Community & Business
27 September, 2023
Food for thought at Breakfast
Pittsworth District Alliance’s last breakfast for 2023 proved to be a busy and informative one at the Motor Inn.
Thirty three attendees, including three TRC Councillors, heard a taste of many things from four speakers, Cr Nancy Sommerfield, Ian Willert from Boomaroo Nurseries, RFDS Local Hero Meredith Lovegrove, and Pastor Brett Dolley.
Newly elected PDA president Rhonda Ashton began the function by welcoming everyone and paying tribute to the sterling work done over the past three and a half years by outgoing president Bob Holzheimer.
Cr Sommerfield focussed on the achievements and ambitions of Toowoomba Regional Council’s waste management strategy.
She said since 2016 the council has successfully reduced its waste facilities from 36 to 23, whilst maintaining a network that keeps 90 per cent of residents within a 20 minute drive of a tip.
The eventual goal is to turn all facilities into transfer stations with all waste taken to the Bedford Street facility, which has an estimated lifespan of 50 years.
Cr Sommerfield urged residents to sort their rubbish into the correct wheelie bin and, even better, to always avoid excess packaging when shopping.
“Don’t bring waste into your household in the first place,” she said.
“We all need to be responsible.”
Boomaroo Nurseries’ Southbrook manager Ian Willert predicted Queensland will soon overtake Victoria as Australia’s largest vegetable growing state.
Boomaroo’s Harlemar Road nursery currently can produce 1.6 million seedlings each week, but a $5 million expansion slated for 2024 will increase that to 2.5 million.
The seedlings are sent to dozens of areas from Bundaberg in the north to New South Wales and Victoria, with the Lockyer Valley and Granite Belt being the two biggest destinations in Queensland.
Mr Willert said the Southbrook set-up is the first fully automated propagation system in Australia, after overcoming teething problems integrating Dutch, Italian and Australian systems and infrastructure.
“The only time the tray is touched is when it’s being loaded,” he said.
The Southbrook nursery now employs 15 staff from the local and Toowoomba area.
Mr Willert praised the welcoming support Boomaroo has received from the local community, businesses and suppliers.
Boomaroo’s foundation 80 acre nursery near Geelong sends seedlings to every state bar Western Australia, and began supplying Southern Queensland growers in 2007 using a holding facility at Drayton.
The company’s search for a suitable nursery site in Queensland began in 2017 and settled on 400 acres at Southbrook, which ticked every box including an excellent water supply.
Mr Willert said the site has 900,000 litres of water in storage for rural fire brigades to access, when required.
The morning’s other main presenter was Meredith Lovegrove, one of the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s seven Local Hero Award nominees in 2022.
Eldest daughter of Trevor and Pearl Saal, and Rhonda Ashton’s cousin, Meredith grew up in the Brookstead district attending Brookstead State School and Pittsworth State High.
In adult life she has pursued a nursing career and is currently a senior midwifery advisor at Retrieval Services Queens-land (RSQ) headquarters in Kedron, Brisbane.
Operating around the clock, the RSQ call centre co-ordinates medical and other staff to deal with more than 20,000 emergency responses and hospital transfers every year, using 21 aircraft to cover the entire state of Queensland.
Apart from delivering important educational midwifery resources, one of Ms Lovegrove’s key roles is to provide vital telehealth support during imminent births, helping to keep everyone calm and encouraged, whilst advising those on the ground, hopefully a local nurse or midwife.
Ms Lovegrove said RSQ also provides 24/7 telehealth support to 162 rural and remote sites across Queensland helping hospital staff manage urgent and critical cases locally until a specialist team arrives.
Pastor Brett Dolley then spoke outlining Harvest New Life’s local Foodbank program which continues to operate in Pittsworth, three days a week, albeit in new premises in Murray Street.
Pastor Dolley paid tribute to the volunteers who have run the Foodbank since 2020 and to the Pittsworth community for supporting those who need a helping hand.
“We’ve been blown away by the generosity of the town,” he said.
“We’ve been able to do more than we ever thought and have big dreams to help build people up, give them skills, and take them out of their situation.”
PDA’s next community events are the Mayoral Prayer Breakfast in Pittsworth on October 6, a car boot sale fundraiser on November 4, and the annual Christmas in the Park event on December 12.
- Alastair Silcock
