Great news, the lady who was responsible for me capturing the dolphin photos has contacted me after seeing the photo and my letter in the Narooma News a couple of weeks later!

Thank you so much. If it wasn’t for your paper I would never have been able to find her.

As I said before, I believe these photos were a gift from God and so I’m happy to share them with anyone who would like a copy.

All I ask in return is a donation to Jewels of Hope, a charity that I support.

This organisation works with orphaned teenage girls in Lesotho, southern Africa, teaching them to make jewellery as well as mentoring and discipling them through their teen years.

A number of people market the jewellery in Australia, and the proceeds from the sales are paid to the girls as a basic monthly allowance which is just enough to cover the bare essentials for food, clothing and education.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Jewels of Hope and/or ordering a photo of the dolphins please ask them to contact me on sandyphotos@bigpond.com or 0419 506 784.

Thanks once again for your interest and help.

Sandy Berthelsen

Healesville, Victoria

With gratitude

I would like to publicly thank and show my appreciation for all the Sir James/Estia Health staff who looked after Stephen Whitfield during his two-year stay at the Dalmeny facility. 

My friend and father of my children, Stephen, recently passed away.

I was especially impressed over the last few months and weeks of his life with the empathy, kindness, thoughtfulness and sensitivity shown by his carers.

Watching staff, who haven’t lost those qualities, caring for their aged clients, restores my faith in human beings.

Thank you so much.

Sarah Bennett

Tuross Head

Thanks for help

A huge thanks to the three men who stopped and helped move our car out of its precarious position in the ANZ car park on Tuesday, August 4. You were wonderful and we are so grateful.

Thanks also to the young lad from Narooma Public School who stopped to offer the phone number of his dad – the tow truck driver.

In the end we were able to drive down to the NRMA and there appears to have been no damage done other than a few plastic bits that were scraped off the casing under the car.

Lucky us because we live in Narooma in a wonderful community.

Don Dornan and Carol Cockburn

Naoroma

Defending Narooma Flat

In the August 5 edition of the Narooma News, Clr Neil Burnside accused his ex ERA colleague Clr Milton Leslight of being irresponsible for suggesting the need for a flood and sea level rise mitigation plan for the Narooma Flat.

I received a serve for being the exponent of this crazy notion and for being a “long time climate change critic of council”.

My concept of “irresponsibility” is a council that adopts an extreme sea level rise policy, participates in studies that warn of the imminent inundation of the Narooma Flat, and then for five years does absolutely nothing in the way of mitigation planning.

Narooma can, as Neil Burnside suggests, wait until the problem becomes pressing, and then line up for scarce mitigation funding in competition with highly populated areas of NSW like the Tweed and the Central Coast.

Alternatively, it can act now to develop a practical mitigation plan and then progressively implement the protective measures over the next 50 year building cycle.

Check out the Lake Macquarie “raise and fill” plan that is currently being developed by that council in collaboration with the local community.

Narooma has a flood problem, so the grounds already exist for this council to seek flood mitigation funding from the state and federal governments.

Most importantly, this council needs to restore investor confidence in Narooma and the Eurobodalla as a whole.

This will only happen if it focuses on solutions instead of punitive planning policies that frighten investors, and have a negative effect on property values.

If the mayor and our local councillor will not step up to the plate on this issue, it is perhaps time for the Narooma community to follow the Lake Macquarie example.

That community set up its own lobby group focussed on forcing the development and implementation of a practical flood and sea level rise mitigation plan for their area.

Ian Hitchcock

Executive member

NSW Coastal Alliance

IPCC climate claims are false

The IPCC’s (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) overriding agenda is to prove that man-made carbon dioxide emissions cause dangerous global warming in order to justify its frightening claim that the earth’s surface temperature will overheat and fry us all, unless man-made emissions are greatly reduced. Its claim is false.

The IPCC has relied on the outputs of computer models for its warming of global average surface temperature assessments: massively sold as genuine settled science.

Hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been expended to this end, only to reveal that there is neither data nor observation to support the IPCC claim.

Science consists of statements of hypotheses that are testable by being subjected to critical empirical testing and observations.

Without that testing it cannot be said to be ‘science’: just ‘pseudo’ ‘transient belief’ studies’. Thus, our choice is between ‘transient beliefs and Earth’s reality, found by empirical testing and observation.

The 108 climate model runs used in the Working Group 1(Science) 2013 IPCC 5th Scientific Assessment for “warming of global average surface temperature” were exhaustively analysed by independent frontline scientists in “Assessing the consistency between short-term global temperature trends in observations and climate model projections” (R.C. Knappenberger, P.J.Michaels, J.R.Christy, C.S. Herman, L.M. Liliegren, J.D. Hannan).

The results were extraordinary, as Michaels explains “If the policies were based upon climate science rather than “climate studies” (pseudo ‘transient belief’ studies), this simple, straightforward analysis would spell the end of any onerous climate policy”, and the IPCC!

Earth’s complex reality is beyond climate models.

And, “the tier-1 scientific literature would not publish this analysis as it “would indicate a massive, unexplainable, and persistent failure of the studies (pseudo ‘transient belief’ studies) driving the global climate policy”. 

And, the official ‘temperature history is now past its eighteenth consecutive year without a statistically significant warming trend in global average surface temperature’.

The IPCC's existence depends on authoritarian control.

Why has there been no report about this by our ABC?

Neville Hughes

Surf Beach

He will be missed

It was with real sadness that I read last week of the passing of John Young.

Though I can't claim to have known John well, our paths did cross on occasion, given our respective roles in Marine Rescue and the Narooma VRA Rescue Squad.

What I did know was that after a successful business career, John “retired” to Narooma for a quieter life, but felt that he still had more to give his adopted community.

His tireless efforts running Marine Rescue, organising fundraising, rescue operations, liaising with other agencies, and just being a truly decent man, will be very sorely missed.

I knew that he had had a battle with cancer last year, but hoped that he had won that one. Sadly, it seems, that was not the case, and everyone in this town is the poorer for it.

On behalf of the Narooma Rescue Squad (VRA), I wish to extend sincere sympathies and best wishes to John's family and friends.  We liked and respected him in life, and will truly miss him now he has gone.

Stuart Kennedy

Narooma Rescue Squad

Mayor's say… Better conduct in local government

The Country Mayors Association met last week and we heard from the NSW Minister for Local Government Paul Toole, who has some good news for local government.

This included a State Financing Authority that will become available to councils in 2016 offering low interest loans, and that there will be a much needed review on how Federal Assistance Grants are allocated to make them more equitable.

In the current framework, city councils receive funding, despite many not needing additional financial support. We were all pleased to hear that funding for roads will continue with the NSW Government‘s Roads to Recovery program.

The government’s review that aims to reduce red tape for councils is continuing and submissions are being reviewed now.

We hope to be given a draft in the next few months and I expect some of these changes may feed into the new NSW Local Government Act, which will be legislated in 2016.

Minister Toole spoke on changes to the Model Code of Conduct for councillors and announced that we will see a faster and more streamlined investigation process from the Office of Local Government soon.

The NSW Local Government Model Code of Conduct is designed to help councils get on with the core business of serving their communities by providing flexibility to resolve less serious matters informally, a fair complaints management process and ways to deter ongoing disruptive behaviour and serious misconduct.

The current system isn’t working and while many councils try to enforce the rules, the Office of Local Government isn’t doing their bit at the top so the effect is watered down.

NSW Minister for Planning Rob Stokes also addressed the group and spoke on the three areas that his department will be focusing on; metropolitan planning, regional planning and resource management.

He will be looking at regional plans for larger areas, and he talked about environmental zones, acknowledging the concerns of landowners and possible changes that should see zones better reflect usage.

A planned review into the 35 zones in the standard Local Environmental Plan will be part of this.

We also asked Minister Stokes to consider the consultation required for exempt and complying development.

There are currently 60 state environment planning policies, which Minister Stokes said would be reduced to 16.

Minister for Roads Duncan Gay spoke about his support for rural communities and was proud to say that 60 per cent of his budget went to rural areas.

He announced a second round of "fixing country roads" funding and stated that the NSW Government is spending more on roads than Queensland, Victoria and South Australia combined.

He announced a $1.2 billion funding package for roads in NSW, and we will be doing our best to gain a fair share of this for Eurobodalla.

Please let me know if there are any issues that council can assist with. You can contact me at mayor@eurocoast.nsw.gov.au or phone 0418 279 215.

Clr Lindsay Brown

Mayor of Eurobodalla Shire

Frustrated swimming parent

As a parent of a competitive young swimmer and a pool user myself, I cannot express my disappointment in the incompetence of the council and all that have been involved with the pool maintenance

Six weeks of no training at a time when the kids should have been preparing for state titles

Six weeks of traveling to either Pambula or Ulladulla to train as our council chose this time to close our pool

Six weeks of having to try anything we could manage to keep our athletes as fit as possible only to be told that the work carried out was a total waste of time and the heaters are still broken

What is wrong with this council?

Do they not think that a indoor pool is something that a shire needs to maintain to help it's constitutes to keep healthy!

For our kids to follow their dreams!

Again we are let down with people just not doing their jobs properly and wasting money, which we are told over and over again that council has none of.

This just proves that that we should have no faith in anything council says to us.

How will the pool be ready for the kids to resume training in seven days if you guys couldn't fix the issues in six weeks?

Michelle Ryan

Narooma