'Bayside Rugby' makes hot topic this summer

Redlands rugby club chief Tony Machin will pay a tribute to "all our elected members" when he addresses the club's AGM. These "members" are the civic and parliamentary representatives he says are working hard to secure funding for a clubhouse and change-room upgrade. More about that later. First, here's the latest on another development as the club makes its mark on rugby in one of Australia's fastest growing regions, South East Queensland ...

Image courtesy of www.nicoletteneish.com from Redlands Rugby Union and Recreation Club website.

AN exciting plan to take the great sport of rugby union to a new level in the Bayside district is on the agenda for Redlands Rugby Union and Recreation Club’s annual general meeting on Sunday, December 7.
Spirits are high in the club after its senior side took the 2008 minor premiership in the Brisbane division-one second grade competition.
The Redlanders suffered a shock defeat in the semi-final to finish the year third in the competition.
With the achievement bringing a promotion to division-one first grade, club officials plan to field the 2009 senior side as "Bayside Rugby" in conjunction with the Southern Bay club.

REDLANDS chairman Tony Machin will tell the AGM that negotiations to clinch the move are progressing well, with the first matches set for March.
"The new senior entity will provide a pathway for all junior rugby players from the bayside to play at the highest level without leaving our region," he says.
The bayside plan ends a big year for the Redlands club, which Tony says has reached the milestone of full Queensland Rugby Union voting rights for the first time, showing the club’s development and strength.
He says player numbers have reached more than 400 and much talent has emerged.
Redlands backrower Edward Quirk was man of the match in the Australian Schoolboys’ 15-11 "thrashing" of New Zealand Schoolboys.

THE victory was Australia’s first on New Zealand soil in that competition’s history, Tony says.
He describes Edward as "hard, tough but fair".
"The harder the game the better he likes it," Tony says.
Other achievers in 2008 have included fullback David Harle, who represented with the QJRU under-18s against NSW and three seniors who helped Queensland Suburban gain a rare victory over their NSW counterparts.
The trio was: half Gary Blank, who was the man of the match; fly half Brendan Dales; and lock Mitch O’Hara, who is club captain.
The club’s Golden Oldies toured to Scotland this year for their world championships – "and caused much havoc on and off the field".

WHILE the administrators work toward Bayside Rugby, the club is promoting its seniors’ pre-season training on Tuesdays at 6.30pm and is also recruiting for senior and colts sides.
Head coach is Damian Watt and senior manager Nigel Brown.
Tony will tell the AGM a lot of work is going into making 2009 another great year.

• Thanks for joining me to meet the great people in the marvellous community of classified advertising. This column has appeared in The Redland Times, Cleveland, Redland City, Queensland, Australia.
  
  
  
  

Redland development: new city turns grey

• Image: The local jobs board that features in The Redland Times.


• More info: The 'economic snapshot' report is available at the Redland City Council site.
  

VISITOR traffic to Redland City Council’s website must be heavy this week as word spreads of the availability of a key report on the district’s economy.
The Redland City Economic Snapshot 2008 contains a wealth of facts and figures, mainly from the 2006 Census but with some key updates and "no nonsense" analysis by the report’s authors.
The Queensland Treasury’s Office of Economic and Statistical Research (OESR) has compiled the snapshot, which will be a tool for business and social planning.
Such a report gives a form to changes we may see every day and accept with a shrug. The Redland’s transition over decades from a rural-based to a service-based economy may not be hard-hitting news but now we can see the change in an understandable form.
The snapshot says only 464 Redlanders worked in agriculture, forestry and fishing at the last Census; 10 years earlier, in 1996, the figure was 851.

LOCAL employment was one of the snapshot’s focuses. The OESR notes 2006 labour demand figures for Redland indicate the retail industry was the largest employer -- with 5540 people, or 17.3pc of total labour demand.
Such trends reflect in every edition of the Classifieds, with an ever-growing Positions Vacant section giving its own snapshot of the labour market.
It is no accident that the Classifieds’ innovative Positions Wanted board has a slogan with the key words "live", "work" and "local", summing up what many would consider the ideal – a job near home.
But getting back to statistics: the OESR indicates a terrier pup is growing into a Great Dane and will soon snap at the heels of the local employment giant, retail.

HEALTH care and social assistance, which employed 3821 people, or 11.9pc of labour demand in 2006, is No.2 on the list for local job creation.
This would not surprise anyone who scans the Positions Vacant column, which always seems to have ads seeking aged care specialists including nurses and assistants, diversional therapists, cooks and cleaners.
Redland will see a lot more of such local employment opportunities, if the analysts are correct.
The snapshot says the Redland's greatest population rise is expected in the 65 years and over group. The forecast rise is from 12.7pc (16,608) in 2006 to 29.4pc (55,568) in 2031.

OPPORTUNITIES will not be limited to employment in the caring fields. Many retirees will live independently, so business and employment niches will keep flowing on.
The official analyses make great reading but they come out only from time to time. Anyone can get a good idea of what’s happening by checking the Classifieds anytime.

• Thanks for joining me in the marvellous community of classified advertising. This column has appeared in The Redland Times, Cleveland, Redland City, Queensland, Australia.

Art honours true believer in Classifieds' community

Image of clay character studies including Cindy Field, centre.

A SON of Moreton Bay was returning to his roots when Ipswich publican Gordon Field decided to sell his hotel and take his young family back to the island where he grew up.
When the Fields’ jam-packed truck rolled off the barge in 1968, Gordon and the Mackay-born barmaid he married, Phoebe, were dedicating their lives to his family’s half-century-long tradition of farming the rich soil of Russell Island.
Raising two young children, Victor and Cindy, the couple grew papaws, bananas and small crops including tomatoes, which a trucking contractor picked up twice a week to catch the mainland barge for the trip to Brisbane markets.

JUST four years into the idyllic lifestyle, Gordon was killed in a car accident on the mainland.
Phoebe must have overcome many tough obstacles as she kept working the land, which she says produced avocados commercially until 1998.
But she kept everything together. In 1980, she married Erik Dupont, who had migrated from Holland in 1956, found work on a Wellington Point farm, branched out into farm work through the bayside region and, in 1967, bought his own Russell Island farmland.
Phoebe reflects on her family history this week as she prepares for a happy annual event that springs from a tragedy in her life – Cindy’s death from a brain tumor in 2003, aged 36.

EVERY November since 2004, Phoebe has organised the Cindy Field Memorial Exhibition of Arts to celebrate her daughter’s life. Cindy’s birthday was November 28.
Known in the island community as a cheerful deckie on the passenger ferries, Cindy joined the Bulletin and Times in the mid-1990s and was a consultant for the Classifieds when she received a grim diagnosis in 2001.
Phoebe says the diagnosis came just as building on Cindy’s dream home on Karragarra began, but the house was finished quickly and was Cindy’s refuge as she battled on, with radiotherapy giving hope for a time.

THE exhibition venue for the first three years was Colours Art Gallery on Macleay and last year about 90 artworks featured at Karragarra fire shed.
The continuing growth is evident this year, with about 120 paintings, priced from $15 to $4800, to go on show at Russell Island Recreation Hall.
The exhibition will open on Thursday night, November 20, and daily until Monday morning. Cindy’s portrait by Lamb Island painter Joan Seal features at each annual exhibition, which raises funds for Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Thanks for joining me to meet the great people in the marvellous community of classified advertising. This column has appeared in The Redland Times, Cleveland, Redland City, Queensland, Australia.

'Flair for hair' meets 'passion for fashion'

THE publishing trade has found a great use for at least one of the elements of its four-colour production system after sister and brother Mimma and Frank Fazio this year decided to go into a business partnership.
Stocks of magenta ink must have shrunk to make all the pink that the Fazios have splashed around in relation to their venture, Sassy B Hair and Fashion, at Birkdale.

THE pair even helped brighten up the Classifieds with a big burst of pink when recruiting a hairdresser for their "Funky New Salon", which catches eyes at Aquatic Paradise Shopping Centre.
Mimma says she and Frank are proud of the salon’s focus on "young colours and crazy hair styles" and its success since opening on July 1.
"I have been working in state and federal government departments for about 25 years and Frank is a sales manager in the construction industry," she says.
"We talked about going into a business partnership and had a busy couple of months after finally deciding upon a salon.
"We had to fit out the premises for the use, and a lot of the family gave us a lot of help."

MIMMA and Frank grew up at Annerley. She now lives at Mt Gravatt and Frank with his wife Joanne at Birkdale.
"Joanne is a hairdresser and gave us the inspiration for the salon," Mimma says. "We are lucky that she still has time to help out although she is involved in other things.’’
The "face of the Sassy B" is Frank and Joanne’s niece, Tarr-a Cowsell, as senior hairdresser and manager. Mimma says that after the recruitment campaign Tarr-a now has the company of another young and lively hairdresser, Talia.

THE fashion side of the business uses the effort that Mimma put into building connections in the jewellery industry while she was on leave from the public service.
She says she sources ‘everyday’, stirling silver and gemstone jewellery from "all over the country" to meet the demand from those wanting "something a little bit different".
"It comes from Indonesia, India, Peru and a bunch of other places," Mimma says. "When someone (a customer) sees something they like I can tell them it’s highly unlikely they could ever find another piece exactly the same."
Mimma emphasises, however, that fashion retail will always come second to hair at Sassy B.

DAPHNE Parnell, of Victoria Point, says her husband Ed’s century-old workbench (Classie Corner, October 24) did not sell for the advertised $40 but found a new home, still in their family. Her son-in-law, Paul Tuckwood, has collected the bench, which originally was a gift to Ed from his grandfather.

Thanks for joining me to meet the great people in the marvellous community of classified advertising. This column has appeared in The Redland Times.

'Rat of Tobruk' celebrates 90th birthday

Image of the Rats of Tobruk from wikipedia.

ONE word stands out in the sea of type that washes up people’s hopes, dreams and memories from each edition of the Classifieds.
"Thanks", as a listing category, keeps its purity despite the Classifieds’ general focus on buying and selling, and it draws at least as many eyes as the best commercial sales pitches.
With German in a "very complicated" family tree, Ian Busst could almost have said "danke" in his notice thanking the Coochiemudlo Island community for "a wonderful afternoon party … in the Recreation Hall".
The party celebrated his 90th birthday, October 3.
Ian well knows the German word for "thanks". He says his surname is the maiden name of his German-born grandmother.
However, his family did not embrace her national culture. He grew up during the Great Depression on Sydney’s North Shore and as a teenager found work on the Victorian hay, wheat and oats fields.

IN October 1939, Ian registered to enlist in the army. "I was five foot five and a half (166 centimetres, tall); you had to be five foot six," he says.
"They said to me, ‘You finish the harvest and come back.’ The hay was important. I was working 12 hours a day. We did it all with forks and horses and carts.
"When I went back at the end of February, he (enlisting officer) said, ‘You are so fit and you’ve grown that half an inch."
Sapper Busst served in the 6th Division as one of the Rats of Tobruk.
"Danke" became part of his vocabulary when he spent about four years as a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany.
It was often heard as he used cigarettes to barter with his captors for extras such as white bread and sugar and privileges.
Ian’s five escapes between April 1941 and May ’45 have been documented in his book, My Experiences as a Prisoner of War, and were summarised in The Redland Times preview of the birthday bash.

THE experiences undoubtedly rated at least a mention here and there as about 75 guests celebrated his life.
Ian has become a pillar of the island community and has received commendations for voluntary work.
After the war, he devoted his life to farm work in Victoria, despite a troublesome injury in 1952, when a bale fell from a trailer and hit his back.
He moved north to the island about seven years ago.
Ian’s experience tells him that fear is the greatest enemy and his lively personality certainly looks that demon straight in the eye.

Thanks for joining me to meet the great people in the marvellous community of classified advertising. This column has appeared in The Redland Times.