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— The Gap RSL Sub Branch —

We hope all our friends had an enjoyable Christmas . Our Australian Defence Force “boys and girls “ were out and about .

Over Christmas, the Royal Australian Navy welcomed home more than 1000 personnel and six ships from maritime training exercises with regional partners.

The ships and their crews have conducted port visits to more than 16 countries throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

We can feel justifiably proud of their contribution protecting Australia’s national interests.

Guided missile destroyer HMAS Hobart returned to Fleet Base East in Sydney after more than three months away. In the previous week, HMA Ships Stalwart, Anzac, Arunta and Adelaide returned to their respective homeports following similar integrated regional deployments.

RAAF personal participated in Operation

Christmas Drop involving five nations and eight Hercules transport aircraft flying from Guam to 57 communities in the West Pacific, airdropping 209 bundle boxes.

Inside each bundle box was fishing and boating equipment, food containers and rice, first-aid kits and life preservers, toys, books, soccer balls and colouring pencils which made for a happy Christmas for many of the locals.

Meanwhile our ADF personnel are still out and about doing invaluable community service. Roads in WA have been cut off by severe flooding that occurred in the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Ellie, resulting in food supplies being critically low. As well as a RAAF C-130J Hercules and C-27J Spartan aircraft delivering food stores, three Army MRH-90 Taipan and two CH-47 Chinook helicopters were also using the tarmac, while a C-17A Globemaster landed to deliver equipment to Broome.

It would be interesting to estimate in monetary terms the AFD’s contribution to the local communities in the recent severe weather events we are experiencing.

COMMUNITY NEWS: JANUARY 2023

TGSI held a working group meeting on the 24th of January discussing multiple grant opportunities ranging between $5000 and $500,000 in value. Some of these are highly relevant to each of our three working group topics of Elevating the awareness and impact of local sustainability activities and volunteer organisations; The Platypus project; and Energy independence.

It was fantastic to see many new faces especially student leaders from The Gap High School and volunteers of Bushcare groups attend. Also, a very big thank you must go to Jonty Bush, MP, Member for Cooper, who came equipped with printed versions of the grant guidelines and suggestions for essential stakeholder contacts for each of the grants.

We discussed each grant’s eligibility criteria, decided what project would be competitive for each and then started to consider the grant application sections on the night. This was followed by formation of writing groups to continue each of the applications ready for submission in February.

It’s great to report that The Gap High School will accommodate us for our evening seminars and working groups. We thank the Principal Anne McLauchlan for offering to host our future events at the school, which will allow us to forge deeper links with the school community.

NEXT EVENTS:

On the 21th of February, TGSI will hold a community seminar on the topic of Platypus conservation. We are very excited that Dr Tamielle Brunt will be our guest speaker. Tamille recommends that on the path to the Platypus rewilding, we identify the monitoring targets such as water quality and invertebrate availability, and consistently assess them over a 3-to-5-year plan and within different seasons/climatic events. Once there is sufficient evidence of sustained suitable resources over that time, then can then think of reintroducing platypus! It’s great to hear that SOWN is already collecting water quality measurements, and that The Gap High School students are also doing water quality measurement as part of the biology curriculum. We hope to report on these data on our website soon.

On the 20th March we will then hold our next working group meeting.

MEMBERSHIP:

If you have not yet done so, pls consider becoming a TGSI member - we just need another 15 members to join to allow us to apply for charitable staus. The membership fee is $5 per annum to cover costs such as insurance, website hosting fee, room hire and facilitated meetings. Please use our Bank Account Name: The Gap Sustainability BSB124001 Account No: 23277186 and send us your name, DOB, and address to thegapsustainability@gmail.com for the membership registry.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Please stay updated about our activities by visiting our website www.thegapsustainability.org. We now also have an active presence on Facebook. Yours sincerely,

The Gap Sustainability Initiative Management Committee website: http://www.westernecho.com.au

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