Six ideas, four minutes

“Be provocative”, they said. “How can we bring all this together and make it stick?”, were the riding instructions. The more I thought about it walking Sydney streets early morning, the more the ideas came. How can I fit watching this sector change, develop, transform over 25 years into 4 minutes? How could I link […]

World at risk

The first session focuses on the why this work is important. The impacts. These sessions are generally full of doom and gloom as we set out all that is going and can go wrong. These can be really hard to take in, this is when the sense of being overwhelmed can become apparent. The Minister […]

From Risk to Resilience

Ironing a shirt today for the first time in about 3 years, wearing grown up clothes makes you think grown up things. How will we get true action to reduce disaster risk in this country? I’m in Sydney for the From Risk To Resilience Summit. This summit is part of a process to design an […]

What we are seeing

The ongoing armed conflict in the Ukraine and its raw imagery on our TV and in our social media feeds, is likely to be distressing to many people. Those Ukrainians in Australia with family and friends, and memories in Ukraine. It will also be distressing for Russians in Australia who do not agree with the […]

Still in the control room….just

Coping with climate anxiety ahead of COP26, with @Shona Whitton

The calm before and after the storm

Guest blog Hi, preparedness and recovery folk. I’m Margaret McCarthy, a colleague of John at Red Cross, coming to you from a town in storm recovery. I’m here to take give you a break from pandemics, earthquakes and bushfire recovery by taking you on a whirlwind tour of a town called Blackwood in Central Victoria […]

Preparedness works!

The number of times I have been asked, (mainly by our communications people), could you give us the stats that show that preparedness works. There’s usually an uneasy shifting of feet, averting of eyes, a bit of mumbling, and the answer “Well its not that easy…..” When I moved into the preparedness space, I made […]

Wet Day Timetable

This was often a response we got when the girls came home from primary school on a rainy day. It meant they had to stay inside and out of the rain and water. In some respects, this is no different to the situation that has been unfolding in New South Wales, as authorities urge people […]

The Span Between Pier 10 and 11

One of my strongest and enduring memories from my first year of school in 1970 was sitting on the floor during show and tell and our teacher, Mrs Wilson drawing on the black board, the Westgate Bridge. She proceeded to tell us how the bridge had collapsed the day before. She left us with the […]

Inside the curve

It looks like we are inside the curve here in Australia. We are still struggling to understand what its like inside the curve, even as the measures start to settle, and we fall into some sort of rhythm. How do we make sense of it? This is what I am trying to do. Yes, this […]