Guest Speakers:

Jane Evans Fundraising, Marketing and Events Manager for the Albury Wodonga Regional Cancer Centre Trust Fund gave us an insight into the efforts her committee are making towards funding for the facilities at cancer centre due to be completed later this year. Jane gave us an update on construction and timelines, the program of events for 2015 – 2016and their fundraising goals.

Megan Gogoll is a Holistic Health and Life Coach and presented us with details of the up-coming Health, Wealth, and Wellbeing conference, the main speakers and their content for the conference and the benefits for attendees of the conference.

Guest Speaker, Chris Pidd is general manager Lifeline Albury Wodonga with over 20 years experience in Not for Profit Management he has been with Lifeline for 3 years.  Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention services … it relies on community support.  Somewhere in Australia there is a new call to Lifeline every minute. People call Lifeline’s 24 hour crisis line 13 11 14 about:

• Suicidal thoughts or attempts
• Personal crisis
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Loneliness
• Abuse and trauma
• Stresses from work, family or society
• Self-help information for friends and family

National Services

• 24 Hour Telephone Crisis Line – 13 11 14
• Online Crisis Support Chat
• Service Finder – free directory of local health and community services
• Mental Health Resource Centre
• DValert – Domestic Violence Response Training
• readthesigns
• National Cannabis Information and Helpline

Guest Speaker Brandt Johnson  introduced us to the proposed recycling programme … Halve Waste … to be undertaken by Albury, Wodonga and surrounding Councils. Halve Waste is an initiative of Albury City Council, City of Wodonga and the Shires of Towong, Greater Hume, Corowa and Indigo. The goal of Halve Waste is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by 50% by 2020. Residents will be kept informed as the programme rolls out and will be advised of the commencement dates in each particular area

Guest Speaker Bill Traill  is chairman and founder of the of the Border Rail Action Group  which boasts BRAG as its acronym. Brought up in a small rural town  in Gippsland, his earlier interest in rail services was cultivated by hanging out as a kid in the freight yards of the local branch line station and observing  the  remarkable volumes and diversity of freight that was observable in that busy rail yard. Trains  then represented a window to his  outside world. Later  he went off to senior secondary school in Melbourne and commuted back and forth to Maffra –  by train of course. Geography was his favourite subject, and the efficient transporting of goods in the modern economy became a  special sub interest. In the Melbourne university commerce course  there was a subject called economic geography which he absolutely devoured and later taught for half of his  professional life. Fast tracking  to  retirement from the Victorian public teaching service in the early 1990s, long haul passenger rail services on the Victorian network came under severe threat from the newly elected Kennett government. Bill became chairman of the Wodonga Trains Group. His rail advocacy interest  was then set in place, and has continued more or less  unabated for over 20 years. BRAG is a recently formed community action group which has evolved out of the gross underperformance of the rail track and associated rail services on the Melbourne/Albury corridor, a situation which has persisted since late 2008, and is still far from resolution.