Tag: Kiama

The secret is out, our Hidden Treasures are hidden no more

Every hour of every day, around 150,000 people across NSW are volunteering. If NSW volunteers were a company, they would be larger than the Commonwealth Bank. Right now, someone is driving a neighbour to chemotherapy, coaching a child, running a stall, checking on an older person, caring for an animal or setting up chairs in a hall.

On Thursday 23 July, the Kiama Pavilion filled with people determined to make that invisible work visible. The Inaugural Kiama Electorate Recognition Awards, hosted by the Member for Kiama, Katelin McInerney MP, celebrated the local women named on the NSW Government’s Hidden Treasures Honour Roll 2025, an initiative of the Rural Women’s Network that has honoured more than 1,300 women and girls volunteering across regional, rural and remote NSW since 2010.

“These are the women who show up week after week, year after year, and who rarely seek the limelight,” Ms McInerney said. “They would prefer we not make a fuss about them. With this event, we are totally ignoring that.”

The women honoured show that volunteering looks different in every pair of hands.

It looks like Ebony Wilson of Jamberoo, whose first steps into volunteering were inspired by cows, helping young people see a future in agriculture through the Young Dairy Network and speaking openly about resilience and mental health in farming.

It looks like Dr Christa Wood of Gerringong, who co-founded Dementia Inclusive Dancing so people living with dementia can experience movement, music, joy and company.

It looks like Annette Young of Kiama, with more than fifty years of service to the Kiama Show Society, tennis, Meals on Wheels, her church and community organisations. Fifty years of seeing what needs doing and doing it.

It looks like Kate Whitworth of Jamberoo and Maree Shepherd of Kiama Downs, creating places where people find their voice through music, from the Flame Tree Project’s opportunities for hundreds of young people to the confidence and friendship of Sing Australia.

It looks like Jenny Ferguson of Kiama, leading a dementia-inclusive choir where singing becomes memory, movement, laughter and the feeling of still being part of something.

It looks like Karen Renkema Lang of Kiama, creating room for local voices through environmental protection, civic participation and Kiama Community Radio.

It looks like Esther Keenan of Kiama Downs, building a longer table. Through The Everyday Table, people find affordable pantry items, a shared meal and a place where everyone is welcome.

It looks like Rosemary Aldred of Kangaroo Valley, raising guide and therapy dogs and then helping other puppy-raisers do the same.

It looks like Sabrina Kelly of Kiama, creating a social club where neurodivergent teenagers feel accepted and understood, while leading a P&C and fundraising for the surf club.

It looks like Jessy Wiggins of Shoalhaven Heads, giving week after week to Girl Guides since 2013 so young girls can make friends, learn skills and test their courage.

And it looks like Nicole O’Brien of Kiama, running the sports club barbecue before heading off to champion local farmers, producers and small businesses at the next market.

Musical Director Antoinette Raynal, herself recognised as a Hidden Treasure in 2024, led the Katandra Women’s A Cappella Choir in a beautiful performance. Katandra brings women together through music, friendship and shared purpose, while also supporting local women’s initiatives through the proceeds of its performances.

The ceremony paid special tribute to the late Lorraine Ettingshausen, recognised posthumously.

Lorraine helped establish the Voluntary Home Nursing Service and gave decades to Camp Quality, supporting children with cancer and their families from the charity’s local beginnings until her retirement. She organised camps, trained volunteers, sat beside frightened parents and stayed with families as children were dying. She gave fifty-six eulogies, fifty of them for children. When poor health forced her retirement, three hundred people came to say goodbye. A year later she became a Volunteer in Policing and served another ten years.

Her granddaughter said it best: “She didn’t just fill her own life. She filled ours.”

The event also marked the first presentation of the Electorate Community Service Award, presented to the Sunday Community Group, founded by a group of Foxground-based women, in recognition of their dedication to supporting those doing it tough in our own community.

“Establishing this award means we now have a permanent way to say thank you to the groups, not just the individuals, who hold our community together,” Ms McInerney said.

People join to give. Along the way, they receive things they never expected: skills they never set out to learn, mentors, friendships and places where they belong. Every one of the women honoured has made her community stronger, warmer and more able to care for its own.

Think about the women and girls in your own community groups who give their time, energy and care without seeking recognition. Nominate one of them for the next Hidden Treasures Honour Roll at hiddentreasures.awardsplatform.com. Nominations close 31 December. The form takes ten minutes. The hardest part is choosing just one name.

 

 

Remember the “pinkie” campaign could it fix our e bike problem

Remember this campaign? Will it fix our e-bike problem?

Watch it again and then ask yourself a serious policy question: is this the answer to Kiama’s e-bike problem?

The Pinkie campaign understood something about teenage boys that every threat misses. The whole performance is for an audience,They think they are bulletproof. Fines bounce off them. Warnings bounce off them. The road toll belongs to other people. Could laughter from the girls on the corner be the answer

Kiama has tried the enforcement route before. I mean well before. In the 1880s this town had a big hoon problem. Mobs of forty and fifty boys patrolled the streets from ten o’clock. They damaged everything in sight. Joseph Weston lobbied hard for his solution, “bring back the whip”

Larrikinism, he thundered, was “a social and moral infection which should be stamped out like small-pox”

In November 1883 he got his wish. “LARRIKINS BEWARE! The ‘Cat’ has arrived.” Triangles, a cat-o’-nine-tails and two taws came down from Sydney on Saturday’s steamer, and the magistrate a Mr Connell announced he would happily show the appliance to anyone desirous of seeing it at the court-house. Kiama invented the pop-up exhibition a century early.

In March 1884 the cat made its courtroom debut, produced before three youthful offenders to rattle them. The delinquents smiled. The Bench promised them a taste of it next time. By the close of 1885 the cat was still waiting for its first customer, the most feared instrument in the British penal system reduced to a conversation piece with viewing hours.

This week Council opened a portal where residents can report e-bike incidents. Same recipe, new appliance. Acquire the instrument with fanfare, then wait for the teenagers to reform themselves. The boys on Collins Street will smile at the portal exactly the way the larrikins smiled at the cat, assuming word of it ever reaches them.

Which brings me back to the pinkie. It cost less than a steamer and it frightened more teenagers than the cat ever did. So here is my alternative submission to Council: skip the portal, commission the ad. Or save the money entirely. Collins Street, Saturday night, all of us on the footpath, little fingers raised.

Watch the add again. What do you think?

Here comes Pollyanna

I’ve just had a big birthday. The kind with a zero in it. You move into a new decade whether you’re ready or not.

Walking into the restaurant, half a dozen people I wasn’t dining with wished me happy birthday. That’s a small town for you. I’m noisy in this community. I have opinions, I used to write for the paper, and everybody knows what I think. Every time we have an election, people are convinced I’m standing for council. Apparently I’m just what council needs.

This post challenges that idea. Our community doesn’t need me. One person can’t deliver what this community deserves, and neither can nine. It needs an engaged community working together, not keyboard warriors: informed people with the skills to make sure the bureaucrats are working for us.

Around my own table were Greens, Labor supporters, independents and friends who had stood for council themselves. Between us we had campaigned, letterboxed, handed out how-to-vote cards and argued for change across more elections than any of us cared to count. If anyone in this district believed in democracy, it was us.

For the record, I’ve never voted for a party in my life. I vote for the person. Over the years that has meant I have voted Liberal, National, Labor, Greens and independent.

The talk turned to council. A councillor had resigned, and the by-election to replace him will cost ratepayers about $200,000. Our council is broke. That’s $200,000 it doesn’t have. The question went around the table: what could one councillor achieve when the bureaucrats seem to have the rest under their thumb?

This is how bad it is. I know our councillors. That’s what my year at the paper gave me. They spend a lot of time on social media trying to work out what the community cares about. So they’re hearing the loud voices, and like most communities, we have plenty of loud voices who all want different things.

I said I’d love to see us try what a district in north-east Victoria did. Build the community first. Find out what people want. Learn to solve problems together, and worry about who to elect after that.

One of my oldest friends smiled and said, “Here comes Pollyanna.”

I know her well enough to understand what she meant by that. Her focus was looking after her friend. She knows what twenty years of heart and soul in agriculture, encouraging people to believe we’re all in this together and the win-win is there if we go after it, had cost my mental health. I had witnessed failure first hand, and neither of us wanted a repeat. That’s how much my friends care. So I listen. I came home and had a big think about whether she was right.

This post is the big think. It ends in an electorate nobody at my dinner mentioned.

In December 2012, a small group from north-east Victoria got eleven minutes with their federal member, Sophie Mirabella. The meeting ended when she told them, “The people of Indi aren’t interested in politics.”

Her district knew her by then. She had boycotted the Apology to the Stolen Generations. She had stood beside Tony Abbott in front of the “Ditch the Witch” signs. Neither time did she ask her community what they thought. They had a member who didn’t speak for them.

They went home and proved her wrong.

The push had started with two young people who grew up in the district and moved to Melbourne for work, because they believed there was nothing at home for them. They decided to do something about it. The generation who had stayed backed them: young people with the idea, older people with the networks and the skills. Between them they ran hundreds of kitchen table conversations, asking what people wanted for the region.

And they argued. Some of the group wanted a seat at the table in Canberra. Others wanted the focus on the community itself. It was the same argument we had at my birthday dinner. Then they did what makes this movement so smart. They agreed to disagree and kept working, until they were confident the community was engaged and that a tilt at the seat was what the community wanted.

Before the 2013 election they wrote down what success looked like: engaged community members turning a safe seat into a marginal one. Winning came last on their own list of aims.

They won anyway. They unseated a frontbencher. They kept meeting between elections. When Cathy McGowan retired, the community chose Helen Haines, and the seat has now been theirs across five elections.

Hardly anyone in New South Wales has heard of Indi, and I’ve come to think that is the strength of it. They did it for the district, not for the fame.

My friend is right. People are hard to organise. Indi is proof that hard and impossible are different words.

It also helped me work out what all the council talk is about. When my neighbours decide I’m standing, it’s the habit we’ve all fallen into: find one noisy person, hand them the problem, and wait. Indi swapped that habit for a better one: believe you can do it yourselves.

We’re already proud of where we live. Imagine being proud of what we build together. Our dry stone walls have stood for a hundred and fifty years. They’re under threat and the reason they’re still standing is our community made it clear it cares about them. What we love survives because we stand up for it. That is true of walls, and it’s true of towns.

The people who wrote Indi’s story down ask a question.

“Have you wondered who is hearing your voice, listening to your community?”

My answer is the power is in your hands, too

So Pollyanna has a question of her own. Why does organising ourselves sound less realistic than spending another $200,000 on another election?

How my valley became Mosman or Toorak with a blowhole, one sale at a time

I have spent a lifetime at farm kitchen tables, and in every conversation the problem is someone else’s to fix. The council’s. Canberra’s. The person who never rang back. So we elect a politician every three years, and we wait.

Look at what that actually asks of them. I hand over my problem. My road, my rates, my paddock. So does my neighbour, and his neighbour, and every voter in the electorate. The politician ends up holding thirty thousand separate problems, most of them pulling against each other, and no honest hope of fixing them all. Politics becomes a queue of grievances, and campaigning becomes promising to move you up the queue. The politician can only promise, disappoint, and be replaced by a rival who promises louder. The loudest dog in the yard wins, every time. We built this machine, and then we blame the politician when it does what it was always going to do.

And while we queue, the big calls get made without us. Here’s how it works in my valley. A dairy farm comes up for sale. A Sydney buyer pays more than any farmer could ever earn back from milk, because he’s not buying a farm, he’s buying a view for six weekends a year. The farm next door is now worth city money too, so when that farmer retires, no young farming family can afford it either. Sale by sale, working farms become holiday homes that stand dark most of the year.

And it doesn’t stop at the farm gate. Every sale drags the price of an ordinary house up with it. Kiama is now the most expensive place to buy a home in regional New South Wales, dearer than Byron Bay. The nurse at the hospital can’t buy here. The teacher can’t. The kids who grew up here can’t. There is no affordable housing here, and no social housing. The school loses children, the shops lose staff, and the town that made the views worth buying slowly stops being a town. It becomes a postcode with scenery. Mosman with a blowhole.

Nobody chose this. There was no meeting about where it was all heading, no vote, no moment anyone could point at and object to. Each sale was legal and each seller had every right. But add it all up and my district has been rezoned by the market, one sale at a time, and nobody ever asked us what the best outcome would be for the farms, the buyers, the nurses the kids or the community. I watch it from my own front gate.

So here is the problem: we hand our say to a politician with thirty thousand problems in the queue, and the calls that change our districts get made elsewhere, by the market, the local council, the state government. What’s left for the rest of us is Facebook, one keyboard at a time. Each of us finds our tribe there, and the tribe does what tribes do: agrees with itself, louder every year. Plenty of conversations. Never one table.

And here is the goal: communities with the knowledge, confidence and skills to find the best outcome for everyone affected.

One rural community in north-east Victoria worked out how to get everyone to the same table, and it’s still going strong five elections later. In my next post I’ll tell you what they did. Then I want to work on the question that follows with you: how do we do it in every district in Australia?

How often do your forget to ask the right question?

All my communications training says the same thing. Have three key points. Include a call to action. Reinforce the points. Then reinforce them again.

For the last twelve months I have been presenting to local service groups and doing my very best to stick to the rules. And I have learned something important. No matter how impressive the talk is, nobody takes up the call to action. My presentation is usually followed by lunch and I invite people to come and talk to me about it over lunch. What I get instead is “wow, your presentation was great.”

After each talk I kept asking myself the same question. What is wrong with me? Why is nobody sitting down to talk about the call to action?

Then I finally woke up. It’s the audience, Lynne. They want to be entertained.

How old do I have to be before I start asking the right question first? Who is my audience? What do they want from this presentation? The reason I keep getting invited to present is that people talk about how entertaining the talks are. Facepalm.

It took me a while longer to see what the answer meant, and it started with admitting what I am actually there for.

I am not in that hall to win commissions. I talk about life story writing because I want people to create living memories, the kind that last well beyond the last person who remembers them. The lunch invitation was never the real call to action.

The real call to action happens later, at somebody’s kitchen table, without me. An entertained audience goes home and tells someone about the talk. And somewhere in that retelling, a son or a daughter decides to capture a parent’s story before it is too late.

If that happens at one kitchen table, the talk has done its job. Nobody needs to ring me. The memory does not need me to survive. It needs a family who decides it is worth keeping.

So the training was half right. Three points, yes. Reinforce them, yes. But the call to action belongs to the audience, and this audience’s job is to enjoy the hour and carry the idea home. If I do my job well, they do theirs, and I will never see it happen.

The number one question for anybody doing anything is this. Who is the audience, and what do they want from me? Not what do I want to tell them. What do they want from me. I have spent a working life in communications and I still needed twelve months of puzzled lunches to learn it.

This is the point where I would normally give you a call to action. I know better now.

Two workshops in one week, and what they showed me about memory

Last week I went to two workshops.

On paper they had little in common. One was about making cabbage tree hats. The other was about recording oral history.

By the end of the week, I was thinking about both of them through the same lens. They were both about the past, and about what happens when people decide it still deserves a place in daily life.

The first was Sue Brian’s cabbage tree hat workshop at Jamberoo Youth Hall. I went to watch, not to make a hat, which was probably wise. The people at the tables were learning how to boil, shred and plait the palm fronds. I was listening for the story behind the craft.

There was a lot to hear.

In the mid nineteenth century, cabbage tree palms were cut in huge numbers. The trunks were used and the unopened leaf spears were taken for hat making. Sue and the people who still make the hats use the palm differently now. They take the unopened leaf from young palms in a way that allows the tree to keep growing.

The 19th century method took the palm out of the landscape. The current one leaves the tree standing.

The same palm that was once stripped from this landscape is now being planted back into it. Landcare Illawarra’s Future Proofing the Cabbage Tree Palm project is planting cabbage tree palms around Jamberoo, below Saddleback Mountain, where some of the last old palms still stand.

Cabbage tree hat making workshop proved to be very popular and the workshops will return in 2027. See bottom of blog post for contact details

The second workshop was at the Pilot’s Cottage in Kiama, run by Alison Wishart and hosted by the Kiama Historical Society.

Alison Wishart and attendees at Oral History workshop. The Historical Society always offer a superlative morning tea.

This was familiar ground. I have spent years helping people tell their life stories through written memories. Alison was talking about oral history, and the power of recording it.

As Alison reminded participants, the recording keeps the emotion for others to interpret. You hear the hesitation, the humour, the catch in the voice. On the page, I have to find another way to express it.

I keep noticing how much people here care about memory. Our local “remember when” Facebook pages come alive when someone posts an old photo. Within an hour, people are naming faces, houses, streets, teams and families. Someone always knows something. Someone else adds the bit they missed.

I understand that feeling more now than I did when I was young.

Earlier this year, when the council floated moving the Pilot’s Cottage Museum from Blowhole Point into a small space under the library, the reaction was immediate. Dr Tony Gilmour and the Kiama Historical Society volunteers led the campaign, and people who rarely write submissions wrote in. In five days, the idea was reversed.

Around the museum, they still joke that the council wanted to turn them into a KFC.

The museum is here to stay (but it is still looking forward to council giving it a 5 year lease – if only council worked as fast as our community)

I grew up in a family that took history seriously. Years were spent writing down who came to this country, where they settled, what the men did, how wonderful the wives and mothers were at raising children and keeping house. Which women never married because they stayed home to look after their parents or their ten plus siblings. Not an era I would have thrived in.

I always thought I should find it fascinating. I didn’t.

I did well in history at school, but I learned the dates to pass the exam.  I realise now I wanted to know what it felt like to be alive then.

I am grateful for the people I meet today who are prepared to share their story.

When I sit with someone to record their life, I am listening for what it was like to live through their sixty, seventy or eighty years. How much changed.  Who stood beside them. What they learned through grief, love, disappointment and endurance.

When I ask people what they would say to young people now, the answers are the same.

Find a way to live in peace.

Be kind.

At the oral history workshop, someone asked the obvious question. If you are recording one person’s memory, how do you know it is accurate?

It is a fair question.

Memory shifts. Families remember things differently. History is full of confident versions that do not line up. Put ten people at the same accident and the police will take ten different statements. Each person saw it from where they were standing.

So you listen for how that person remembers it. Their version may differ from someone else’s. It may differ from your own. But it is their story.

That does not mean anything goes. A life story is not a place to settle a score with family. The highs belong there, and so do the lows, but the purpose is to understand a life, not punish people from the page.

The other thing I came home thinking about is how different every person is to record.

Some people give you gold in the first ten minutes. Some hold their story so tightly you wonder why they agreed to begin. Some families want every sentence to serve a different purpose. Some people need audio. Some need a written story. Some need a patient interviewer who can sit with silence. Some need structure before they can begin.

There is no single right way.

The cabbage tree hat workshop showed me that a craft survives because people keep practising it, slowly and carefully, with their hands.

The oral history workshop showed me that a life story survives because someone listens, then chooses the way to record it that suits that person.

Anyone can keep the dates and the places.

I am focused on the voice behind them, and whether I can express enough of that voice on the page for the person and their loved ones to recognise them.

Three exciting things to share

  1. Dr Tony Gilmour the Vice President of the Kiama Historical Society told me the majority of the Oral History workshop participants would like to turn their workshop learnings into recording people’s lived experiences; Contact the society at E: kiamahistory@outlook.com  P: 02 4232 1001
  2. The Cabbage Tree Hat making workshops will return in 2027. Contact Kate Malfroy E: kate@lampshadeworkroom.com.au
  3. Landcare contact is Meredith Hall  E: coordinator@landcareillawarra.org.au
    M:  +61 (0) 499 027 770

Further reading:

Cabbage-tree hats through history 

Jamberoo welcomes the Future Proofing the Cabbage Tree Palm Project

 

The Paddock That Grew Nothing

On why “save our farmland” is the wrong fight for the right reason.

Wollongong Railway Station, 1900. 

Take a good look at that old photo of the railway station. Timber and tin, a scatter of weatherboard cottages, and open paddock rolling away in every direction. Now go and stand where the photographer stood. There isn’t a vacant block for miles. Every one of those paddocks filled in, one approval at a time, and nobody felt the loss on the day it happened. That’s how it always goes. The green doesn’t vanish in a single bad decision. It goes in slices, each one too small to argue about, until one day you look up and the hills have a rash.

The same station, 1920. Twenty years on

And it didn’t stop in 1920. Local residents Lesley East and Annette Young and their now husbands still remember driving into Wollongong in the early 1960s to see Psycho at the Regent Theatre on Keira Street, then a grand Art Deco picture palace only a few years old. They parked in a paddock right near the cinema. A paddock, in the middle of town. Today Wollongong is a city of more than 200,000 people, the Regent has been a church since 2005, Crown Street is a pedestrian mall, and the idea of an open field to leave your car in near the main street sounds like a tall tale. But that’s the whole point. Every one of those paddocks was “just one block” once.

Nobody stood in it the day it was lost.

So I have a lot of sympathy for the worry behind Graham Pike’s comment on one of my Catch-Up posts. He was referring to a development application on Minnamurra Lane, Jamberoo, a house and a farm shed on a vacant block, the one Cr Lawton sensibly sent off for a second look and independent legal advice at the May Council meeting. Here’s part of what he said:

“We might not be using the vacant lands or the land in question for food production right now. but most of these lands have been used for farming within the past century or less and, most importantly, we’ll need them for food production again as the human population, even in our area, increases uncontrollably and unsustainably and the resulting suburbanisation sprawls across and fragments this same agricultural/food producing land. The zoning of the land as RU1 or RU2 is a human construct and immaterial. It is still land that we have used and will in future need to use, if any is left uncovered by concrete and asphalt, for food production.” Graham Pike, Jamberoo

I’ve turned that over for days, because there’s a lot in it I agree with. The slow creep of houses and sheds across those hills is real. I’ve watched it happen. And his bigger worry, that we keep paving over the very ground we’ll need to feed ourselves one day, is a serious one.

In a later note, Graham went further and put his finger on what he sees as the root of it all: too many people. Human overpopulation, driving an economy that chews through the natural world. It’s a heartfelt view and plenty of thoughtful people share it.

That’s too big for me to sort out. What I’d say is simpler: whatever any of us thinks about how many people there ought to be, they’re already here. They were born, they need a roof, and saying “there are too many of them” doesn’t put one over a single head. So my mind goes to the thing we can actually do something about, which isn’t the number of people, but where they’re going to live.

The thing is, all that green didn’t go in one big decision anyone could point to. It went in slices, a block here, a shed there, each one too small to worry over on the day. Nobody ever stood up and voted to lose it. It just happened while we weren’t looking.

So maybe the better thing isn’t to fight every single house, but to decide on purpose where the houses should go, instead of letting them turn up one at a time until the hills are full again and we’re left wondering how.

And there’s a part of these “save our farmland” conversations that almost never gets said out loud. Farming is a business. For most farmers, the land isn’t only where they work. It’s the biggest thing they own, the nest egg meant to see them through old age after a lifetime of hard years and thin margins.

So when we say a paddock must stay green forever, I think we should stop and hear what we’re really asking. We’re asking that farmer, and only that farmer, to lock away the worth of their own land so the rest of us can enjoy the view on the drive past. A person in town can sell their house for whatever it’ll fetch. The farmer gets told their paddock is a community treasure and they ought to keep it green for a fraction of what it’s worth. I’m not sure that’s protecting farming. It feels more like asking one family to foot the bill for everyone else’s nice outlook.

I’ve stood on that side of the fence. I dairy farmed for decades, and I know what it is to look at a paddock and see both a lifetime’s work and the only retirement you’ve got. So I find myself asking the question that doesn’t get asked much: is that fair?

And it’s a slippery word, fair. Everyone in this thinks they’re on its side. The people in town feel it’s only fair the hills stay green, they get the view and lose nothing. The farmer feels it’s only fair they get to realise the worth of the land they’ve worked their whole life, the same as anyone else can with what they own. Both are sincere. Both are “fair.” They just can’t both have their way.

And it tends to be the farmer’s fairness that gets left out, because the farmer’s usually not in the room when the rest of us decide their paddock is too precious to touch.

So where does that leave me? Not where you might think. I’m not saying build everywhere. And I’m not saying the green hills don’t count, they’re a good part of why people love this place, and why the visitors come. The slow spread of sheds and houses across those ridgelines is real, and worth watching very closely.

But if we want our farmers to keep the hills green for the rest of us, the least we can do is be honest that we’re asking them to give something up, and decent enough to talk about who carries that cost rather than pretending it’s free.

Lock the gate on a farmer’s land and we haven’t saved farming. We’ve decided their retirement is a fair price for our view.

Good on Cr Lawton for asking for a proper look before anyone signs anything. That’s the kind of careful, eyes-open thinking this deserves, on this block and the next one. The conversation I’d like us to have isn’t “green or houses.” It’s “if we want the green, who pays for it, and is that fair on them?”

I don’t have a tidy answer. I’m not sure there is one. But I think we owe the farmers at least the courtesy of asking.

A note on the photos: I came across these two images on Facebook, where they were dated 1900 and 1920 and identified as Wollongong Railway Station. I haven’t been able to independently verify the dates or the photographer, so if anyone can confirm the details or knows the original source, I’d love to hear from you, please get in touch.

A Little Shout-Out to Kiama Library

Something caught my eye on Facebook the other day and it put a smile on my dial.

Whoever runs the socials at our local Kiama Library is very clever, and they deserve a shout-out.

The first one was a brilliant bit of bookface, the art of holding a book cover up so it lines up with a real person behind it, and the cover seems to finish the picture. It turns out this has a name and a bit of history. It grew out of an older idea called “sleeveface” from 2007, where people posed with vinyl record covers. The book version really took off when the New York Public Library started sharing theirs in 2015, and France’s famous Librairie Mollat bookshop turned it into a global craze a couple of years later. These days libraries everywhere join in, usually tagged #BookFaceFriday.

But Kiama hasn’t just copied the trend. They’ve put their own cheeky stamp on it. Here are a few that made me grin:

They’ve also got a running gag about AI coming for library jobs, which had me laughing too

What I love is that it’s not just clever photography. It’s a warm, funny way to show off the books on their shelves and remind us what a gem we have on our doorstep. So this is just a small thank you to the team at Kiama Library. You’ve brightened up my feed and reminded me to pop in and borrow something. How clever are they?

Daily News Round Up – 23 May 2026

Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.

From a Council meeting that could decide who runs Kiama, to a budget fight reshaping Canberra and the Iran war still at the petrol pump, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 23 May 2026.

Betty from Blacktown and her brother Kevin from Kiama, making sense of the world’s chaos the only sensible way: over toast, a strong cuppa, and a good long natter on the phone. That’s what this Catch Up is for.

Very Local: a special Council meeting you’ll want to know about

Council has called an Extraordinary Meeting for 5pm this Wednesday 27 May, and there’s only one item on the list. That alone tells you it’s BIG. It’s Council’s formal response to the Minister’s proposed changes to the Performance Improvement Order, the “lift your game” notice that’s been hanging over Kiama. Here are the bits that caught my attention.

The big stick is now named out loud. The order spells out what happens if Council doesn’t lift. First a Financial Controller could be parachuted in to take the wheel on the money. And if that’s not enough, the Minister can suspend the Council entirely and install an administrator. In plain terms, our elected councillors could be sent home and an appointee put in charge. That’s the shadow behind every budget decision being made right now.

The good news, said out loud by the Minister. It’s not all stick. The Minister has handed Council an extra year to balance the books, now out to 2027-28, and openly acknowledged Council has made real progress. Better still, he’s pushed back on Council’s own deeper cuts, saying he’s worried about what slashing services would do to the community. So the bloke holding the order is actually arguing for gentler cuts, not harder ones. Worth remembering next time someone says Sydney is out to gut us.

Your bins are safe. The order flatly bans Council from outsourcing domestic waste services. The Minister reckons the small saving wouldn’t be worth the long-term loss to the community. Council half-agrees but is quibbling over the wording, asking that “waste management” be narrowed to “waste collection,” because it doesn’t run its own tip and needs to keep using outside contractors to cart rubbish away.

Jobs versus services, the $7 million question. This is the guts of it. Council has to close a $7 million gap between what it earns and what it spends. The order says do the gentler stuff first, the efficiency savings, before reaching for the big staff cuts. Here’s the eye-opener from Council’s own response. There were two options on the table. The bigger-saving option, $2.7 million, would mean axing community services, winding back tourism, and cutting library and Leisure Centre hours. The other saves less, $1.8 million, but hits staff numbers harder. Council is effectively saying it would rather restructure its own back office than gut the services residents actually use. That’s the choice to watch.

The accounting fight that sounds dull but isn’t. Council has lobbed back a sharp point. It says the Office of Local Government measures its performance in a way that even the NSW Auditor-General disagrees with. Council reckons that if you measured every council in the state the Auditor-General’s way, around 90 of them, roughly seven in ten across NSW, would be running at a loss. The unspoken message: don’t single Kiama out as uniquely hopeless when most of the state is in the same boat.

And yes, the parks again. Remember our holiday parks question? It’s here in black and white. The order tells Council to review its “strategic assets and revenue opportunities,” and Blue Haven Terralong gets its own special mention, with Council ordered to prepare a business case on whether to keep it, lease it, partner it out, or sell it, partly because of unresolved fire safety problems. So the asset shake-up isn’t a rumour. It’s a written instruction from the Minister.

The bottom line: this one meeting is the whole story in miniature. A small council under real pressure, an extra year of breathing room, a Minister who actually wants the cuts softened, and a quiet but crucial choice brewing between trimming the back office and trimming the services we use. It’s livestreamed on the Council website if you want to watch.

Across NSW (State)

A grim run on the roads this week, worth a mention if only because it’s the sort of thing that makes you drive a bit more carefully. Three people died in a two-car crash at Sans Souci in Sydney’s south early this morning, and there’ve been separate fatal crashes out near Warialda and Mudgee in the past few days. A sobering stretch.

On the brighter side, Vivid Sydney is now in full swing, lighting up the city every night until 13 June. If you or the family fancy a night out, the light walk and the drone shows are free, which counts for a lot just now. Rug up. It’s proper winter.

Across the Country (Federal)

The politics is getting willing. The big national story is the scrap over Jim Chalmers’ budget and its tax changes, and it’s reshaping the whole landscape. One Nation has surged in the first poll since the budget, and the Coalition, now split after the Nationals walked out earlier in the year, is promising to hand money back to workers by tying tax rates to inflation. The Opposition under Angus Taylor is also floating cutting welfare for non-citizens, which has stirred plenty of anger. The short version for the kitchen table: tax and cost of living are the whole ballgame now, and the minor parties are the ones cashing in.

The same money squeeze, everywhere. Notice the thread. The fight in Canberra over budgets and tax is the exact same fight playing out at our Council, just with more zeros. Everyone from the Treasurer to our Mayor is wrestling the same problem: not enough coming in, too much going out.

Around the World (International)

The Iran war grinds on, and it’s still about your petrol. The ceasefire in the US and Israel’s war with Iran is holding, just, but more than 400 people have been killed since it came into effect in mid-April. The latest twist: Iran’s Supreme Leader has reportedly ordered that the country’s enriched uranium not be sent abroad, which is the sort of thing that keeps everyone nervous. The Strait of Hormuz disruption is still rippling through global fuel prices, which is why petrol stays dear here at home.

Russia and China cosy up further. Vladimir Putin has been in Beijing meeting Xi Jinping, the two of them talking up closer ties, just a day after Donald Trump left the same city. Meanwhile the war in Ukraine drags on, with reports Russia’s economy is starting to wobble under the strain.

The bottom line

It all joins up, Betty. A war on the other side of the planet keeps petrol dear, which feeds the cost-of-living squeeze that’s shaking up politics in Canberra, which is the very same money fight our little Council is having on Wednesday night, just closer to home and with our library hours and bins on the line. Everyone’s wrestling the same beast. Not a bad lot to talk over with Kevin and a cuppa.

Sources: Kiama Municipal Council agenda, NSW Police, SBS, Yahoo News Australia, Al Jazeera, Sydney Morning Herald, and others.

A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.

Daily News Round Up – 22 May 2026

Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.

From a fired-up Kiama Council saying no to amalgamation, to jobs slipping and the Iran war keeping petrol dear, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 22 May 2026.

Very Local: what our Council got up to this week

A busy night at the Kiama Council meeting on Tuesday 19 May. Here are the bits that caught my attention.

“No to amalgamation.” The big one. Councillors voted unanimously to reaffirm Kiama as a “strong, proud and independent council” and say a flat no to any merger. The clever part: they’re writing to the sitting member for Kiama and every declared candidate for the 2027 state election, asking each one to put their position on amalgamation in writing so it can be tabled in public. Everyone on the record before the next election. Watch this space.

Money is the cloud over everything. Behind the scenes sat a finance and governance improvement plan, a budget review, and a note about Council’s Performance Improvement Order, which is the state government’s “lift your game” notice hanging over Kiama. That pressure is the real reason the amalgamation fight matters. A small council is scrapping to prove it can stand on its own two feet.

Youth services under a question mark. The Mayor tabled a letter from federal MP Fiona Phillips flagging the possible closure of Council’s SENTRAL Youth Services. The Assistant Minister’s reply says headspace Kiama and others can pick up the slack. Reassuring on paper, but if you’ve got teenagers it’s a sign local youth services may be on the chopping block as budgets tighten.

More homes for Gerringong. Two greenlights worth noting: two residential flat buildings approved at 104 Belinda Street, and 48 Campbell Street set up as an “Urban Release Area,” which is planning-speak for land rezoned for new housing. Housing supply is the thread tying the whole region together right now.

A Jamberoo house off to the lawyers. A dwelling and farm shed on Minnamurra Lane got messy. Councillors split four-all and the item was carried on the chair’s casting vote, deferring it for legal advice first. It’s back in June. A tied vote tells you it’s genuinely contested.

Skate park families, take note. Council backed Option 3 for the Kiama Sports Complex. The promise to find a new and better skate park site got softened to simply relocating it “as per the revised plan.” Keep an eye on where it actually finds a home.

Looking after the locals with fur and roots. In-principle support for the “Save the Greater Glider” campaign and a possible expansion of Seven Mile Beach National Park, plus a long-term plan to tackle the asparagus weed choking the Werri Beach dunes.

The bottom line: it all comes back to money. The improvement order, the budget reviews, the stand against amalgamation, and the worry over youth services are really one story. A small council fighting to stay its own boss while the dollars get tighter. The homes, the gliders, the skate park are all happening on top of that.

Across NSW (State)

Cost of living is still the song that never ends. Sydney’s hung onto its title as the dearest city in the land, and the jobs picture just took a knock too (more on that under Federal). The one bit of breathing room remains rents, which after years of brutal rises have finally levelled off, though nobody’s exactly celebrating at the checkout.

And tonight the city goes a bit magic. Vivid Sydney switches on this evening and runs every night until 13 June, lights glowing from 6pm to 11pm. There’s a 6.5km walk of light displays from Circular Quay through The Rocks, Barangaroo and Darling Harbour, and the drone shows are back, though they’ve shuffled over to Cockle Bay this year. It’s free to wander and look, which is the main thing in a year when everything else costs the earth. Rug up if you go. It’s proper winter now.

Across the Country (Federal)

Jobs took a hit. Today’s big home-front number. The unemployment rate jumped to 4.5% in April, the worst it’s been since late 2021. About 33,000 more people found themselves out of work, and nearly 19,000 jobs actually disappeared over the month. It hit young people hardest (youth unemployment is now over 11%), and this month the losses landed mainly on women, who drove the whole fall in employment while the men’s rate held. This means work is getting harder to find, and that’s the kind of thing that worries a household before it ever worries a politician. Oddly, the share market had one of its best days in weeks on the very same day. A reminder that what’s good for the big end of town and what’s good for your kitchen table aren’t always the same story.

The Budget shake-up, still rumbling on. You’ll remember Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his big-swing Budget on 12 May. The headline change for ordinary folk: the government wants to limit negative gearing to new builds from July 2027, and change capital gains tax so it’s tied to inflation with a minimum tax on profits. If you already own an investment property, or had one under contract before 7:30pm on Budget night, you’re left alone. The idea is to give first-home buyers a fairer shot, and they reckon it could help around 75,000 people into a home over a decade. The Opposition’s dead against it.

And here’s where Michael West earns his cuppa. While the big mastheads chase the Budget headlines, the independents are digging where it’s uncomfortable. Two beauties this week from Michael West Media. First, a coal miner versus the Big Australian: BHP, a $300 billion giant, is taking Michael West Media itself to the Federal Court to try and shut down its reporting on an injured coal miner’s wage-theft case. They tried to rush through urgent orders to pull the stories down, and the court told them to wait their turn. The fact they’re being sued and still publishing the file number tells you what kind of outfit they are. Second, Cricket Australia is running an “independent review” into a $600,000 cloud-computing deal at the centre of “contracts-for-mates” allegations, but the whistleblower who raised the alarm has already been made redundant. Exactly the sort of follow-the-money stuff worth your support if you’ve got a spare dollar. Their whole model is “don’t pay so you can read it, pay so everyone can.”

Around the World (International)

The Iran war is still the one that reaches your petrol pump. The US-and-Israel war with Iran has been grinding on since late February, and a shaky ceasefire brokered by Pakistan keeps wobbling on and off. The latest worry is that US intelligence reckons Iran is rebuilding its military faster than expected and has already restarted making drones during the truce. Pakistan’s army chief has flown to Tehran to keep the talks limping along. The fighting keeps squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane, which is exactly why fuel’s been dear the world over, and why so much of our Budget was built around cushioning petrol prices.

Outrage over the Gaza flotilla. This one’s moved fast. Aid activists who’d tried to sail to Gaza were intercepted by Israeli forces, and a video posted by a far-right Israeli minister, taunting them while they knelt bound on the ground, sparked a global firestorm. At least ten countries summoned Israeli ambassadors to explain themselves, Australia and New Zealand among them. As of today, Israel has now deported all the activists, sending them home via Turkey, after even Israel’s own PM called the minister’s behaviour out of line.

A nasty Ebola outbreak in Congo. The head of the World Health Organization has raised the alarm about a rare type of Ebola spreading quickly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One to keep half an eye on.

The bottom line

It all joins up, Betty. A war on the other side of the planet pushes up oil; oil pushes up the petrol in the car and the price of everything trucked to the shops; and that’s why the Budget was built around fuel relief while the jobs market softens at home. Closer in, our little Council is fighting the same fight in miniature, scrapping to stay independent while the dollars tighten. And through it all, the watchdogs like Michael West keep poking at the powerful so the rest of us can see where the money really goes. Not a bad day’s reading over one cup of tea.

A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.

Sources: Kiama Municipal Council minutes, Sydney Morning Herald, ABS, Michael West Media, Al Jazeera, The Conversation, CNN, CBC, and others.