DECEMBER 12, 2017 \ STARWEEKLY.COM.AU
NEWS + SPORT + PROPERTY GUIDE
(Marco De Luca)
Harnessing new ideas Lancefield’s Alison Noble is riding high – on and off her horse. The 13-year-old’s idea for a memory foam helmet insert that molds to the wearer’s head has been selected as a winner in the national Samsung STEM competition Make My Idea. Alison’s idea is one of only three out of 5000 entries being developed into a 3D prototype. The keen horse rider said her idea came from the challenge of finding a helmet to fit. She said helmets that were too tight caused headaches, but bigger helmets could fall over riders’ faces. Alison’s mother Kim, who also rides, said they knew of people whose helmets had slipped when they fell off their horse, causing them to break their nose. Alison spends a lot of time wearing a helmet as an endurance horse rider. She is Australia’s number one endurance rider in the junior division, having competed against riders up to 17 years of age. Kim said Alison had been asked to qualify to represent Australia at the world championships when she reaches the minimum required age of 14. Alison is currently nursing a broken leg from falling off her horse, but she says she can’t wait to get back in the saddle and see what’s next on the horizon. Serena Seyfort ALISON
Cops deny burglary rise By Serena Seyfort Sunbury, Bulla, Clarkefield, and Diggers Rest homes are more likely to be burgled than the average Victorian household is, according to new RACV burglary statistics. The data reveals Sunbury has also experienced a rise in the number of burglaries, but Hume police dispute this, saying they are seeing a reduction. RACV Victorian burglary statistics put Sunbury’s burglary rate at higher than the state average, with one burglary for every 63 homes
in the 2016-17 financial year, compared to the Victorian average of one in 69 homes. The figures show Sunbury’s burglary risk has increased – last year the town’s risk was below average with one in 72 homes being burgled. But Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Karp said the Hume Crime Investigation Unit was seeing an overall decline in burglaries in Sunbury. He said the unit had recorded 84 burglaries in Sunbury by December 7 last year, compared to 63 burglaries at December 7 this year. “In October, we had only eight burglaries,”
he said. Fourteen burglaries were recorded for the town in November, and 15 were recorded in the first week of December. Senior Sergeant Karp said the rate of robberies went through spikes, but police were pleased with the overall trend. RACV data revealed Diggers Rest to be No.7 on greater Melbourne’s burglary hotspot list, with one in 32 homes being burgled in 2016-17. Even though the rate has improved from one in 23 houses in 2015-16, the rate is more than double Victoria’s average. One in 24 homes were robbed in Bulla last
year, and one in 18 in Clarkefield, RACV data shows. But both towns have less than 250 residences, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s 2016 Census. While Mount Macedon had an average number of robberies, at one in 69, Lancefield was well below average at one in 249, Kyneton had one in 199 and Gisborne experienced one in 173. The RACV said its data was compiled using data from bodies such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Crime Statistics Agency.