of Practical Husbandry in between, his early education had been a strange Frankenstein creation of mechanical physics, Tennyson, Shakespeare and the parasitic afflictions of sheep. Whenever Jack

would ask for more, the reverend would fob him off, tell him it was best to ‘marvel at the mysteries of God’s Hand’, meaning, he supposed, that a blackfeller should keep his intellectual curiosities in check, for they would lead nowhere.

But maybe the army would lead him somewhere – somewhere he hadn’t imagined yet.

It certainly did that.

Tricia farewelled him from the wharf as he sailed first for Brisbane, handkerchief in one hand, baby Mary in the other, and that sight of them there, held deep in his heart, kept the most essential part of him alive through many a desperate night to come. He wrote letters home, every few weeks or so, and didn’t worry that he never got one back except for a brief note here and there saying all was well: Tricia was illiterate, too prideful to ask for too much help and too careful with their money to waste it on a letter-writer; she was also unquestionably devoted to him and to their daughter.

He never doubted, not for a moment, that she was true, that she would be there, with Mary, when he got home. They were safe and sound in the pretty little two-room cottage by the railway sheds he’d moved them into just before he left, he was sure; he could see them waving to him from the doorway. He never doubted that the four-shillings-per-day allotment from his wages was getting to her, either.

He carried these certainties with him through every sand-blown, fly-blown hour: from the beaches of Turkey to the deserts of Arabia. He carried these promises of love everlasting as a salve against the boredom – that crushing, maddening boredom – of military life in all its order and sameness and waiting, for five and a half long years, all up. He carried the imaginings of how his daughter must be growing and learning and becoming more and more perfect daily, through the terrors that punctuated his own dull days with a rareness and randomness that had him jumping at his own shadow more or less the entire time. He carried every yearning and desire for home and for love, from those first weeks of entrapment, horseless and helpless, in the trenches of Gallipoli, chucking jam-tin bombs into the nowhere that lay between Anzac and Abdul, to the breakneck assault on Beersheba that showed him what an animal he really was, the low sun glowing red on the fat white minaret of the mosque there like the devil’s own beacon, the plunge of blade through flesh, the taste of another man’s blood as it splashed up across his face, hot and screaming. What was it all for? Jerusalem. The visions of others he could never share. The winning of a war that wasn’t his.

None of it mattered when he thought of his girls, not then.

All of it shattered when he thought of his girls now.

After his ship had docked in Brisbane, while everyone made off for that city’s various pubs, getting busy spending their deferred pay, Jack had stayed on the railway platform snoozing on his kitbag, too worried he might miss that next train up to Rocky.

He made the train and once off it again, he ran for his house around by the old sheds, ran for his home like he’d never run before.

But when he got there it was only desolation that came to greet him.

‘Tricia who?’ A woman he didn’t know answered the door, and she looked at him like he was dirt under her shoes.

‘Tricia Bell,’ he said; he tried again: ‘Tricia Curtis? And our little girl – Mary – she’ll have just turned five.’

‘Never heard of them.’ The woman shut the door

PROUD ORANGE BUSINES FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE S

and left him standing there on the street. Fear like no other gripped him: had that Spanish flu taken them, as it had taken so many, an angry rash that had swept around the world as punishment for all their murdering sinfulness? He looked up and down the wide streets of Rockhampton: there’d been a big flood in January the year before, the January of 1918 – she’d sent him a note, which he received only a few weeks before the Armistice, some ten months on from the event, telling him the Fitzroy River here had busted its banks and come right up to the front step of the house, but she marked seven kisses under the words: ‘All is well with us, my darling Jack.’ Had there been another flood? Had it carried them out to sea?

It took him almost a week to find out what had in fact happened.

‘Tricia?’ An old mate from the cattle yards scratched his head under his hat. ‘She’s gone back to the buckjumping show, last I heard. She thought you were dead – we all did.’

every way.’

He knew what she meant – that it was over between them; that she was too shocked, too broken-hearted to see him again; that she’d had to look after herself by taking up with another man – but he took a swing at the bloke anyway.

Of course, in response he got the snot thrashed out of him – by three of them – and once he could get himself walking again, he kept on walking, all the way back to Bourke, another five hundred miles southwest, trying to convince himself he’d survived worse.

When he got into town, he asked for a room at the half-empty Central Australian Hotel, where he was told: ‘Sorry, Jack, you can’t stay here.’

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

‘Dunno, mate.’ He was met with a shrug.

He backtracked the five miles then to Sunshine, where he’d been camping ever since. Almost two years on, and he still couldn’t work out what was actually worse: driving his bayonet through the heart of another brown-skinned man, or having his own heart ripped from his chest by the government of Queensland and kicked down the red dirt road.

‘Where’s the show?’ he asked, for there were no posters around in the town.

It was this heavy load that dragged him towards sleep each night.

‘Dunno. Sorry.’ And that hollow, unthinking ‘sorry’ rang in his ears and under the soles of his feet, still yet hanging on to the hope that he might outrun this bullet.

Where was his little girl now? Who would know? He’d since learned that this child-stealing business was no uncommon thing today: he’d met a few from the Brewarrina mob, a couple of escapees making their break for Sydney and freedom along the river, and a couple of others mustering the station cattle out this way, and they’d all told him there was a mission school there, on the station, a church-run boarding school, where kids from all over the place were brought, and no one from the station was allowed near them – because the kids were being taught how not to be blackfellers. Jack had taken that sixty-mile walk upriver twice now, spying, to see if she was there.

But she wasn’t, or not that he could see. He would know his own kid, wouldn’t he? And she’d be more likely to have been put somewhere in Queensland anyway, not here in New South Wales. How many mission schools were there in Queensland, then?

Where would he begin looking across that expanse of land a million miles squared? And how, when every policeman he’d pass within it would want to see him locked up one way or another?

‘She’s gone back to the show? With Mary? With our girl?’ Jack was incredulous – you wouldn’t take a child around with you there, not with any wild west buckjumping crowd. Not unless you had to.

He tracked her down, finally, four hundred miles south, where the show, having reinvented itself as the Travelling California Rodeo, had set up camp at Toowoomba, and the moment their eyes met he saw a death in hers telling him that nothing had been worth it.

‘What happened? Tell me.’ He shook her by the shoulder when she turned her face away from him in shame. ‘Tell me – where is our girl?’

‘I don’t know.’ She told the dust on his boots.

‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ He was yelling at her, though she cried.

And still she could not look at him as she tried to explain, words tumbling through her tears: ‘This feller, from the police, he came and took her, just about six months ago now. She was playing with the neighbours’ kiddies – all the little ones, playing outside next door’s, as they often would of a morning.

I was hanging a sheet on the line, out back, when one of the neighbours come running around in a panic, “Mary’s gone! Mary’s gone!” That copper had picked her up, grabbed her, put her in a cab. I went straight to the police station, but they wouldn’t tell me where they took her. I told them you’d skin them when you got home. They told me they’d had notice you were dead, and that taking Mary is all for her own good – that she’s gone with the Aborigines Protection Board, gone off to school. They told me I couldn’t look after her no more. They told me I had no claim against the law. They even stopped your pay coming to me, that’s how dead they made you out to be.’

‘What?’ Jack yelled only louder at her, only more and more disbelieving, shaking her harder in his rage.

‘This bloke bothering you?’ One of the rodeo riders came up behind them.

‘Bothering her?’ Jack turned to him, letting her go as he did.

And Tricia begged him then: ‘Jack, leave it. Leave it all. Please. I’ve let you down. I’ve wronged you in

He never blamed Tricia for it – never. Probably what had happened was that one of the neighbours had decided they didn’t want a tar-touched kid playing with theirs: a complaint of some kind would have been made, and that would have been that. Nothing Tricia could have done to prevent it. If he shed a tear himself, he shed it for her.

He dreamed of her, of the impossibility of putting his little family back together again. Dreams that haunted him, tortured him, but without their sweetness he was, in every essential way, already dead. And if he ever dreamed of murder, his visions entailed wringing the neck of the one who had lied to her, telling her that dead he was, and cutting off her money, or maybe stealing that, too – so easy to manipulate anyone who can’t read. Jack would dream of grabbing that fistful of emu feathers from that bastard’s hat, from every Light Horse hat, and setting them aloft on the breeze.

He’d wake every morning with the dawn, with the corellas all squawking in the trees above, and somehow mornings were all right: he was reminded he was indeed bodily alive when so many others weren’t. Mornings brought some remnant hope that one day, one day when his thoughts were straight

OCLife

enough to grasp and hold, he might even formulate a plan – strike out, demand his rights, stand up for himself as a man, bare his chest to the sun and dare it to deny him all his due.

Mornings brought him hunger, too, and this morning it brought a yen for baked potato, so he decided to sneak round to the patch that lay behind the homestead closest, bandicoot a few. He’d better help himself to more than a few, he reminded himself, since the place was now occupied, too. Though he didn’t know who they were yet, he’d sensed there was something a bit out of the ordinary about that pair: the bloke working away like a slave through the heat of the day, heaving and hammering, and the woman scrubbing and sweeping the verandah in her fancy pink frock, her wavy golden hair chopped short in the fashionable way – they didn’t seem like the usual farming folk of the district. They also had a gramophone, and they would play it of an afternoon, music he’d not yet come close enough to hear distinctly.

As he neared the house this morning, making his way around a thicket of gidgee and emu bush to keep himself out of sight, he heard the back wire-screen creak and close, and saw the woman step out towards the overgrown garden, basket in hand – towards his potatoes.

Bugger.

He waited, watching. She had a yellow dress on today; she looked like a streak of sunshine itself. She didn’t start digging for potatoes, though; she turned and called back at the house, something that sounded like: ‘Darling, if you don’t eat your breakfast, I will smack your bottom.’ And she laughed. Laughter that sounded like sunshine, if the sun was a woman and a posh one at that. Laughter that seemed like a song.

Then she went on her way, past the garden and out along the old track that cut cross-country to the freshcleared and planted fields of McGlynn. Jack followed her with his eyes, until she disappeared.

Stave IV

NEXT WEEK IN ORANGE CITY LIFE

Sunshine was first published 2019

by Jazz Monkey Publications, copyright © Kim Kelly 2019. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

This edition for Orange City Life is publ ished with permission of the author. Som e phrases and words have been altered from the original, for a general audience.

All rights reserved. No part of this publ ication may be reproduced, stored in a retrie val system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior perm ission of the author.

The characters in this book are fictit ious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 35

OCLifeTHUMBS SHOW US YOUR THUMBS!—SMS: 0459 022 084 STANDARD SMS RATES APPLY // EMAIL: RECEPTION@OCLIFE.COM.AU // FACEBOOK: INBOX ‘ORANGE CITY LIFE’

THUMBS UP to

management and staff at IGA for the manner in which they are managing the current challenges presented by Coronavirus.

THUMBS UP to

Landers Music Centre for looking after my brother, who is blind - but loves his guitar playing. They are so helpful and patient, well done.

THUMBS UP to

McArdles Carpet Cleaning Service who were very professional, kind and efficient. Liam was wonderful. Thank you so very much for your assistance.

THUMBS UP to Ryan at Orange Vet Hospital for his compassion to Max and understanding the tough times with people being stood down. A true vet to his patients.

THUMBS UP to

Jennifer at Mitre 10. I had problems with a slate sealer and after numerous calls to other stores and the company of the sealer I used - she was most helpful, even though I didn’t purchase the sealer from her, she also told me about her 20 year’s of experience so I know where I will be going next time.

THUMBS UP to our

beautiful neighbour

Margaret from Botanic Way for always checking on your friends and neighbours and delivering us little goodies to keep us going.

You are truly the most generous person. Thank you.

A HUGE THUMBS UP

to my daughter Lucy for calling the police and ambulance and saving my life. You’re my 9 year old hero.

A HUGE THUMBS UP

to paramedics Darren and Matt for helping my mum and her teddy bears, love from Lucy.

THUMBS UP to

all the wonderful administration people at Orange Hospital, as

over the last week and at every point I was asked respectfully to sanitise my hands and to stand behind the line and at every admin person. It mustn’t be easy being the first point of contact person. So, I want to thank them as they are just brilliant, caring and need to be recognised.

Also a big thank you to the Admin person on the medical wards you are so kind and compassionate.

THUMBS DOWN to

Centrelink, they still want people who have been put off work to look for 20 jobs a week otherwise you lose your benefits. Didn’t anyone tell them the world is

shutting down, so why get people to go out and meet 20 strangers who run the risk also of getting infected.

THUMBS UP to

IGA. Peisley Street for handing out free latex gloves to customers last week.

THUMBS DOWN to the person who went to so much trouble to knock OCL for ‘No Crossword” last week.

Really! Don’t you think they are doing their best under very difficult circumstances. Well done OCL - THUMBS UP TO YOU. EDITOR: Appreciate your support.

Shows just how passionate people are about some things.

THUMBS UP to staff at Orange Botanic Gardens. What a pleasure to walk through at the moment with mown lawns, neat edges and hedges. Great to see so many staff hard at work in lush green surrounds.

BIG THUMBS UP

to Andrew at Mitre 10 for helping out Calare Nursing Home.

THUMBS UP to

Gemma at Bunnings for her awesome customer service! I did an online order and was a little confused at which store it was coming from, and she sorted it all out for me within the hour.

THE THUMBS REPRESENT THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS OF READERS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF ORANGE CITY LIFE STAFF. EVERY CARE IS TAKEN NOT TO PUBLISH THUMBS THAT ARE CONSIDERED DEROGATORY OR DEFAMATORY IN NATURE

WHERE TO EAT TAKEWAY ONLY Ask About Home Delivery NAME

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Lonestar Rib House & Brews

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Groundstone

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The Beekeeper’s Inn

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Cheeky Barista

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Raku Izakaya

Modern Japanese

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Trang Hue

Vietnamese Cuisine

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Hog’s Australia’s Steakhouse

Classic Australian

177 Lords Place, ORANGE

6362 2389

Takeway Only Ask About Home Delivery 16 — 22 APRIL, 2020 39