Today I went to a lovely reception at Government House in Melbourne. The occasion? Receiving a National Emergency Medal for services in both the Victorian Bushfires in 2009 and the Queensland Floods in 2010/11. It was fabulous to be there with dedicated colleagues, both volunteers and staff, seeing them be recognised for what was one […]
Read more "Gong"We have this great tension over leadership in recovery management. On paper, our principles (which people don’t realise have been around since the late eighties) tell us that it should be community led, which is in line with a participatory approaches to governance, and the role of government is to facilitate. So that’s the theory, […]
Read more "When the Generals Talk"There is this cool project that I came across from the US called Burning House. Foster Huntingdon is a photographer, who posed the question, if your house was burning down, what would you take. Before all the Grade A pedants shoot their hands in the air and say, “nothing, sir, you must leave immediately” it […]
Read more "Burning House"So said the young woman on the supermarket checkout to me this afternoon. We had a wild old night here in Melbourne last night, with some mighty thunder and lightning, and a month’s rain in the day. I was somewhat surprised that I was getting conversation more than the standard Hihowareyouhaveyougotaflybuyscardschequessavingsorcredithaveagoodday incantation, but the young […]
Read more "I woke up with the ceiling in bed"A number of years ago, I had a person working with me on secondment who had a strong service policy background. She worked on reviewing the personal hardship grants for us (the financial assistance the State Government provides those people in need of support). She asked me what was the rationale for the grants. I […]
Read more "What’s in a name"One of the things I find I am often doing is trying to temper the way people describe disasters. I hear often that Black Saturday was Australia’s biggest disaster. I wonder, by what “measure” (and measurement is problematic). If you take a purely simplistic numbers perspective, it doesn’t stack up. The 173 tragic deaths doesn’t […]
Read more "The Bigger They Are"A bit over a year ago, I was pointed in the direction of a NPR Broadcast (National Public Radio, America’s great public broadcaster, which I discovered in a hotel room in Washington, waiting to be sent to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina .. a whole another story) which talked about the key to disaster survival […]
Read more "Relationships Matter: Social Capital"One of the best films made about disasters in the recent years, is local Strathewen resident Celeste Geer’s then the wind changed. It is about Strathewen, a little town that I have had a bit to do with after the fires (which I will detail in another post, another time, when I’m ready to cross […]
Read more "Then the wind changed"Objects and Memory “There are events that transform ordinary things into irreplaceable carriers of identity, emotion and memory. These objects help us find our way forward.” Laid low by a cold, I finally managed to have a look at a film that I ordered some time ago. Jonathan Fein and Brian Danitz’s Objects and Memory […]
Read more "Objects and Memory"A relatively short post, I just thought I’d draw your attention to this article on climate change in Melbourne, and featuring our experience in the Elwood Floods in 2011. I will write more in the future on the floods. http://wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/84f8e43af454/
Read more "Elwood Floods"
Sastrugi 