Maggi Barnard

Maggi Barnard has been with the Parkes Phoenix since it was established in March 2016 and loves writing about her community.

Christmas Messages

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

Cr Ken Keith OAM
Parkes Shire Acting Mayor

As the year draws to a close and we approach 2022 I would like to thank our local community for their support and resilience throughout a challenging year. I would like to congratulate and thank our local business community for their innovation and determination. It was fabulous to see so many businesses adapt to the ever-changing rules and regulations and continue to support our local community.

In addition to Council’s general operations, significant achievements over the past year include the upgrade to Lower Clarinda Street and delivery of the Cooke Park Pavilion; the expansion of the Parkes Library and Cultural Centre; road construction and renewal upgrades just to name a few.

Despite the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Parkes Shire economy has been afforded some reprieve thanks to significant government and private sector investment. It has also been encouraging to see local businesses investing in the growth of their operations and upgrading premises.

2021 has seen many challenges, particularly to our local small business community, however I look forward to a thriving 2022, especially welcoming visitors back to our region to enjoy the Parkes Elvis Festival, Overture at the Pavilion, Trundle ABBA Festival and many other exciting events.

On behalf of Parkes Shire Council, Merry Christmas and wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas break and a prosperous 2022.

Michael McCormack MP
Federal Member for Riverina

This year has certainly thrown some challenges our way. COVID has continued to have an impact on our way of life, as have floods, a mouse plague and even an earthquake!

You are probably looking forward to a period of peace and quiet. You may be anxiously looking for last-minute gift ideas.

I want to suggest, whilst gifts are a practical and generous way to celebrate this festive time of year, as well as a unique opportunity to support local businesses by purchasing Australian made products and produce, the most thoughtful gifts we can give are free: friendship, kindness, hope and love.

My hope this Christmas is that everyone across the Riverina and Central West gets to experience the happiness of reconnecting with family and friends. As borders open and COVID restrictions ease, the ability to travel and enjoy life as we have previously, are things for which we are truly grateful.

Whilst celebrating this special time of year, we pay tribute to and thank those who give their time to serve and support others: our health care workers, emergency service and defence force personnel, aged care and disability workers, the farmers who will be harvesting to ensure we have food on our tables and those who spend time with the homeless and less fortunate.

May we all rediscover the joy of simple things in life and endeavour to share this with those around us. Catherine, my family, staff and I extend our best wishes to all for a happy Christmas and a successful 2022.

Laura Donates Her Labour Of Love

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

Laura Rusten and her sister Jorja at the show jump she designed for her HSC major work. The jump has butterfly wings on both sides to honour the Dolly’s Dream butterfly. Laura created the wings by welding together horse shoes.

A Year 12 student spent hours working on her HSC major work this year and then decided to auction it off for a charity.

Parkes Christian School student Laura Rusten created a very special show jump for her major works in Design and Technology.

“As an avid equestrian I know how hard it is when practicing show jumping on your own to have to get off the horse to lift or lower the pole, so I decided to create a jump that would allow me to automatically lift or lower the pole while still mounted.”

With some input from her dad, Laura spent countless hours over six months to build an automatic pole lifting show jump with a motion sensor camera.

“My show jump is designed to be used by the rider solo, with two electric winches remote controlled to either lift or lower the pole, a motion sensor camera that can record your movement with an SD card or a second party can access the camera with their phone and control the movement of the camera to give direct feedback.” Laura said the jump was not only designed as a training jump but could also be used in competition.

As a keen supporter of Dolly’s Dream, a charity set up to care for children who have experienced or witnessed serious violence, bullying, cyberbullying or other safety and well-being risks, Laura decided a great way of raising funds for the charity would be to sell the show jump on auction. “With the approval from Dolly’s Dream this became my inspiration.”

The auction kicked off on Monday and by Tuesday she had already raised over $500. “I don’t really have a final figure and only hope it goes well,” said Laura, who has been accepted at Wagga CSU to study a Bachelor of Equine Science next year.

The auction includes other smaller items and is open until 12pm today at: https://fundraise.dollysdream.org.au/fundraisers/laurarusten

Laura Rusten.

There Are Carols In Parkes This Christmas – Twice!

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

The Parkes Shire Concert Band will be playing Christmas Carol in Cooke Park from 11am tomorrow.

The annual Nine Lessons and Carols will again enthral those who gather on Sunday night (19th December) at St George’s Anglican Church at 7:30pm.

The event features songs and carols based around nine readings that tell the story of the prophecies of Jesus, through to his incarnation or birth as God on earth.

The event also foreshadows his death and resurrection which is commemorated at Easter.

Rev Natalie Quince said: “There is a dignified purpose and simplicity in this service that enables people to hear about God’s promises and their fulfilment for us in Jesus. It is the beginning of the Christmas season.”

And the best bit is – everyone can join in singing!

Richard Morgan will be accompanying the congregation in many favourite carols. He is an accomplished organist from Sydney and a regular at this event.

Local Belinda Boland will be performing a solo, as will Keola Aho, while A Capella group Tapestry will lead the congregation in singing and will perform two items.

Please get in early as it will begin promptly at 7:30pm. Richard will be playing the organ from 7pm.

Carols In The Park

If you cannot make the service at St George’s on Sunday, the Parkes Shire Concert Band will be playing Christmas Carols tomorrow (18th December) from 11am at the Cooke Park Pavilion. Bring your picnic rug or chair and enjoy some Christmas cheer in the open.

Elf Journal Entry – By Debbie Gould

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

Date: 16th December

What a day! All I can say is the pressure was on. Major panic in the production line. Blue ducks! Seriously? I did tell Santa that Mac was colourblind. I had to do a back shift to sort it out. Santa said he trusted me to fix the problem, but I think he thought flattery alone would work for me. First thing tomorrow I’m going in to change my time sheet to include overtime rates.

My specialty is attaching wheels to toy cars, trains, skateboards etc. I admit it’s not rocket science, however it does require some thought. While I repainted the ducks to the appropriate sunny yellow Santa let Mac work at my station. Mac upended the tray of wheels all over the floor. Susie was walking past carrying a stack of boxes, trod on the wheels and let’s just say now she has a pair of crutches and is on worker’s comp. Mac apologised profusely and quickly gathered up the wheels and returned them to the tray. Unfortunately, most were in the wrong slots. When I finally got back to my station there were cars with skateboard wheels and bikes with car wheels. I just couldn’t believe it. Mac sat there looking at me grinning proudly.

“Everything has wheels,” he said to me. I was speechless.

Mac’s real name is Macaroni which certainly fits. He’s a bit of noodle. Lots of shape on the outside but hollow on the inside. I will have to sort out the wheels tomorrow. Another long day. I appealed to Santa quite forcefully that perhaps a great job for Mac would be using the hose out the front to water the snow. Santa didn’t look impressed.

Tomorrow I will need to do another back shift to catch up. I’m feeling very unimpressed and somewhat angry at the time of writing this despite Santa’s orders that all elves must be filled with Christmas spirit. I am exhausted and tired of cleaning up after Mac. I’m not happy at all but I can’t do anything about it because Mac is Santa’s nephew. Santa was very definite about Mac working on the toys with me.

“Listen Cheese,” he said, “I think you’ll be a winning combination.” I looked at Santa unconvinced.

“Mac and Cheese?” I replied doubtfully, “I can’t see that working out.”

One Thousand Issues By Design

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

Designer, Lisa Brien celebrated the design of her 1,000th Phoenix newspaper ths week.

The Designer of the Phoenix newspapers celebrated a momentous milestone this week reaching her 1,000th edition in eight years.

Lisa Brien designed her very first edition, Issue 271 of the Canowindra Phoenix, on 21st November 2013, and with this week’s Parkes Phoenix Issue 290 she clocked up 1,000 editions of doing all the advertising and layout design.

She was there for the first edition of the Forbes Phoenix on 3rd July 2015, and the first edition of the Parkes Phoenix on 11th March 2016. To date she has done 392 issues of the Canowindra Phoenix, 318 issues of the Forbes Phoenix and 290 issues of the Parkes Phoenix.

“No two weeks are the same and no two papers are the same,” said Lisa. “I enjoy the challenge that each week brings. It is like putting together a big puzzle that is continuously evolving, and trying to get all of the pieces to fit together to create a visually appealing, balanced publication.”

Lisa says the trickiest part of her job is managing the hundreds of emails she receives every day from three editors and three sales managers. “I have to be super organised and am fanatical about my colour coded flag system and folders.”

Over the past eight years Lisa has worked for three different owners of the papers. She started with Cheryl Newsom, then Sarah Maynard from January 2017 and the current owner Joshua Matic took over in October 2019.

She has seen how the papers reflect the state of the local communities, especially during the drought years when the papers were at their leanest with only eight pages each. “We celebrate the boom times and also suffer with the community through hardships.”

Lisa discovered the beauty of technology early on as it allows her to work remotely.

She has designed issues of the Phoenix from all over the country – from a beach at Batemans Bay, NSW to one in Hervey Bay, Queensland. “The most remote place I have designed a paper is sitting in a paddock on a cattle property near Roma in Queensland! It was the only place where I could hotspot my phone to get an internet connection. I have even pulled over on the side of the highway while driving to Canberra to make last minute changes on the morning of print.”

Cheers to Lisa and another 1,000 editions!

Final Result Of Council Election Out Next Week

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

The final result of the Local Government election will be made known on Tuesday when the ten councillors for the new term will be confirmed. The Mayor and Deputy Mayor will be elected by the councillors on Thursday, 23rd December.

The much anticipated election with a total of 19 candidates (includes the group of six) resulted in many conversations, predictions, debates and some accusations.

The total number of votes counted are 8,689 according to the NSW Electoral Commission web page and the quota is 739 per candidate for Proportional Representation (PR). This means any surplus votes of the elected candidates (that is, votes in excess of the quota they needed) are transferred to the candidates who were the second choice of voters. However, they are transferred as a reduced value. This is why it takes so much time to finalise the results.

The latest vote count for the top ten councillors according to the NSW Electoral Commission web page for the Parkes Shire are: Ken Keith 1,165; Glenn Wilson 946; Louise O’Leary 777; Bill Jayet 708; Neil Westcott 706; Jacob Cass 661; Marg Applebee 577; Kenny McGrath 492; George Pratt 428 and John Southon 335.

Colouring-In Winners

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

There were five very excited young Parkes residents this week when they were told they had won a prize in our very popular Christmas Colouring-In Competition. Thank you to Packed Cones for your generous sponsorship! The winner of the lucky dip prize is Laura Brooker (9).

A very happy winner 11 – 15 years: Errin Waters.

The winner of the 7 – 10 years category, Oden Greef (8).

The smiling 0 – 3 years winner Lillian Mulligan (3).

Abbey Lovell (5) with her prize for the 4 – 6 years category.

Sports Grants Announced In Time For Christmas!

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

The successful recipients of the latest round of the Sports Grants Program are (L-R) Sue McGrath (Parkes Touch), Mitch and Aliza Roberts (Parkes Soccer), Tiarne McCleod (Peak Hill Central School), Cr Louise O’Leary, Denise Gersbach (Parkes Kennel Club), Rachel Rice (Parkes Touch), Denise White (Parkes College for Seniors), Stuart Milne ( Parkes Junior League), Al Ryan (Parkes Rugby), Kerry Edwards (Parkes Little Athletics), Natalie Williams and Cath McQuie (Parkes School of Dance).

Christmas came early for ten local organisations who will be sharing almost $40,000 of the latest round of the Sports Grants Program.

Parkes Sports Council Chairperson Alan Gersbach said it was fantastic to see a broad range of projects with Northparkes Mines supporting the program for the past eight years.

The recipients are:

Parkes Marist Junior Rugby League Club, $8,024 to enclose carport end of long canteen, install roller doors, lighting and benches; Parkes and District Kennel Club, $4,860 to purchase two sets of agility timing gates; Parkes Rugby Union Club, $8,024 to purchase quality kitchen and canteen equipment for the new clubhouse; Parkes & District Amateur Soccer Association, $1,000 to run a four-week pre-season soccer academy for girls aged 5 to 12 years, and to purchase training kits and coaching jackets; Parkes Little Athletics Inc, $3,000 to purchase a comprehensive first aid kit, 14 portable first aid kits for each age division, 4 twin pack UHF handheld radios plus various athletics equipment; Peak Hill Central School, $3,744 to purchase sporting equipment and a high jump mat for students to participate in a wider range of sports activities, uniforms for participating in representative sport as well as updating sporting storage around the school; Parkes Touch Association, $2,746 to purchase AusTouch playing shirts and CovidSafe plan products including 2-way radios, and sanitizer stations. Also update representative team training equipment, first aid kits, and transport trolleys; Parkes School of Dance Inc, $1,500 to purchase online subscription to the Progressing Ballet Technique (PBT) to enable teachers to access 250+ exercises and to purchase dancing training equipment; PCYC Parkes, $5,313 to purchase a trampoline harness to support training sessions.

The next round will open in March next year with a total of $30,000 available for sports related projects within the Parkes Shire.

Christmas – By Margaret Irwin

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

Irwin I think it was in 1983. It was on the news. A family reunion in the bush on the banks of a creek in southeast Queensland. A small boy, two and one-half years old, had gone missing. The distraught family had searched to no avail and called for reinforcements. The closest town had turned out in force and every available person was out searching the virgin forest. Days went by with no sign of the toddler.

At that time the Nepean Belle was being built on a property adjacent to the Nepean River and our 16-year-old son, Rodney, was employed there. As there was no bus service to the property, I drove him to and from work each day. I dropped him off and as I drove out of the yard, the 8:30am news came on: “As this is the fourth day with no sign of the child, and the searchers are all exhausted, if he isn’t found today, the search will be abandoned.”

Tears streamed down my face as I pictured this child, alone in the forest, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no change of clothes, alone through the night and with no parents. I had made a habit of giving thanks in all circumstances, so that’s what I did all the way home, for the distraught parents, for the guilt and heartache they would have been feeling, for the exhausted searchers, for the bereft little boy who could not find his way out, for everything I could think of. I gave thanks to God and Father of Jesus, who sent His Son to pay our way and lead us home.

It was coming up to 10am and I was once more in the car, this time to do the shopping when the 10am news came on: “The little boy who was lost in southeast Queensland, walked out of the forest, onto a farm, and made himself known to the farmer… Just after 8.30am this morning.”

Again, I cried all the way home, this time with a heart overflowing with joy and thankfulness. I can’t remember what time of the year it was, but for me, it was Christmas.

By Margaret Irwin

A Christmas Tale – By Heather Veal

December 17, 2021 By Maggi Barnard

One Christmas Eve not long ago

I was lying on the rug,

Eating Christmas fare, and feeling rather smug.

The sound of hooves upon the roof woke me from my reverie

“Whoa” came a cry. “Ho, Ho, Ho!”

Do you know what I did see?

Santa coming through the door,

And this he said to me.

This travelling can be tiresome –

Even Santa needs a break.

He stopped, and helped himself

To a slice of Christmas cake.

Put nosebags on the reindeer,

“It’s getting warm out here”

Santa loosened up his collar,

And reached for a beer.

“Before I leave,” said Santa, “I have parcels for your tree.

(That he had gifts for us had not occurred to me.)

He searched the sleigh. “Here they are!

I know you’ll use them carefully.”

When you see that box stamped Friendship

Beneath your Christmas tree

Count yourself as fortunate and blessed – believe you me.

It’s a gift that brings compassion – and responsibility.

It’s a gift not given lightly, when unwrapped it gives such pleasure.

It’s the same in every country –

A truly national treasure.

Pressed down and brimming over, always given in full measure.

Laughter – a tin of polish for dark and gloomy days

Take care you choose the proper one, wrapped in the correct way.

Make sure how you unwrap it – you do well to be suspicious

Laughter must be happy – it must never be malicious.

For cancer, and the refugees, I have boxes of support.

Small, but constant. They are all so heartened by the knowledge of this thought.

For all the disadvantaged (here Santa shed a tear)

We need more understanding, it’s in short supply this year.

Many gifts to many countries I deliver this Christmas night.

A reindeer whinnied. “Goodness!” said Santa.” I really must take flight!”

He cocked an eye. “This beer is not bad.

Can I take some? Is that alright?”

“Here’s a bottle of Christmas Spirit. All you need is a shot glass.

The glow you will receive from it just cannot be surpassed.

Gather families, gather friends, out in your Australian sun

And share it out amongst you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

By Heather Veal

Maggi Barnard

Subscribe