Green day

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire in London. Green is the colour that has been adopted by survivors to show courage and strength through this awful, awful disaster. I followed this disaster from afar, attempting to learn from it, as it is my job to bring an understanding of how we […]

The kids are alright

Last November I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Transforming Vulnerability Conference hosted by the Global Challenges Program at the University of Wollongong to be part of a panel on Children and Disasters. Wollongong is one of my favourite cities, having spent quite a bit of time there during my Uni days. It […]

Fight them on the beaches

Tally ho red leader, bandits 11 oclock high, As the son of a WW2 veteran, I grew up on a diet of war movies and books. I thought it was a lot of fun and derring do. I remember saying to Dad, it must have been fun up there, and he said “It wasn’t fun […]

Golden oldies

Recently I’ve been trawling around op shops for vinyl records, hoping for that gem. The trouble is everyone else is now doing, so the hope of finding a signed Beatles is non existent. Or even just a copy of The Triffids Born Sandy Devotional. But I have been discovering a lot of golden oldies, music […]

Let’s have a party!

The Pyrennes region of Western Victoria has unsung beauty. Some time ago, I drove up with some colleagues to Elmhurst, a small town on the highway to talk resilience. Road trips are one of my favourite things in this job, generally because it involves music and good company. This was no exception. Unfortunately, I don’t […]

Connecting

It’s not often you get to enjoy the company of one of the world’s great minds in the area of Post Traumatic Stress. Yesterday I, and many of my colleagues, were able to revel in 3hours of post traumatic stress heaven (if there is such a thing), with Dr Patricia Watson, one of the gurus […]

Out of Uniform

I couldn’t wait to leave school, to stop wearing a uniform. To my horror, when I started nursing, I had to start wearing one again. (the irony of it all, I am glad that my children wear uniforms to school, saves on clothes!). So, naturally, I gravitate towards a project called Out of Uniform, Building […]

Global Resilience Forum

Late last year I attended the Red Cross’ Global Resilience Forum in Cali, Colombia. Cali is possibly one of the furthest cities from Melbourne. It also rates as one of the most dangerous cities in the world (which I found out as I was researching what I might do with spare time while I was […]

Tables that are round

Yesterday we held the second Red Cross National Resilience Roundtable. The focus of this roundtable was on the role of the not for profit and non-traditional organisations in emergency management. The idea was to draw attention to the range of resources that the not for profit sector has offer. To consider this, we brought together […]

Ice Baby

Probably the best presentation at this conference, and one of the best I’ve heard for some time was from the dynamic Dan Neely from the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office. Given that he used music (Vanilla Ice) as a hook, I was hooked. He talked about how they are reconfiguring emergency management to be community […]