WHERE THE MONEY GOES

Make A Move

Move this Movember by running or walking 60km over the month. That’s 60km for the 60 men we lose to suicide, each hour, every hour across the world. Do it as a team with mates, colleagues, family, or go solo.

Family Man Mental Health

Family Man is a free, online parenting program designed by experts with dads in mind. The interactive website uses evidence-based strategies to help men tackle the often hairtearing moments of being a parent. By equipping men with practical tools to deal with parenting’s ups and downs, Family Man aims to increase their confdence as a parent. With practice and consistency, research shows Family Man results in less-stressed parents, and a more peaceful home environment where teamwork, quality time and good mental health thrive. familyman.movember. com

HOST A MO-MENT

Rally a crew and do something fun. Hosting is all about having a good time for a good cause. Throw a dinner party, trivia night, Bingo tournament… the sky is the limit. Inperson events are back baby, it’s time to celebrate.

Ahead Of The Game

MENTAL HEALTH

Ahead of the Game uses sport to teach young players, parents and coaches how to talk about mental health. The program shows participants how to spot the signs of mental health issues, what to do and when to get support. Kids learn how to build resilience and overcome challenges in sport and life, setting them up with the skills to look after their mental wellbeing now and into the future. aheadofthegame.org.au

Mo Your Own Way

A choose-yourownadventure challenge, epic in scope and scale. You set the limits and chase them down. Take a hike, run a relay, ride the distance from Wollongong to Wagga Wagga. Get creative, push your limits and inspire.

True North Prostate Cancer

An information-rich online resource, True North’s mission is to transform how men living with and beyond prostate cancer receive care, make informed decisions and manage symptoms to improve their quality of life and health outcomes. The innovative website aims to achieve this by providing straight shooting information, access to useful digital resources, facilitating connections to helpful tools and services, and ofering reliable, relevant and accessible support and guidance for men, and their partners and/or caregivers. truenorth.movember.co

NUTS & BOLTS TESTICULAR CANCER

For young guys diagnosed with testicular cancer, life changes a lot, and it changes fast. Nuts & Bolts is designed to help these guys feel like they’ve still got their feet on ground. A relevant, reliable, straight-talking source of information to ease uncertainty and equip men with what they need to feel calm and informed. Nuts & Bolts’ mission is to ensure every guy going through testicular cancer knows they’re not alone, and that they have every chance of getting back to living a happy, healthy and long life. nutsandbolts.movember. com

MAYBE I’ve blocked it out, or maybe someone out there now all grown up can prove otherwise, but I don’t recall having ever penned a love letter to anyone. The closest I got was on a train in my 20s, after having seen a girl reading some poetry, I quickly scribbled a line: “The poet’s work endures” by Shakespeare’s own hero, the poet Ovid, and quickly handed it to her as I alighted at my stop.

But when I think back over the course of my life, or certainly my adult life, one constant has accompanied me every step of the way; and that is writing, or more so the jotting down of thoughts at the end of each day. Which is really nothing more than a form of mental aerobics: as I’ve never put pen to paper under the delusion of an illusion that what I have to say is even remotely good, but I do challenge myself to make it as honest and reflective of what I sincerely thought at any given time.

Writing and most certainly reading, as undertakings, are so interlinked that it is difficult at times to even separate them, in terms of the relief and raw assistance they provide for release from the daily grind. Or as the Englishman, Ted Hughes once so well said: “Over the cage floor the horizons come.” And without the prospect of new horizons, the everyday ones that surround us become dull, confining processions that we run the risk of outright taking for granted.

One of my favourite

Yamba Chef Learns Under The Best At World Famous Noma Restaurant

TAFE NSW graduate and Yamba local Marley writers, John Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature the same year that our Sydney Harbour Bridge was officially opened in 1932, once surmised: “A writer’s business is to get values at least averagely right, to see keenly, to feel and think deeply, and to express more clearly than other people what we see and feel and think. To be worth our salt we have to be patient; to keep our sense of humour and proportion; to preserve a certain humility, a proper independence, and a real zest.” Being able to harness one of these six attributes, let alone all six at once is what anyone remotely immersed in writing should ever aspire to realise, each time they pick up a pen. The curse, far rather than blessing, of putting yourself out there as someone who bothers to string words together for public perusal, is that you never quite know who even cares, let alone values what you have to say. It is essentially a very lonely pursuit, strewn with pitfalls and by-paths that can beguile you into thinking that what you actually do, you do clearly, and well.

Van Den Boom has brought new cooking skills home to the North Coast, following an internship at threeMichelin-star restaurant Noma.

After studying a Certifcate III Commercial Cookery through TAFE NSW Grafton and fnishing his apprenticeship at Karrikin, Marley travelled to Japan to gain experience overseas.

Relatedly, the celebrated Russian literary dynamo, Joseph Brodsky once said, “If you are in banking or if you fly an aircraft, you know that after you gain a substantial amount of expertise you are more or less guaranteed a profit or a safe landing. Whereas in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.”

When Noma, which has been named World’s best restaurant several times, announced they were launching a three month pop up in Japan called ‘Noma Kyoto’Marley applied for one of the coveted internship positions.

He was delighted when his application was successful - and believes the skills he learned at TAFE NSW prepared him for the experience.

“While it’s a completely different world in a restaurant like Noma, I was fortunate enough to come in with the foundational knowledge I needed to succeed,” he said.

“I had already established my basic skills and through my experience there, I was able to grow and expand on my knowledge. It was defnitely a shock to the system, working long days as part of a huge team. Often there were around 30 people in the kitchen during service, which is something I had never experienced before.”

Marley said he knew it was going to be hard work - but the internship was also more fun than he imagined it would be.

“The team was so professional and really took the time to teach me. I have learned incredible new cooking techniques, how to use different kitchen tools, theories behind different fermentation methods and unique ways to use ingredients.”

“I have been working in hospitality since I was 14, but I learn differently to others, so fnishing my TAFE NSW course and my apprenticeship didn’t come easily for me. My teachers were open to my needs and gave me the support and encouragement I needed, while always pushing me to do my best.”

“I don’t think I would have even applied for the Noma Internship if they hadn’t encouraged me to take every opportunity that comes along and give it a go.”

Marley plans to travel again, to continue his learning – but hopes to one day settle on the North Coast.

“There is a long list of places I want to go - with the top three being South and Central America, Canada and London. I want to learn as much as I can and see all the different cultures and ways of doing things.”

“My dream is to then bring all this knowledge home, to open my own restaurant.”

Register.Find.Reunite. launched to reunite families and friends impacted by Kyogle Bushfre

Australian Red Cross has opened Register.Find. Reunite. and is urging people affected by the Kyogle bushfre to get in touch with their families and friends.

Australian Red Cross State Director Kate Miranda said being separated from family and friends is one of the most stressful things a person can experience during an emergency.

“Not knowing where your loved ones are, not being able to contact them by phone or email adds to that anxiety,” Ms Miranda said.

“The service helps fnd and reunite family, friends and loved ones during a disaster.”

If you or a loved one has been impacted by the Kyogle Bushfre, Australian Red Cross encourages you to register or enquire through the Register.Find.Reunite. service.

People can register and look for someone with Register.Find.Reunite. on the Australian Red Cross website at redcross. org.au from a computer or any mobile device. If internet and mobile devices are down due to the emergency, people can also register and enquire in person at an evacuation or relief centre.

The Register.Find. Reunite. service matches registrations from people affected by an emergency to enquiries made by their loved ones searching for news. Where a match is made, the person who made the enquiry will be notifed.

It is important for emergency management agencies to know where people are during emergencies. By registering with Register. Find.Reunite. you are also letting important services know that you are OK and what support you may need.