From the Mayor's Desk - 6 June 2022

Establishing a Yelarbon Rural Fire team, a priority for local community

The Yelarbon community has historically operated with an active Auxiliary Firefighting team.   Auxiliary Firefighters are a paid casual role, but come with minimum weekly commitments and a range of other criteria that has limited the town’s capacity to attract new Auxiliary members.  In response to this challenge, I attended a recent community meeting where local residents in attendance unanimously recommended to the State Government that a Rural Fire Service be established.  A Rural Fire Service will allow for a team of volunteer locals to be first responders to prevent fires from encroaching on other buildings and secure surrounds, as well as respond to grass fires and vehicle incidents until the Inglewood or Goondiwindi Fire Service arrives to undertake the higher risk activities.  Once a decision is made by the Queensland Government,  community members will be formally asked to volunteer for the Yelarbon Rural Fire Service.

Acciona Wind Farms Project gets underway

On Thursday last week I witnessed the sod turning on the Macintyre Wind Project. The magnitude of this project and the construction equipment is something to behold. It is the largest project of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and will generate almost as much power as the Tarong coal fired power station and will supply 700,000 homes; it will also create over six hundred jobs during its two plus years of construction. The 1,026MW (megawatt) precinct consists of two wind farms – the proposed 103MW Karara Wind Farm to be owned and operated by the Queensland Government’s low-emissions generator and retailer CleanCo Queensland, and the 923MW MacIntyre Wind Farm that will be owned and operated by Acciona Energy Australia.  It’s wonderful to see that the Goondiwindi Region is once again the region of choice for innovative, pioneering projects such as the Acciona Wind Farms, which is set to be one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world.

Tourism in Our Region

Holiday visitors are back with many caravans travelling throughout the region at the moment. The Goondiwindi Chamber of Commerce hosted a Tourism in our Region information night and it highlighted some great local businesses and community groups going above and beyond to attract tourists to our region.  It is always welcome to hear it reinforced that Council’s investment in clean and tidy towns is the first thing that tourists notice and is a consistent comment from visitors to our region. 

I also attended the recent Goondiwindi Visitor Information Centre (VIC) Steering Committee meeting.  This meeting provides an opportunity for the exceptional volunteers at the Goondiwindi VIC to participate in the future planning of the VIC.  If you’d like to give volunteering a go, I’d encourage you to make contact with Council and have a chat about what a supportive and rewarding environment the Visitor Information Centre is.

Great Community Activities

As a region we were so fortunate to have the world renowned ‘O’Shea’ in town to launch the Dolly Parton Imagination Library initiative in Goondiwindi.  It was a fabulous night out with high quality music, and a guest appearance by one of our own, Cr Phil O’Shea.  Proceeds from the concert go towards supporting our local Dolly Parton Imagination Library and compliment the $5,400 that Council contributed earlier this year. The program is an opportunity to help bring the magic of a library into the home.

Where funding permits, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program provides every registered child in the region a new book to keep, direct to their mailbox, every month from birth until their fifth birthday. The delivery also includes parent ‘tip sheets’ to help guide parents to engage with the books in ways that are shown to boost language development and early literacy.

Businesses or individuals can sign up to sponsor the program here: https://unitedway.secure.force.com/DonateNow/DPILGoondiwindi

I also had the pleasure of attending both the Goondiwindi and Inglewood Blue Edge programs.  This is a fantastic initiative by the local Queensland Police, using physical training as a tool to help young people develop discipline, goal setting, team work and personal development.