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Anne Skyvington

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Australia

Clinician preparing baby
Australia

An Amazing Story About Stuttering

Did you know that Australia is a world leader in Stuttering research and treatments? See: The Australian Stuttering Research Centre.

But first, let me tell you a story. Many years ago, when I was little, there were always one or two children in school who couldn’t get their words out. They sounded ‘bumpy’ when they did manage to speak. Other children laughed at them. In my uncle’s time, he was even caned for his stutter.

Enter a team of Australian speech pathologists) at Lidcombe Hospital and other locales in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, during the nineties. They devised a simple plan, based on the idea of a puppet who appeared and then magically disappeared from sight. The Lidcombe Program for treating preschool age children was born!

When refined, this program was conceptually very simple, and involved trained therapists in verbally rewarding stutter-free speech outputs and pointing out “bumpy words” in a neutral manner.

Therapy sessions, individually suited to each child, and occurring in fun and environmentally friendly settings, occur over a period of weeks. Although simple, it could ‘go wrong’ if certain protocols are not followed. In other words, it is a demanding operation, that requires a stable and subtle framework to put it into practice.


Fast forward to today. The Australian Stuttering Research Centre RC is now working on another ground-breaking piece of research. They have been researching the very deep question of WHY people stutter. The causes of stuttering have escaped researchers all around the world since thinkers first wondered about it eons ago. It is a very complex multifactorial matter and many possible starting points for scientists to work from.

Enter the Baby Solution! Researchers at the ASRC have courageously begun studying the brains of infants who are at risk of developing stuttering. Yes, it is proven to be a heritable condition, afflicting ten percent of those on the planet at some stage during their lives. At risk babies were placed in Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners in special capsules. This is already showing amazing early suggestions of differences between ‘at risk’ and control groups.

This study is the first to investigate the brains of children before the onset of stuttering.

Professor Mark Onslow, the Australian Stuttering Research Centre founding director, says people who stutter live in a society that marginalises them with stereotypes that portray stuttering as a psychological problem. It is not caused by emotional issues, but made worse by stigma and bullying at school.

The researchers say their preliminary findings warrant replication incorporating longitudinal research. They say a better understanding about how different brain regions become disconnected will bring us closer to developing treatment that one day may completely alleviate stuttering.

How do I know this? Because I’m married to the director of the the Australian Stuttering Research Centre, Mark Onslow. And because I’m so proud of him and his colleagues for the work that they do in trying to manage this horrible affliction that ruins lives and prevents sufferers from reaching their full career potential as adults.


Read the article Does Stuttering Have Its Origins at Birth on the ASRC website at https://www.uts.edu.au/news/health-science/does-stuttering-have-its-origins-birth

[See the Research Paper published in the journal Neuroscience Letters: ‘White matter connectivity in neonates at risk of stuttering: Preliminary data’]

An Amazing Story About Stuttering was last modified: July 12th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
June 14, 2022 0 comment
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The Whole Class
Australia

From the Archives: Australian Story

I first saw the following video on a Facebook group that I belong to: Armidale Teachers College: The Class of 1961-1962

This was the year, 1963, that I started teaching primary school children in Granville, Western Sydney. The girls I taught were aged 8 and 9 and in 3rd and 4th classes. Some of my classmates at Armidale Teachers College chose to teach in small schools in the bush or even in outback places. The school children in the video below had to ride horseback part of the way, then catch a flying fox to get to their school.

1963: School children from a farm near Nowra had to catch a flying fox across the river, after leaving home on horseback.

My first education department posting was easy by comparison. After Teachers’ College I was posted to Granville Central School, teaching 3rd and 4th classes. I loved the girls I taught—it was parallel classes with high flyers and disadvantaged in together—but my first taste of work-based authority figures was a shock: ‘You’ll do what I say!’ Or some such from the woman in charge of first-year-out teachers, grey eyes steeling to add the final touch.

One of the other new teachers from Sydney ended up with a nervous breakdown. I decided to enjoy the pupils and to think of the future when I could escape from teaching for the Education Department. I tried to bring out the best in each pupil, building up confidence, not crushing it.

I must admit I loved teaching story writing, art and drama best. I even choreographed a play to the music of the Peer Gynt Suite: pretty mediocre stuff but fun. I took a day off to watch the cricket once with a pal from the Junior Secondary section of the school (I needed a break and so did he: his pupils were tough nuts to teach). You needed a break every now and again! It was probably part of my silent rebellion against the management.

Ironically, I got a shining Teaching Certificate report from the District Inspector (to the astonishment of guess who!) because the girls performed brilliantly for me—and it was a Maths class! I recently met up with some of these girls through a connection passed on to me from Daphne Ferguson, and they were still calling me ‘Miss Skyvington’!

3rd class at Granville Central School in 1963

My mother must have missed me when I left home for Armidale Teachers College in 1961. She used to run up on the Singer sewing machine lots of lovely dresses for me to wear to the regular dances at the College. Unlike my friends, I hadn’t met anyone I was intimate with, and my dresses were worn by my room-mates more than by me. Warren (Wazzah) found the following clip from a newsletter about the ‘scandolous’ front verandah at Smith House, with couples saying goodbye before doors closing time (11pm on Saturdays). I remember the gorgeous full-skirted dress in pale blue checks with the white fringes around the skirt. This time it was Marnie in it, saying a fond farewell to Mac, whom she married later on. It would take me a long time of growing up to find Mister Right! Honestly, it wasn’t me!

From the Archives: Australian Story was last modified: June 14th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
June 14, 2022 0 comment
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Andy, David (Ping) and Gordon at the Farewell Dance in 1963
Guest Post

Armidale: The Gang of Four

This is a guest post by Gordon Forth, a fellow student at Armidale Teachers College, who started there in 1962, a year after me. Gordon writes: Please find attached my somewhat scurrilous account of my time at ATC. I really had a lovely time at College, but was immature, a rather lazy student, who just managed to graduate. It may give some of my fellow students a chuckle.


Though I didn’t learn much, the two years I spent in Armidale was the most influential time of my adolescence. I guess the move to this country location at seventeen was my first tentative step to explore the wider world. To an extent, it involved breaking ties with my family and friends and starting a new life. Choices opening up before me had a great deal to do with the fact that I’d be living in a student residence.

The northern regional city of Armidale with its churches, the University of New England, Armidale Teachers’ College and several private schools, promoted itself in my mind as the Athens of the North. Moving there at seventeen marked a turning point in my life. Though tame by today’s standards, my decision to go to college there seemed quite adventurous at the time.

After spending two years in Armidale and three teaching in a remote part of the Snowy Mountains, I spent the next seven years in Sydney. In 1975, my then wife Penny and I moved to Warrnambool in South West Victoria. Over the next thirty years, I taught and undertook research in Ireland, China and the United States. Since my retirement in 2001, Penny and I have undertaken regular overseas trips. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.


In March 1963, I caught the overnight train from Hornsby to Armidale. My family, friends and, in tears, my girlfriend Vanessa, lined up on Hornsby station to see me off. On the train I met Paul Coghlan and Andy Miller, also commencing the primary teaching course at Armidale. Paul and I were to remain lifelong friends, while Andy was best man at my first wedding. Another dozen or so Sydney boys and girls on that train were also starting the teacher education course at Armidale. By the time the train arrived at Armidale the next morning, I was confident Paul, Andy and I would be friends. The three of us shared a taxi to Newling House, the men’s student residence. At the entrance we were met by second year students, who carried our suitcases to our rooms. My roommate Dick Clark hailed from the northern New England town of Glen Innes. Tall and well-built, Dick was a star swimmer. We got on as roommates but were never friends.

Another first year student, Dave Martin had been allocated the room next to mine. Tall, dark and good looking, Dave was from the north coast town of Murwillumbah, where his stepfather Stan owned a banana plantation. Supremely self-confident and personable, David was attractive to women and knew it. After Introducing himself, he enquired if I was any good at wrestling. I replied I most assuredly was. Smiling, he challenged me to do battle with him on the grass outside our rooms. Having boasted of my prowess, I could hardly refuse. After a preliminary skirmish, I applied my tried-and-trusted headlock, confident of bulldogging this cocky country bumpkin to the ground. However, Dave, who was extremely strong, bent low and used his hips to throw me over his head…twice!! Eventually, I learnt to lock one leg behind his knee to make this unsportsmanlike tactic less effective. It was an unusual way to begin what became a close friendship.


Most Armidale Teachers College students were from coastal northern NSW and knew each other through inter-school sporting events. There were established cliques, most notably one consisting of former students from Woodlawn, a Catholic boarding school in Lismore. The majority of students had completed the Leaving Certificate at coeducational country high schools. Quite a few hoped to return to teach and settle in their home towns. For these students, it was this prospect as well as being awarded a teachers’ college scholarship that led to their decision to choose teaching as a career.

Students from Sydney were outsiders and tended to group together. We met up on the train travelling to and from Armidale. During the holidays several of us met at Sydney’s Tatts Hotel. One of these was Denis Field the youngest son of a working class Catholic family from the inner western suburb of Enfield. Socially inept, and something of an innocent, Denis was a good natured, likeable character. His two older brothers, Maurice and Lionel, were both high school teachers. Denis’s father was known as “Joe the Header” due to his love of Two Up. As an older teacher, Denis featured in the Sydney press, having regularly sued the NSW Education Department. Working with his solicitor, he sought compensation after being hit by a cricket ball while supervising school sport and later falling down on a school bus. After his wife Kathryn died, Denis posted photos of himself on Facebook with busty young women at the Sydney Crown Casino. Within weeks, Paul, Andy, Dave and I were a close knit “Gang of Four”. Clomping around in riding boots, I was now known as “Hoss” or “Horse”. A flashy table tennis player, Dave was “Ping Pong” or just “Ping”. Andy, with his thin bony face, was less than ecstatic at being referred to as “Skull”. Paul was “Cog”, though after a public performance, his own wild version of the American dance The Hucklebuck, he became “The Rocking Ostrich”.


A cynical hedonist, Ping rejected the conformist attitudes of most college students. Perpetually restless and randy, Ping didn’t appear to take himself or anyone seriously, including our primary teaching course lecturers. Night after night, he went out on the prowl, with mischief, drinking and sex on his mind. Ping convinced Paul, Andy and me that we didn’t need to join the plodders slaving away at their assignments after tea. Rather, he persuaded us to join him on his nocturnal rambles. On one regrettable occasion, this involved frightening old ladies walking through a local park. After one such adventure, Ping returned home in the small hours, knowing a major assignment was due the next day. He set his alarm clock for 5am in order to finish the assignment. However, when the alarm went off, Ping — suffering from a lack of sleep and a hangover — smashed the offending clock against the wall. Rather than turn up for breakfast in the dining hall, Dave preferred to start the day sitting up in bed, smoking and munching Maltesers. Too lazy to be bothered washing his clothes, he simply gave them a jolly good dusting with Johnson’s Baby Powder.

One Saturday afternoon, after turning out for a College rugby team, I showered and pressed my best shirt, trousers and sports coat before setting off for the pub. I laid my clothes out on my bed, intending to change into them for the dance that evening. Alas, when I returned from discussing philosophy in the pub, my clothing had vanished. I managed to borrow a sports coat and an ill-fitting pair of strides, and just made the 9pm deadline for admittance to the dance. There, amongst the waltzing throng was a smirking Ping ,looking resplendent in my clothes lining up yet another conquest. When I remonstrated with him about his evil deed, he merely laughed and said I should be grateful that he deemed to wear my crappy clothes.

Ping was careless about money, his own and other people’s which he had no hesitation in borrowing. His strategies for raising extra cash included auctioning his clothes and hustling in pubs. His chosen venue was Armidale’s down-market Club Hotel, which boasted a table tennis table in the main bar. With a half smoked cigarette and a glass of beer on the table, Ping and I played a set with several patrons looking on. As the straight guy, my role was to defeat him with ease. A seemingly drunk Ping then challenged any one of the onlookers to play him for a couple of quid. Once his challenge was accepted, he instantly sobered up and proceeded to demolish his opponent.

Another time, Ping placed money on the bar, then challenged anyone present to a “best of three” arm wrestling contest. Though lightly built, he had extremely strong forearms and won easily. On one occasion he defeated a surprised older opponent. It was obvious that the man’s tough-looking mates were intent on exacting retribution on this youthful conman and his accomplice (me). We fled the scene and thought it best to give the Club a miss in future. Ping was aware that his “opportunistic” ways were not always appreciated by his friends. In order to find out what they really thought of him, he hid amongst the college hockey equipment stored in the top of his wardrobe. My role was to gather his friends to his room and encourage them to air their grievances regarding his character flaws. They all, including his roommate Andy Miller, enthusiastically embraced this opportunity. To a man, they agreed that Ping was a dirty rotten scoundrel. This was too much for Ping, who jumped down from his hiding place and started semi-playfully strangling a shocked Skull. In fairness, Ping was loyal to his friends when it really counted. When an eighteen plus stone Goliath “Bill Constable” threatened Andy, Ping unhesitatingly confronted the Bull from Bellingen. Twice he managed to throw Bill over his shoulder onto the floor, smashing a bed in the process. However, on his third attempt, Ping slipped and ended up with an enraged Constable choking him. I grabbed a hockey stick and threatened to rearrange Bill’s bovine head if he didn’t release his choke hold. He did.

Though clever, Ping went out of his way to ensure that he failed. He was at least partly responsible for Paul and Andy having to repeat second year at their own expense. I’ve no doubt that, had they not been under Ping’s influence, both would have passed. Paul and Andy really wanted to graduate, while Ping didn’t care. At the start of one annual exam, Ping filled in the cover sheet, stood up and walked out smiling.


After leaving College, I caught up with Ping in the mid-sixties, when I was teaching at a rural school in the Snowy Mountains. I was playing rugby for Cooma, which meant travelling to Canberra every second weekend. At that time, Ping was employed at the Commonwealth Department of Statistics in Canberra. I was best man at his wedding, when Ping, recently voted “Mr. Statistics”, married Barbara, “Miss Statistics”. She was conventionally attractive, but boring and vain. Understandably, Barbara didn’t appreciate Ping and I mocking her. Their hasty marriage only lasted a few months. Over the next few years, I met several of Ping’s girlfriends. I remember one telling me that she knew the relationship with David wouldn’t last, but was happy to make the most of it while it did.

In the early 1970s, after I had moved in with Penny at Rose Bay, Ping turned up driving a new Datsun 240z sports car. It turned out he had won quite a large sum in the lottery. That evening, while having a beer with him at a Kings Cross pub, he pointed out two attractive mini-skirted women sitting across the room. He explained that he had paid for them to have a twosome with me. I thanked him, but politely declined. After I moved to Warrnambool, I lost contact with Ping, but often wondered what had happened to this personable, flawed human being.

Like Ping, I did the minimum amount of work at College, preferring to spend my time playing billiards, table tennis at the pub and courting. Apart from Paul, I lost track of my college friends after we moved to Warrnambool in January 1975. I was surprised and a little hurt that Andy didn’t invite Paul, Ping or me to his wedding. Doubtless, he was concerned, and with good reason, that one of us, probably Ping, would get drunk and start calling out “Skull” or something worse at the reception. Andy had been an easy target for Ping’s cruel mockery. In our post college careers, Paul and I had much in common, having completed postgraduate degrees and moved onto secondary and tertiary teaching.

When Penny and I are in Sydney, we generally meet with Paul and his wife Nola for a meal and reminisce about our Armidale days.

 Author’s Note: Born   July   1944, Gordon attended Beecroft   Primary, St Andrews Cathedral Choir School and Epping Boys High. Having  graduated  from Armidale  Teachers College,  Gordon  was a primary then secondary teacher,  before taking up academic appointments at UNSW and then Deakin University. Gordon  holds a B.A and M.Litt (UNE), M.Ed UNSW, and a Ph. D (Monash). He has been a visiting  scholar  at Trinity College, Dublin,  Nanjing  and  Kansas State universities. Since  retirement, Gordon   has  worked as a consultant,  and authored a number of commissioned histories.   He and wife Penny, with their  two whippet dogs,  live  in  Warrnambool.

Photo: Andy, David (Bing) and Gordon with an unnamed female student at the Farewell Dance in 1963. The 4th member of the gang, Paul Coghlan, is not in the photo.

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Armidale: The Gang of Four was last modified: July 29th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
February 18, 2022 0 comment
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A proposed design
Australia

The Republican Movement is Back

I’m reposting this Conversation article by Denis Altman, to mark my backing of the new model being set up by the ARM.

The republic debate is back (again) but we need more than a model to capture Australians’ imagination

Chris Jackson/AP/AAP

Dennis Altman, La Trobe University

The Australian Republic Movement has just released their preferred model for a republic.

It would see Australia’s parliaments nominate candidates for head of state, who would be put to a popular vote of all Australian voters. The head of state’s term would be for five years.

For the past two decades, the Australian Republic Movement has not had a position on what model should be used. So what does this development mean?

The 1999 referendum

Australia’s 1999 republic referendum is widely believed to have failed because republicans were divided on what model to adopt. The proposal for a president chosen by the federal parliament was opposed by many republicans, who insisted only a directly elected head of state was acceptable. Whether another model could have succeeded is unknowable.

The idea of a republic has essentially been on the political back burner since the referendum.

Major polls suggest declining support for a republic. Interestingly, support for change is weakest among younger age groups, who would have no memory of the earlier campaign.

Under former leader Bill Shorten, Labor proposed a two-stage popular vote to get to a republic: one to decide in-principle support for a republic, and if that succeeded another to decide how. However the issue is unlikely to feature prominently in the upcoming election campaign, set to be dominated by COVID and the economy.

After Queen Elizabeth

As the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign approaches, the Australian Republic Movement has reignited the debate, following two years of consultation. Central to their campaign is the claim:

Australians should have genuine, merit-based choice about who speaks for them as Head of State, rather than a British King or Queen on the other side of the world.

Monarchists will retort that we already have an effective head of state with the governor-general, who for all practical purposes exercises the powers granted to the monarch. Ever since 1930, when the Scullin government appointed the first Australian-born governor-general, Sir Isaacs Isaacs, against the opposition of King George V, it has been clear this choice rests with the prime minister.

Becoming a republic would essentially be a symbolic, if important act. The republic movement claims we need the change so “our future, more than ever, will be in Australian hands”, but it is hard to see what effectively would change.

The biggest hurdle for republicans is the reality that Australia is already an independent nation, with only sentiment and inertia linking us to the British crown.

Most Australians, when pressed, struggle to remember the name of the current governor-general or to explain their role.

Over the past several decades, prime minsters have seemed increasingly presidential. Indeed, one might have expected a head of state to be more visible as a unifying force during the past two years of the pandemic, but Governor-General David Hurley’s messages have gone largely unnoticed.

A hybrid model

To find an acceptable means of removing the link to the crown, the republic movement is now proposing a hybrid plan. The media response to this has been at best lukewarm.

This model retains the basic premise of the Westminster system, namely that effective power rests in the hands of a parliamentary majority. A directly-elected president can be compatible with parliamentary government – this is the system in Ireland and several other European countries – although it would need strict constitutional limitations on the powers of a president.

But former prime minister Paul Keating lashed the hybrid idea, saying it would undermine the prime minister’s authority and lead to a dangerous “US-style” presidency.

Former “yes” campaign leader and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has also criticised the proposal as unlikely to get the required support of voters, because it

will be seen by many to embody the weaknesses of direct election and parliamentary appointment models but the strengths of neither.

Indigenous recognition

Becoming a republic would require significant rewriting of the Constitution, which would then need to be ratified by a majority of voters in a majority of states. Such a significant undertaking should see us imagine more than just a name change for the head of state.

One of the major shifts since the 1999 referendum is the growing demand from Indigenous Australians for recognition that sovereignty was never ceded, and the scars of colonial occupation and expropriation remain.

As historian Mark McKenna writes:

The republican vision of Australia’s independence […] must finally be grounded on our own soil and on thousands of generations of Indigenous occupation.

A republican movement that begins with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, rather than concerns about the symbolic links to the British crown, is a project more likely to capture the imagination of Australians.

Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Republican Movement is Back was last modified: February 10th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
January 28, 2022 0 comment
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Australia

Climate Change: Things Australians Are Doing About It

Reference: ABC Online: Future Australia

While the Federal government has come to the party at the COP 26 (Glasgow) on net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, our 2030 targets still fall far below what’s needed to keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But Australian states and some powerful—as well as many ordinary—individuals are doing a lot about tackling climate change problems head on.

Solar Panels

In Australia, 2.7 million households have solar panels on their roofs. Cheap solar, both on farms and roofs, has forced a change to the electricity market, encouraging big power generators to embrace a fully renewable future. The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), claims that, given the low cost of renewables, there will be certain times when 100% of Australia’s power will be supplied by renewables by 2025. (ABC Online)

South Australia

Since 2016, when a storm storm knocked out power lines across the state, causing widespread blackouts, SA now has the most reliable grid in the nation, and five years on from 2016, power prices have dropped. SA boasted 100 per cent renewables last October—with 78 per cent of that from rooftop solar—and 60 per cent of their energy for 2020 from renewables!

SA has also shown the rest of the country and the world how a fully renewable grid could work, by building Australia’s first big battery at Hornsdale in 2018. The Tesla Battery has saved South Australia $166 million in its first two years. Other states are following suit, and more than 31, 000 people installed batteries in their homes in 2020. Both battery and solar panel prices are dropping. (ABC Online)

The Federal Government & The Transition

The Australian power grid is huge, and moving from coal-fired power plants to renewables requires courage and commitment. Malcolm Turnbull was trying to set up a comprehensive national energy policy for doing just that when he was overthrown. The Federal Government makes the rules that run the grid, and the current lack of clarity is an obstacle for businesses wanting to invest in renewables and storage. It’s been left to the states, individuals, and companies acting on their own to fill the leadership gap.

The lack of emissions standards encapsulates the dynamic Australia faces this decade. All transitions are painful, but the transition from coal is underway and the federal government says it’s on board. But they’re not yet doing the things required to speed it up and make it as easy as possible to move to the next stage.

New South Wales

NSW recently announced a renewable energy zone in the New England area with capacity for 8 gigawatts of renewable power. They got offers from businesses to build plants for 34 gigawatts of wind, solar and storage.

Dubbo farmer Tom Warren has discovered that sheep can graze under solar panels. It’s happening in other parts of the world, in France, for example. In the most recent drought, while other nearby farms needed additional feed for more than 18 months, his flock only needed it for three months. More and more farmers are turning to solar panels to provide that. And the benefits go both ways: planting crops underneath and around solar panels reduces the temperature and increases moisture.

Queensland

Mining billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest yesterday announced that Central Queensland would soon be home to the world’s largest hydrogen manufacturing facility. It is expected to make Queensland a renewable energy superpower, with predictions the plant will double green hydrogen production across the globe. The renewable energy flooding our grid could be turned into hydrogen and stored to be used when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, or shipped overseas to other countries who don’t have the same renewable resources we do. He’s also planning to build the world’s largest solar farm in the Northern Territory to power a giant sun cable via Singapore to Asian countries.

Tasmania

The Meat and Livestock Association announced earlier this year the entire industry would become carbon neutral by 2030. Our agriculture emissions are 12 per cent of total emissions, and almost all are from livestock. Asparagopsis grows like a weed all year round in Tasmania, and the CSIRO found that it reduces methane by as much as 99 per cent when fed to cattle.  It makes the cows fatter and healthier and farmers can spend less on feed. Tasmanian startup Sea Forest is aiming to be the first in the world to produce this plant at scale. Western Australia is also stepping up with initiatives in this area. See ABC News article: Poo Eating Beetles.

Electric Cars

For Australia to be on track to do our bit in keeping warming to 1.5C above historical levels we need 76% cars to be electric by 2030. Because we don’t build cars here, we will need to go with the flow, and every major carmaker, with the exception of Toyota, has committed to ending internal combustion engines by 2035. And there’s a race on to dominate the EV market. In Australia electric car sales tripled in the past two years. EVs are on track to become as cheap as other cars, with half the operating costs some time during the decade.

Business Backing

Unlike earlier times when this country has tried to argue the need for climate change initiatives, there is now evidence business has come to the party, and is ready to invest in renewables. Within a matter of three years, the Business Council of Australia has changed from seeing emissions reduction as economy wrecking, to describing a 45-50 per cent reduction in emissions as pragmatic and a chance for ambitious investments. The BCA is now embracing a future low-carbon world, and predicting that the economy could grow by a trillion dollars over the next 50 years, as industry moves to cheap and clean electricity.

The Future

It’s currently cheaper to build new renewables supported by batteries than to build coal-fired power plants. At some point, it will be cheaper to build renewables than it is to run existing fossil fuel power plants. (ABC Online)

We are among the largest emitters per capita in the world, and exports to other resource-needy countries triple our footprint. But if Australia can supply Asia with cheap, abundant renewable energy and carbon-neutral materials, we could make a critical difference, while pumping money into our region for decades to come.

Will Australia step up in time?

Climate Change: Things Australians Are Doing About It was last modified: December 5th, 2021 by Anne Skyvington
December 5, 2021 0 comment
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Australia

Pandemic States of Australia:

A Hermit State Forever More?

The normally united states of Australia, have entered a chequered phase of mistrust and anger. Victoria hates New South Wales for not locking down sooner and more severely. (Tongue in cheek!) We here in New South Wales sometimes envy Victorians with their sensible leader/s, while our Gladys has had to go before ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption). Newly elected Premier of NSW, Dominic Perrottet, conservative Catholic and father of six, (with another on the way), wants to open up to the world. The image of a chess board is not exact, but it does reflect the fact that two colours, blue and red, tend to head off against one another in this conflict. The Liberal (blue!) states of New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania tend to face off against the (red) Labor ones of Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia. In truth it’s the premiers who push their own colour and brand of ideology in this way. And don’t forget that the Federal government is blue at the moment.

The states’ responses to closing borders to other states, may have seemed draconian, but they worked well while Australia had vaccine shortages. For the past three months, NSW and Victoria have suffered through tiresome and economically disastrous lockdowns. I’m in NSW, so I mustn’t forget to emphasise that Victoria had the world’s longest lockdown: 18 months or more through two winters. Not surprisingly, Victorians have celebrated freedom day, recently, with dancing in the streets. Vaccination rates are now above 70 percent, and both states are reopening. Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is reopening her state on December 17, when vaccination rates are predicted to hit 80 percent. Tasmania will open at 90 percent and the ACT on November 1. Mark McGowan in WA will likely follow NSW’s approach and open up once vaccination rates hit 80 percent. However, like SA and the NT, he must be cautious about exposing the high indigenous populations in his state to the virus.

Should the same logic apply to reopening international borders now? Vaccination rates of 80 percent and over could be used as the line in the sand for reopening the country to the world. ‘We can’t remain a hermit state forever,’ as Dominic Perrottet has said, putting the PM on notice. If NSW is happy to welcome visitors from Victoria—the latter recorded a Covid caseload of 2200 on October 22—then it should be safe to allow tourists or others from France, for example, which has had a much lower viral caseload by population. In any case, all arrivals would be fully vaccinated and tested before arrival.

Prime Minister Morrison wants to let in only Australian citizens in the beginning. Qantas is not dragging its feet, expecting to reinstate 11, 000 workers it stood down because of lockdowns by December.

Australian tourism and educational industries are suffering while Mr Morrison delays making a move on reopening to the world. He should take a page from the states, who have met the challenge of the pandemic on all fronts, by encouraging high vaccination rates, employing contact tracing and other measures to reduce rates and spread of the virus, and encouraging citizens with positivity and incentives.

Pandemic States of Australia: was last modified: November 2nd, 2021 by Anne Skyvington
October 25, 2021 0 comment
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crowded coogee beach
AustraliaBooks

What We’re Reading Down Under

That is, reading on the beach

I live at Coogee, close to the beach in a unit with my husband of 47 years. Coogee Beach is located on Sydney’s famous Coastal Walkway, which stretches from Bondi Beach to Maroubra Beach. The name Coogee is taken from a local Aboriginal word “koojah” which means “smelly place”. Mountains of seaweed collect on the beach at times due to winds and tide influences. But daily beach cleaning by Randwick City Council ensures that the sands are pristine and soft white, stretching along the 200 metre shoreline of the bay. The beach is partly protected by a rocky outcrop called Wedding Cake Island, and shark nets have been laid nearby, so that few sharks have been seen in the area for many years.

Australians are great sun and sea worshippers, and many are lucky enough to live near the ocean. They are also reputed to be great readers of books. This post combines those two pastime passions within it.

It was the first hot Sunday during the Pandemic and a crowd had spread out across the sands at Coogee Beach. I walked along the foreshore and saw that many people of all ages were reading books, paperbacks stuck in the sand, or held high by sun worshippers on their backs or bellies on towels; some were reading on electronic devices, but I had to eschew those for this post. I saw that most sunbathers had settled down at a safe distance from one another, that is, despite the look of the crowd in the header photo, taken from high up.

I’ve been in the habit of noticing, for some time, what people read on the beach at Coogee. Always from a safe distance, and with my mask on, during these anxious times. This day, as I looked from the shoreline with my 20:20 vision (since cataract surgery), I noted down the titles on my iphone; sometimes I slipped cautiously between bodies, to take a closer up look. Never talking, always at a safe distance…

Here are some of the books being read this day…

  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari: This book highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and it offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times. (Shortform Readers)
  • Gone Girl: Gillian Flynn:  A 2012 crime thriller by an American writer. The sense of suspense in the novel comes from whether or not Nick Dunne is involved in the disappearance of his wife Amy. (Wikipedia)
  • A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara: A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. (Goodreads)
  • The Hunted: Gabriel Bergmoser: Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide – an electrifying, heartpounding, truly unputdownable thriller.
  • The Promised Land : Barach Obama: A memoir by the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, including the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
  • Songbirds: Christy Letferi: A beautifully crafted novel, intelligent, thoughtful, and relevant, by the author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo. (Allen&Unwin)
  • Against All Odds: Craig Challen & Richard Harris: The inside account of the Thai cave rescue and the courageous Australians at the heart of it
  • I Catch Killers: The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective, by Dan Box & Gary Jubelin: Australia’s most celebrated homicide detective, leading investigations into the disappearance of William Tyrrell, the serial killing of three Aboriginal children in Bowraville and the brutal gangland murder of Terry Falconer. During his 34-year career, former Detective Chief Inspector Jubelin also ran the crime scene following the Lindt Cafe siege. (Booktopia)
  • Karma: Sadhguru: A new perspective on the overused and misunderstood concept of ‘karma’ that offers the key to happiness and enlightenment, from the internationally bestselling author and world-renowned spiritual master Sadhguru. (Penguin)
  • China Rich Girfriend: Kevin Kwan: a satirical 2015 romantic comedy novel. It is the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians a novel about the wealthy Singapore elite. Kwan was urged to write the sequel by his publishers after the initial success of Crazy Rich Asians. (Wikipedia)
  • Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie: It portrays India’s transition from British colonial rule to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist literature. (Wikipedia)
  • Sorrow & Bliss: Meg Mason: In the hands of its acerbic narrator – dealing with a crushing mental illness – even the darkest material is handled lightly, and is all the more powerful for it. (Guardian)
  • Girl, Woman, Other: Bernardine Evaristo, the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019. (Goodreads)
  • How to Win Friends & Influence People: Dale Carnegie: American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, his most famous book first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. (Goodreads)
  • Your Erroneous Zones: Wayne Dyer: A popular American self-help advocate, author and lecturer. His 1976 book Your Erroneous Zones has sold over 30 million copies and is one of the best-selling books of all time. It is said to have “brought humanistic ideas to the masses”. (Goodreads)

A recent survey of Australian reading habits provides insights into contemporary preferences, behaviours and attitudes of Australians towards books and reading. The Australia Council has partnered with Macquarie University on this third and final stage of their three-year research project titled ‘The Australian Book Industry: Authors, Publishers and Readers in a Time of Change’.

Reading the reader: A survey of Australian reading habits
What We’re Reading Down Under was last modified: July 29th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
October 13, 2021 0 comment
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Heritage listed 90 year old building
Guest Post

Memories of a Country Education

by Ian Harry Wells (Wellsy)

Armidale is a city of learning, being home to the first NSW Teachers’ College established outside of Sydney. The Armidale Teachers’ College is a heritage-listed (now former) tertiary college at 122–132 Mossman Street, Armidale. It was designed by the New South Wales Government Architect, Mr Tolhurst, and after the demolition of the Armidale Gaol. The foundation stone was laid by local member, D. H. Drummond, and the magnificent building was constructed from 1928 to 1931 by the NSW Public Works Department. It is an impressive building surrounded by formal gardens, high on a hill overlooking the city of Armidale. The College was built to train school teachers for country service, and played an important part in the establishment of the University of New England, which was the first public university to be established outside of the capital cities. The town also boasts two major cathedrals facing Armidale Central Park. ATC students came from all over the state and resided in various Armidale accommodation venues, mainly Smith House for the female students and Newling House for the male students.

1961 was a massive year in my life.  It was the year I left home to experience the world under my own steam, the year I left the “big smoke” and went to “the country” to begin a new stage of life.  It was the year for my childhood to end, with adulthood beckoning, or so I thought.  It was the first year of a two year course of teacher training, the year I entered into higher education, and the year I discovered girls… College was co-ed, a big change for me, after nine years in all boys’ schools, with a chance to share lectures with the opposite sex.

The men’s dormitory for college students was the residence called C.B. Newling House; it was about a kilometre from the impressive looking college building where we had lectures each day. As we had to return to the residence for lunch, we had a compulsory four kilometre walk daily. This wasn’t so much fun in winter with black frost, and sometimes even snow, around well into the afternoon hours. I was placed in a room in Mr Ross’s block when I arrived. He was a psychology lecturer at Armidale Teachers’ College, who had a sympathetic ear for students and who was head “warden” of Newling House, named for Cecil Bede Newling, founding principal of the College.

Bob Ross was a handsome, well-groomed and very personable man. He was the target of any number of admiring glances from the female students, many of whom, I’m told, chose Psychology as an option to study. He retired in 1984 but soon launched into a second career, applying his counselling and support skills to needy groups, particularly within the Armidale Aboriginal Community.  His cheerful, friendly, self-effacing manner and his obvious love of life and concern for others, were qualities that endeared him to everyone he had contact with. Mr Ross spent endless hours listening to students’ problems, encouraging them and helping them through difficult times in their lives. Just as he was able to relate well to his students, he had a fantastic memory for names, and he was also completely at ease with his fellow staff members, who knew him as a man of integrity.

College was great. The standard of education we enjoyed was excellent, but it was at Newling House that my real “education” took place. It was a Darwinian game of survival, the Survival of the Fittest! We lived in each other’s pockets and the enthusiasms and hormonal excesses of our youth were exercised in physically rough and ready ways, but without malice, and so mateship was born. The two years of college were a huge social experience, rather than solely an academic one.  We had a ball! 

We Newling “men” were housed two to a room in six corridor blocks, each of twelve double rooms.  A lecturer, sometimes with family, lived in a suite of rooms at the end of each corridor as a supervisor. A communal toilet complex and a separate communal shower complex served each section.  There was a common dining room, a lounge room for entertaining visitors, a billiard room, a music room, a card room and a number of quiet study rooms. Our social life was “interesting”. There were too many male students enrolled to fit into Newling House, so the overflow was housed in rented rooms in private homes around the town, but those fellows spent much of their free time in Newling House. Built of aluminium siding, the residence was a cold hole of a place, minimally heated by steam heaters, only in the corridors! There was no in-room heating at all. 

C.B. Newling House in the Sixties

I have vivid memories of those times … of communal shower rooms and communal toilets rooms with individual stalls for a semblance of privacy. Of Mrs Beatty’s corner shop, just a block away, with the Commonwealth Bank agency to cash our monthly stipend cheque.  Of Durries, snooker and pool games, table tennis, cards, the in-house student SP bookie, clothes swapping, secret toasties, pies and sausage rolls on Friday evenings, sitting on the corridor steam heaters, waiting for midnight so meat could be consumed without the stabs and pangs of religious conscience. Of trips to the pub or Tatt’s Tavern for liquid refreshment, and how about Meggsy reciting “What it was was football”, hilariously, in the common room?  Great memories!

Because of our youth, enthusiasm and innate competitiveness, we students engaged in an overabundance of sporting opportunities. Over the two years you could play a number of sports competitively, or just for fun and relaxation; basketball, tennis, squash, rugby, soccer, athletics, cross country, table tennis, hockey and snooker. We played something most nights and both days at the weekends. Participation earned extra credits towards Physical Education and Health marks.  It got us a lot of fun, too, both in the competitions and their celebratory aftermaths. 

It wasn’t ALL high jinx and hilarity; there were times of intense study, assignment research slogging and group tutoring support. There were occasions of great moment, even international crises, which we discussed and argued about at length.  For example, “The Cuban Missile Crisis”, which resulted in me appreciating the importance of being nearly nuked off the planet, or the planet being nuked from beneath me, and being ever-so thankful for the negotiated settlement which meant it didn’t happen. JFK you were my hero.

In 1963 I would discover what REAL country was! when I graduated from ATC and started teaching in the first of a series of small schools.

I think Charles Dickens said it best when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”  That’s college life in a nut shell as I recall it. Life is a balancing act. We need the experiences of highs AND lows to really appreciate the good times, the BEST of times.  We also need those heartaches, the WORST of times, to appreciate that we are alive … and how blessed we are, we who have been ATC alumni … we experienced the very best of times.

In Praise of College Daze.

When I think about college one thing stands right out;
It’s the greatness of mateship, about that there’s no doubt.
I know that one person’s truth is another person’s lie,
But in praise of college mateship I’ll sing until I die.

There were some pretty cool gals that came out and about in Armidale in the 60s as well, most of them responsible for rev-v-v-ing up our hormones … mine included. Ahhh, those were the days!

Map of Armidale showing the Old Armidale Teachers’ College (1928-1971)

See link to another post about the College, https://www.anneskyvington.com.au/the-class-of-1961-62/

Memories of a Country Education was last modified: July 9th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
September 23, 2021 2 comments
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A fairy-tale wedding
Guest Post

Things Come in Threes by Ian Wells

What would you do, if you lost your long-term partner? How would you cope with the grief? My Armidale Teachers’ College classmate, Ian, writes about just this. Feel free to share your own experiences of loss in the comments, and we will get back to you.

Successes, disasters and catastrophes, good things, not so good and bad things, always seem to come in threes.  My mum was a great believer in this. Why is it so?  Scientists have examined the reason why bad things “come in threes”: Their conclusion is … that they simply don’t. Humans habitually look for patterns in random data in a way to extract order from disorder. Another important component is the affinity of the number three in Western culture: there’s multiple examples of this in religion (the Holy Trinity), storytelling (“The Three Pigs”, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”), literature (the three-act play), and so on. Because of confirmation bias, and our own cultural biases, we just have a tendency to group things in threes.

Because of my mum and (apparently) my cultural bias I, too, believe in this phenomenon.  As proof, I offer the fact that my life has been divided into three major sections: Before Wendy, With Wendy and After Wendy.

I first saw Wendy, the one who was to become my wife, when I went to Rollie O’Neill’s milk bar and fruit shop in Dungog in late 1963. I was playing cricket with the village team, Underbank, a team formed of men from the Chichester dairy farming community where I taught in my first school. After cricket the team went en masse to a Dungog pub for refreshments, but their ideas and consumption levels were both at variance to, and far greater than, mine; so I soon chose the milk bar for my post game refreshments.  I chose that one, out of the half dozen milk bars in town, because Joy, a young lady from the same community, worked at O’Neill’s.  Coincidentally, also working behind that counter was a vivacious young fair headed woman who caught my eye.

Before I met Wendy, I was something of a loose cannon, a tear away; a motorcycle nut who loved climbing hills, shooting rabbits and game for anything adventurous.  Normally shy, when under the influence of alcohol I thought I was bullet proof, hilarious and a good catch for any girl.  (There’s another reason to limit my alcohol consumption).  When I got the courage up to shyly ask Wendy out, she flatly refused.  I was determined and asked frequently … each Saturday after cricket … while she was equally firm in refusing each request.  Finally her workmate Joy took pity on me and suggested she and her just married husband could double date with us.  Wendy reluctantly agreed.  The four of us went out each weekend in early 1964 until Wendy became comfortable enough to go out with me alone. Never-the-less we still had many double dates with Joy and her husband Colin.

On Wendy’s nineteenth birthday in 1965 we became engaged and married in the August/September school holidays in 1966.  For the next five decades she went with me from school posting to school posting, from one rental home or school residence to the next, till we bought our life time home in Gorokan in 1980 and retired years later.  We lived very happily together, raised three boys and a girl and later enjoyed the arrival of two grandchildren, a boy and a girl. Wendy confessed to me many years after we married that, because she was still only seventeen when I first asked her out, and had never had a boyfriend, and because I had already turned twenty, she thought I was too old and too experienced for her. Thank God for Joy’s intervention.

Then in December 2017 after fifty one years of marriage Wendy fell ill, was placed in an induced coma and five days later her children and I had to make the hugely disturbing and almost impossible decision to turn off the life support machinery and let her pass away.  How can one make such a decision?  I don’t know, but we did, however reluctantly.

Life after Wendy has been a huge struggle and a long road of self-re-education.  How does one “get over” such a tragedy?  The answer is that one doesn’t, one slowly adjusts, slowly accepts the inevitable and slowly changes their life focus by leaning on family and friends for support along the way. One forms new life patterns, redirecting one’s energy and direction to new and different things while being boosted by the memories of past glories.

Life goes in circles or cycles I have found, and often in threes. Happiness depends on our ability to be SELECTIVE, to be POSITIVE and to CONTINUE JOURNEYING along life’s path, anticipating better days ahead (there’s another three). I have decided to sit back more and to enjoy the natural world around us and be content to just BE!  I want to save my time to use it selfishly, though still to be open to the needs of family and friends. I’ll allow my inner wonder to shine through, to be open to the simple things of nature, to nurture my curiosity.  I want to have more time for BEING so I can still be DOING … things of my choice.

  • Chichester is a small New South Wales Rural Location within the local government area of Dungog, it is located approximately 190kms from the capital Sydney covering an area of 218.353 square kilometres. Chichester has a recorded population of 29 residents and is within the Australian Eastern Daylight Time zone Australia/Sydney.
Clover vector icon. Shamrock vector icon on white background
Things Come in Threes by Ian Wells was last modified: June 13th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
September 22, 2021 9 comments
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Guest Post

Coping With Covid

A Perspective from Two Young Women

Covid isolation and protesters as seen through the (younger) eyes and voices of 2 women I am proud to call relatives:

https://www.facebook.com/coronavirus_info/?page_source=covid_vaccine_faxit&hoisted_module_type=covid_vaccine_development

Ange R questions deniers and ‘rebels without a clue’ on Facebook:

I ask you this, why are you protesting about lockdowns when there is so much other shit in the world to get angry about, to fight about, what did you achieve? Is this your middle-aged Braveheart moment, so fucking lame. Now you put yourself out there but not for the benefit of the most vulnerable. STAY the FUCK home and find something real to channel your activism in and get vaccinated because people like my boy can’t. Any variant will kill him and we all have sacrificed so much. #200days

Abira H produces, directs, sings and acts in a comical skit that is deadly serious at the same time!

“Isolated“

[See link to video and sound: https://youtu.be/N3KvcCG02F4]

[Listen Audio Only: High Quality! Music Single Release (High Quality) –>

lyrics:

Going bored out my brains
Cause the world has gone insane
There are people taking walks like dogs … ‘woof woof’
Waiting 9 months to get the vaccination
Wearing masks religiously
Sanitising till it burns
Ahuh huh

We had like barely any cases
Then stupid protesters with uncovered faces
Went frolicking everywhere
Like dude, you’re just sharing your covid air
And Scotty is too slow
With the vaccine jab … oh
We’re gonna die … yeah

Continue Reading
Coping With Covid was last modified: July 29th, 2022 by Anne Skyvington
August 23, 2021 0 comment
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About The Author

About The Author

Anne Skyvington

Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. You can learn here about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir. Subscribe to this blog and receive a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics and events.

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About The Author

About The Author

Anne Skyvington is a Sydney-based writer and blogger. <a href="https://www.anneskyvington.com.au She has self-published a novel, 'Karrana' and is currently writing a creative memoir based on her life and childhood with a spiritual/mystical dimension.

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