A new app will help ensure children receive vital vaccinations in time for the start of the new school year.

NSW Health is urging parents and carers to ensure children are vaccinated on time and has warned vaccinations shouldn’t be delayed even if a child has a minor illness.

Dr Jeremy McAnulty, Executive Director, Health Protection NSW encouraged parents and carers to download the free Save the Date to Vaccinate app.

“The app reminds parents and carers what vaccinations their child needs and when they’re due, in line with the NSW Immunisation Schedule. The app sends automatic reminders to your phone, making it easier to schedule immunisation appointments, and have a record of vaccinations your children have received.

On-time vaccination and overall participation in childhood immunisation programs continues to improve in NSW, with 94.5% of children fully vaccinated by five years of age in the past 12 months compared with 90.8% in 2012.

Protecting children from potentially deadly diseases is a key priority for the NSW Government, which has invested approximately $130 million in the 2019-20 Immunisation Program budget, including Commonwealth and state vaccines.

The new school year resumed for thousands of students this week and Parkes, Forbes and Lachlan Shire Councils are reminding local drivers and parents about children’s safety around schools.

There are 40km/h school speed zones around all schools in NSW. Most school zones are operational between 8 – 9.30am and 2.30 – 4pm on school days. The school zone in Bushman Street, Parkes is operational from 8am – 4pm. Police will be targeting school zones to ensure drivers obey the 40km/h speed as soon as school returns.

Parents and carers can help students remain safe by regularly reinforcing important road safety behaviours with their children, and following the below tips.
• Always make sure children wear a seatbelt or use a child restraint. Child restraint laws require children up to seven years old to be restrained in an approved child restraint.
• Always drop-off and pick-up children on the school side of the road.
• Make sure children use the footpath-side door, or safety door, when getting in and out of a car.
• Never call children across the road to you.
• Use a pedestrian crossing where possible and avoid being distracted by friends, mobile phones or listening to music through headphones whilst walking.
• Children aged up to 10 years old should always be supervised when near traffic.
• Children aged up to eight years old should always hold an adult’s hand when crossing the road or walking near traffic.
• Make sure children always wear a helmet when riding a bike.
• If your children catch a bus, always walk them to the bus stop. “Children are vulnerable road users. They are at risk in traffic because of their size, their inability to judge speed and distance, as well as the fact that they may behave unpredictably,” said the Councils’ Road Safety and Injury Prevention Officer, Melanie Suitor.

Blue sky days have become somewhat of a rarity lately, but kite enthusiasts were not disappointed on Australia Day when over 200 people enjoyed a beautiful morning at the fourth Kite Festival at Northparkes Oval. The sky filled with colourful creatures from stingrays, flamingos, bats and butterflies to two adorable giant koala kites flown by Ian Burrell.

Ian is from Canberra and comes to every festival with his amazing array of giant kites. He has some surprises every year, and the koalas being a news-worthy topic currently stole the show this time.

“I would like to thank the organisers and the people of Parkes for putting on the kite festival again this year. It would not be Australia Day without going to Parkes. Hope to see you all again next year,” said Ian.

Organiser of the event Peter Guppy was very happy with the day and said it looked like it was the biggest one yet. “Considering it was a long weekend with many people going away, we feel it was a successful day.” He said all the events on Australia Day were very well attended including the early morning breakfast cooked by Parkes Action Club members for the walkers with more than 100 people turning up.

By Maggi Barnard

Dear Valued Customers and Suppliers,

The Haddin family is saddened to announce that we will be winding down the manufacturing side of Bosmac Pty Ltd over the next couple of months.

This has been an extremely hard decision our family has had to make. It has been driven by many factors including weather conditions, economic climate, cost of labour and cost of capital equipment needed to compete with other manufacturers.

The announcement of my retirement means a loss of skill and expertise in manufacturing design and implementation, which has played a big part in the products and services Bosmac has been able to provide in the past.

Whilst manufacturing winds down, and we change over to the new setup, we are happy to announce that Bosmac will still be selling many of our well-known quality products manufactured outside our workshop. James and the team will be assembling these and have them available for sale. However, our own in-house manufactured products will no longer be available.

James and the team will also be sourcing new quality products to service our customers’ needs from local and overseas suppliers. Bosmac is now also a local supplier of BOC and ELGAS gas agencies.

CSIRO’s iconic Parkes radio telescope will get a new receiver that will significantly increase the amount of sky it can see at any one time, enabling new science and supporting local innovation in the space sector.

Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants have been awarded for the development of a new receiver for the Dish, and a major upgrade for the Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri in NSW.

A $1.15 million LIEF grant will support a $3 million project to build a sensitive receiver called a ‘cryoPAF’ for the Parkes radio telescope. The new cryoPAF will sit high above the Parkes telescope’s dish surface and receive radio signals reflected up from the dish. Its detectors will convert radio signals into electrical ones, which can be combined in different ways so that the telescope ‘looks’ in several different directions at once.

The cryoPAF will be cooled to -253°C to reduce ‘noise’ in its electrical circuits, enhancing the ability to detect weak radio signals from the cosmos at frequencies from 700 MHz to 1.9 GHz.

The grant was led by the University of Western Australia, which will coordinate construction and commissioning of the cryoPAF. CSIRO will design, build and install the instrument.

Professor Lister Staveley-Smith from The University of Western Australia node of ICRAR, who led the grant application, said the cryoPAF had three times more field of view than the previous instrument, allowing quicker and more complete surveys of the sky.

“The new receiver will help astronomers to study fast radio bursts and pulsar stars, and observe hydrogen gas throughout the Universe,” he said.

CSIRO has previously designed and built innovative phased array feeds for its ASKAP telescope in Western Australia, and a test version of the cryoPAF was used successfully on the Parkes telescope in 2016.

The Parkes Shire will welcome CEO of Youth Off The Streets and former NSW Australian of the Year, Father Chris Riley AM as the Parkes Shire’s 2020 Australia Day Ambassador.

Father Riley has worked with disadvantaged youth in a variety of roles including teacher, youth worker, probation officer, residential carer and principal of the charity Boy’s Town for more than 35 years.

He founded Youth Off The Streets (YOTS) in 1991 working with disadvantaged young people to encourage and facilitate positive life choices. As CEO, Father Riley oversees the operation of over 35 programs that employ over 180 staff and involve more than 250 volunteers.

Join the celebrations across the Parkes Shire, more information at www.visitparkes.com.au.