Maggi Barnard

Anne Norton.

Many people will know Anne Norton from her years in the teaching profession, but last month she joined Project Sprouts as the new coordinator.

Anne said she had attended the initial community meeting in 2018 when Royal Far West presented its “Invisible Children” report bringing to light confronting findings about the state of children’s developmental health in rural and remote Australia. After retiring in 2019, she was keen to join Project Sprouts.

Looking at her new role and the vital part Project Sprouts play in our community, Anne said: “I would love to see children receiving timely and affordable access to local paediatric allied health services via a systematic approach that identifies, screens and provides therapy referrals.

“It will be my role to collaborate and co-ordinate with Royal Far West and the Pro-ject Sprouts Working Party for the provision of these services, and to offer access to educational capacity building sessions for teachers, parents and service providers. I will also be gathering data which will inform our future planning and reporting back to our philanthropic funders and stakeholders.”

Anne started working as a teacher in 1976 and taught at a number of schools around NSW. She moved to Parkes in 2003 when her late husband bought a business here. She joined Middleton Public School (MPS) and worked there until her retirement in 2019.

In 2014 she trained as a Reading Recovery Teacher, and is at present the coordinator of the COVID Literacy and Numeracy Support Team at MPS.

Anne is confident Project Sprouts will ensure all little children in our community are visible and have the best start to formal schooling. “In turn this will lead to confident, productive, resilient young people, who in the long-term will work and positively contribute to the Parkes Shire community.”

Spring in Australia may see more rain than usual in the east and a dry outlook for parts of the west, Bureau of Meteorology climatologists say.

According to the latest seasonal outlook issued by the Bureau, this spring is likely to bring above average rainfall for people living in the east of the country as well as cooler days and warmer nights.

Bureau climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins said predictions for a wetter and warmer spring came after a particularly wet and warm winter.

“Nationally, we’ve seen the wettest winter since 2016,” he said.

“Australia’s average winter temperature is also expected to be one of the ten warmest on record, particularly in the tropical north.”

Dr Watkins said the main reason behind the Bureau’s prediction for a wetter than average spring was a climate driver called the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).

“We’ve currently got a negative IOD – a phenomenon which typically brings an increased chance of rainfall to southern and eastern Australia,” he said.

“This negative IOD is expected to persist throughout spring but is currently weaker than the last negative IOD event we saw in 2016, which brought Australia’s wettest May-October period on record.”

There was an interesting discussion on the ‘Parkes In Photos of Years Gone Past’ Facebook page this week when Margaret Marshall posted a photo of the massive old River Red Gum Tree (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) outside the Parkes Shire Council building saying she reckoned it was one of the oldest trees in Parkes.

“There was a water course with a little bridge beside it in the 1950’s, a great place to play, especially when Bogan Street was flooding. It is a wonderful big tree that I remember from my childhood,” she said.

Someone suggested the tree should be lit up at night to bring out its true beauty. Many others shared memories of their favourite trees around town.