On this episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, Rachael speaks to Drew Marshall – Defence Air Traffic Control Officer. Drew grew up in Canberra and in 198 joined the Air Force originally to train as a pilot. Unfortunately, he wasn’t successful at pilot training and swapped over to Air Traffic Control, a role he was much more suited and did well.

Drew’s first posting in 1982 was to the RAAF Base at Pearce in WA where he spent four years. During this time, Drew deployed to the Middle East – the Sinai – as a member of the Multinational Forces and Observers (MFO) for six months.

In 1986, Drew was posted to RAAF East Sale in Gippsland in Victoria, the home of the Roulettes, where he spent four years. 1990 saw Drew posted to RAAF Base Darwin for two years. In 1992, Drew began a long association with the home of the RAAF Fighter Force when he was posted to RAAF Williamtown. In his first five years at Williamtown, as well as Air Traffic Control duties, Drew performed other roles such as the Base Fire Officer – heading up the airfield fire fighting section and undertook various deployments around Australia in support of the ADF’s exercise programme. In 1997, Drew went back to RAAF East Sale for another four year posting but returned to Williamtown in 2001.

In 2001, Drew transferred from the permanent Air Force to the Air Force Reserve and began a long period of headquarters staff work directly in support of the RAAF Fighter Force at 81 Wing and Headquarters Air Combat Group. It was during this time that the RAAF deployed Fighters to the Middle East in support of Operation Falconer. Drew remained at Williamtown playing a key role as part of a skeleton home support staff during the deployment. One of Drew’s proudest moments was participating in the welcome home parade in 2006 marching the length of George St in Sydney with the other members of the deployment force before being welcomed home by the Governor General and Prime Minister at Sydney Town Hall.
Drew performed various (non ATC) roles at Williamtown over the period 2001 to 2012 including as Visits Liaison Officer meeting and greeting VIPs who were visiting Williamtown and as the Base Aviation Safety Officer, a key role managing the safe operation of the airfield.
In 2012, Drew returned to his primary role as an Air Traffic Controller but this time slightly differently. The RAAF employs ex-RAAF Air Traffic Control Officers as members of the Australian Public Service (APS) to supplement the members of the Permanent Air Force (PAF). Drew took up a position as an APS Air Traffic Control Officer at RAAF Base Richmond in 2012 and has established his home in the Hawesbury (in one of Rachael Goldsworthy Realty rental properties) where he continues to live and work.

Drew enjoys undertaking fitness activities which include participating in the Parkrun at East Richmond when shift work allows and is a keen SCUBA diver.

I Live, Love, Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode.

I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and welcome to the drive home to Hawkesbury, where I believe every home has a story and I love sharing those stories on real estate in the street with you. Can you we share the fish ways to add value to your property, how to avoid the common mistakes people make when buying and selling property, and how to get the maximum return on your investment with a focus on supporting local business. I live love and can’t wait to get into today’s episode with you. So let’s get started.
Morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on what time you’re watching this video. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy on the drive home to Hawkesbury and today I am joined by Mike Delta. This is row Romeo golf to you. Do you read me over?
How are you drew? That’s obviously not how bad I. I know I was going to say Romeo Golf to Mike Delta. Are you there? Maybe Delta. Mike. Oh, Delta. Mike. Okay. Because you reverse it. Of course. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Yeah, really good. Thank you. So great to have you on the show today because um, a lot of people where we live in the Hawkesbury and we’ve got the towers and we’ve got the planes overflying and um, we get to see some beautiful plains and it’s good to have somebody on like yourself that is able to share the information on what’s actually happening in the air. And I’m your illustrious career in the RAF and also as a civilian now. So tell me a little bit about that. What’s it like being an air traffic controller?
Uh, well, it, it varies a lot. Richmond is a lot quieter than the basis I’ve been at. I’ve started my life over in Perth where the air force had a, they have a flying school over there and so it’s really, really busy. Then abandoned places like Darwin and William Chan, which are equally as busy back different. And then Richmond is a lot quieter than those places. So Richmond has its moments, but it’s a quiet place, believe it or not. I don’t think a lot of a lot of residents who believed that come sort of July or January when the Hornets come down to do their stuff, but certainly it is a lot quieter than it used to than it used to be at an end compared to other devices.
No. Terrific. And um, what changes are coming up with the base? Do you know of any sort of snippets that the locals don’t know about or any insights that you can tell us about or is that
mean it’s a fairly well known fact that, um, the spot. And so the new to engine aircraft that we blocked down there at the moment, they only Dalani be huge at the end of the year. And then I really liked character emily, so we’ll go back to just having a in of Hercules, but I mean essentially richmond is still lead the transport hub of Sydney and um, I, I don’t know, it’s a, it’s something that I don’t really pay a lot of attention to is to how long the base together be there for. But you will have noticed that as you go on Hawkesbury Valley, why they’re bullying us new control tower, so that, that to me is a bit of a commitment. You probably have seen that yet, mastering mushroom thing appearing in the middle of the year and now it’s got a whole lot of blue top
holding around it. So it’s a commitment. Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I think John’s joined us on the line and Joe and a few other people. So hello to everybody that’s listening to every Bernie with this equally, um, the towers, I mean, one was not enough. We needed to. There is a bigger commitment as you say. So how many planes are coming in every day? What sort of, um, you know, tracking
did we, we can have a really busy day the other day when I was here and we had a, I know probably 36 to 48 aircraft movements. Say they had a lot to do with the parachute and that we’re doing a yet you’re going to get quite days that are quite different. I believe that yesterday was a busy day. I, uh, one of the, uh, what am I training Chinese actually got his qualification, you’ll say, so was pleasing you, sent me a text and said it was a really busy day. So, and I was in Richmond and I saw a lot of [inaudible] flying over. So was there doing some circuit training there. So was it reasonably busy day?
Well, isn’t that great if you get the certification?
Yes it is. It’s a big, it’s a big milestone in a junior controls life to get it. That’s his first control writing. So he graduated, he graduated from the school in, in Gippsland about 18 months ago. So yes, this is a big step and he’s in Korea.
And tell me, I’m drew. What is it that somebody needs to do if they want to be a traffic air traffic control of what is the training involved? Is it years, is it months, is it, you know, simulation, what do you do? What do you have to do?
Okay. Um, the system is set up so they can take a person off the street who has no affiliation background than I do about 20 weeks of officer training school, Dan at the rep basically style and that’s just general officer’s training. So all of the, all of the officers do the same training and then I go off to the school of the air traffic control, which happens to be at the same base down at a silent during that nine months there. So all in all it’s about 12 months of training and depending on where they were, the, the officer training a lot of food chain in glove with going over to the school. Some caught, a lot of times it doesn’t. So there’s a bit of hanging around. But uh, about nine months id you graduate as an air traffic controller, but that gives you the, the, the skills to go out to a base and then get trained at that phase two to drive their traffic at that bites.
And that’s what this young fellow is just done. He’s, he’s just say he completed, he completed his training about last year and a British qualification. Now after doing some training you asked me about the simulation. The school at style has, I have large, very, have a very uh, um, comprehensive, uh, air traffic control simulator which mirrors, which means a of traffic control tower. It’s, it’s, um, it’s a very big video game. Basically it’s a big room or there are in fact two of them and they have big screens around the outside and it mirrors exactly what you would see in a control tower and it’s very, very effective pitch equipment.
And when you in that simulator, does it feel real, I mean, do you, because you know, it’s a simulated because you’re sitting in there, do you think, uh, huts, just, just something that you do and we’re just gonna get in there. We’re going to play a bit of an xbox and enter that land. This plane safely.
Surprisingly no, I was out of the air traffic control for about 12 years doing other staff work and I had to go back and do a refresher in 2013 down at the school. And um, you do think, ah, it’s just, they’re just virtuals pitchers on the, on the, on the, on the screens that have not. It’s something like that at all. You really get into it. It becomes, it becomes, I think a lot, a lot of people playing vr games are the same, but this is, this is encompassing. It’s 360 degrees and you are, you’re standing in what is equivalent to a control tower and you’re busy and you’ve got a lot of our appliances, a lot of inputs. You’ve got to do a price if she can provide a lot of, a lot of feedback. So yeah, it does. It get you in and it is a workout. It’s a big workout. It’s like being in the gym.
Yeah, I’m sure. And the feedback that you would need to give to the pilots, I would think would be fairly detailed on whether on conditions, on surfaces, those sorts of things. Can you walk us through your typical landing,
the, the, the controls role is to make sure that that an aircraft landing and taking off on the wrong way, it doesn’t collide with another something, whether it be a vehicle or a person or another aircraft. So the idea is that whenever an aircraft takes off or whatever and they’ve got lanes and surprisingly people who sit on the sides of runways, you come up to the control tower, you ask them how fast is that airplane going? And I say, well, I don’t know, say well they’re applying is growing at about 120 knots when it lands and takes off. And they go. I said how does that relate to driving on the road? Because it’s about double. So an aircraft landing and takeoff was doing about 240 kilometers an hour because it’s kind of like wide open in larger airplanes. It doesn’t. It’s kind of a relative thing.
So you can imagine. So I hope you ladies is about 60 tons of airplane and it’s doing 240 kilometers an hour. So landing and taking off. You don’t want to do anything. Probably not. Yeah, that’s a good point. Valid point. So that’s the role of the air traffic controller predominantly in control to make sure that there is no obstructions on the runway for an aircraft landing and taking off. It extends beyond that. Particularly at Richmond we have a lot more lateral space at richmond because we encompass where they do the parachuting. You’ve probably seen a lot of parachuting at Reagan, be Reagan on the AFL itself in Londonderry. So we encompass more, more a lateral area than most other control towers. Um, but so we have a bit to do with things like there’s a lot of people around here and helicopters. Uh, we had the rural fire service, they fly the helicopters around here, we have a rescue helicopters flying out to go to different accidents and we’ve got to keep them away also in the air from other aircraft in the air as well as landing and taking off.
So it was a bit of activity last night with helicopters overhead in Windsor and the whole school year, I believe there’s some grass fires. We’re putting out a few other people if you’ve actually caught me on leave. So I know I wasn’t a work yesterday. I don’t know exactly what was going on. Yeah, that that happened. That’s of my, my, my first year here. My first few months here after getting my qualification back was that period in 2013 when we had all these really bad wish was around the Hawkesbury and up the Blue Mountains. And we had. We had probably two dozen aircraft stationed at Richmond. And it was manic. It was, yeah, there was helicopters, there was a little fixed wing aircraft that dumped the Flyer Todd and plus the big aircraft that were dropping the Farrakhan as well. So it was really crazy. So we do do a lot of work with the rural fire service and in regards to the planes at the airport, what is the smallest plane and the capacity of that and what would be the largest plane.
Cool. Because we’re the transport hub, Bob Sidney, we get a lot of aircraft coming and going. For example, the other day we had one of the pushy nine trainers, which is a an a pilot trainer. It came up from east side where the central flying school is in the home of the rural eds. That’s the primary pilot training aircraft and the norm. They based at peers with to find training school leaders, but at siloed like trade teach. The parts become distracted. So one of those on Friday. But we have everything so we have a. quite often we’ll have the VIP aircraft come in. Like you say, I saw one of the challenges come in. That’s a little bit. It’s about, it’s about 10 or 12,000 kilograms. Some the one that. So it will fit probably half a dozen people and fly around Australia or the cabinet general to go to sort of hide walger or some of these regional places?
Yes. Yeah, it was a little white arrow. Yeah. So we’ll have them. We have the. We had the bb Js, which is also the 34 score on an aircraft because we have our hooks which are biased to you. We have the which are based up in Amberley and I’ll come down here both to do your transport. Great. I’ll pick up stuff here and go maybe for. So recently we had them for the relief effort in the Fiji and the Solomons and places like that. But they also do other work like parachuting work. So they’ll do, they’ll pick up a load of parachutes and drop them over Richmond, all our pickup, some cargo which has been set up with parachutes and I’ll drop it over. Londonderry parachuters that Hercules. Or is it only now they come out of like coming out of the spot and sort of Hercules and the seventeens.
And so they essentially just dropped the back flying along and then everybody will just jump at a certain height. That’s right. Yeah. Generally the, um, when they’re learning to do it, they are on a, on a static line, which was a sort of thing used, probably see in the movies were in World War Two. The parishes would jump out of a, out of a, a, a decoder and, and their parachutes with parachutes with open instantly. But we’ve come a long way since then. So that’s basically the initial training and I’ll do that generally over at Creek. There’s a big field, a big field in between rick and bees creek and Windsor and uh, they do that at about 1500 feet, but they vary between that and up to up to 10,000 feet with I do free fall as well as, as the, uh, the static line, isn’t it?
Scared of heights, but I’ve actually seen them jump from 18,000 feet. But then, I mean that’s what happens down at, that’s what they do down in Picton as well. You’ve probably been down the hume highway there and they’re jumping of the jumping and anything after 20,000 feet. So generally you need supplemental oxygen from about 10,000 feet. So the guards had jumped from the higher levels, I think they use supplemental oxygen or like jump and I drop really quickly and they don’t open their parachutes to below 10,000 feet in the air traffic control. You are looking at becoming a pilot.
I grew up in Canberra and my whole sole focus in life was to become an air force pilot. I was kind of obsessed, uh, joined the air force and uh, didn’t make pilot training. Didn’t cut. They didn’t cut the mustard at the right they wanted me. So yeah, you get that. But, um, I uh, was encouraged to consider air traffic control, so I swapped over the air traffic control and haven’t looked back. That was in the early eighties and I’ve been doing this job now for 37 years. So, and it’s taken me all over Australia, uh, both in postings, uh, any exercises. And it also took me would say I went to the Middle East and 94. Um, but as I’ve worked all over Australia, it’s been fabulous because, I mean I grew up in Canberra, are really caused a little company town. Yeah, they have a lot of the people, a lot of my peers joined the company and they’ve all, they’ve all retired now because they’re in that super scheme, but I’m still going and um, obviously, you know, all of the striker and a lot of my peers, if I haven’t been to Bali, that probably haven’t been out of Canberra.
So where would your favorite place that you’ve posted? Oh, that’s like asking me who your favorite child is different. There is because my first posting out of out of basic training was period, which put us and I really love pool. I love it. It’s a really lovely paste but it has its drawbacks. It’s truly isolated. I mean it’s supposed to be the most isolated city in the world and certainly in those days, in the early eighties it was because, you know, you’re had to just about a away two weeks worth of salary to get on an airplane different now. But then I was in Darwin for a few years and it’s similar in, it’s really isolated. Um, it has a drawing, a wet season, which season you don’t want to be there. Dry season. It’s fabulous fun about then the workout, the workout. There’s really, really good. It’s the, it’s the pinnacle for air traffic control working out.
But then I spent, I spent many years at Williamtown as far as I’m concerned, you’re not going to like this because you’re from the Hawkesbury, but the hunter is God’s country and it’s like, that’s your opinion. You’re entitled to that you don’t have a favorite thing. Then you look at Victoria. I’d quite like for Victoria as well. I mean Melbourne’s a really nice place and Gibsland is a beautiful little area to the east, to the east of Melbourne and I was down there originally trading some of the, some of the guys and I was enjoying myself. You know, there’s plenty of, it’s like the Hawkesbury actually because there’s plenty of places you can go and be out in the country. Quite regional. It’s really, really pretty. Yeah, for sure. And how long have you lived in the Hawkesbury? I’ve been back in it or been here now five and a half years.
I came and um, you enjoying? Yeah, I do. Actually, it’s, it’s, it is a lovely place. I um, I am discovering more about it. Um, I, I tend to do a lot of. I’ll go into town a lot so I’m a big theater go. But then somebody said, well hang on. What about going to something like the Riverside Theater and parent mentor or going down to the Joan Sutherland in penrith and I hadn’t considered them. So now I’m considering them but uh, but yeah, hooks reads a nice place. It’s very quite, you know, people say, Oh, where do you live in Sydney, but it’s kind of western Sydney so I’m not in the rat race and I avoid the Canada, the buisiness of Sydney when I can. Sometimes I don’t have a choice because I want to go into town or apparent matter, but certainly hope springs is a lovely place to live if you’ve got to be in the Sydney area.
Yeah, for sure. And you like to keep fit as well in your spare time. You do the park runs locally. Tell me a little bit about the parks and the favorite ones that you have.
Well, I’ve only done the POC at ace Richmond. Uh, that’s the local one, which is along the long haul for evaluating the, the, the, the park that’s between the information center and the tennis courts. And I really enjoy that. It’s flat and it’s, it’s a, it’s an easy. I mean there are other ones around here, like there’s one up at Goldstone, but that has, that’s a bit challenging I believe. Um, there’s other ones. The other close ones are at penrith lakes and apparently that’s really nice because the difference between penrith lakes in east richmond is you don’t go back on yourself. It’s one continuous loop. Whereas with a, with a treatment you do, you go back when you a couple of time and it’s five ks and it’s fun. It’s just a lovely, a good distance where it’s not too short, but not too long. And I don’t know what it is about Sunday mornings, but the last couple of Saturday mornings something I brought up and it’s been low single figures I think blue and enough want to go for a run, but I get down there and it’s a lovely sunshine and it’s projected that amongst the trees there and it’s just beautiful.
It’s really lovely.
Yeah. It’s such a, isn’t it?
Yeah. And then after that we wander off down to the market for, for breakfast. So we go down and get some, either some Nice Asian or some other sort of food down there. And it’s really lovely. I wonder in the markets in enrichment for breakfast.
Yeah, there’s so many diverse cultures and in different areas to look at within the Hawkesbury. And I love the market. It’s on the weekend as you say, and you can get anything from plants to produce to, you know, things that people have made themselves, the attention trails. Um, it’s just fabulous that the selection that we have available to us. So completely.
We were close proximity to the mountains as well. I, I, um, I took a friend up for drive up to Lira for lunch on Sunday and that was really lovely. We went up there, we stopped a couple of times on the way up, including the loss of markets. There’ll be quite a bit different to the Richmond market because more of a lot more sort of hand crafts and stuff and like not, not, not as much food, but uh, but that’s really lovely to be able to be in striking distance of the Blue Mountains as well.
Yeah, you’ve really got a nice choice. You can head into the city, as you said before for a night of theater or you can head out to the mountains for a day out and there’s some great walks along there as well. And even by the river in Windsor, it’s just such a beautiful place to be. So, um, lots of. Yeah. So tell me, um, other things to distress and air traffic controller, would that be diving? Is that on your list? I believe.
Oh, you’ve been doing your research, Rachel? I’m on holidays. This is six or eight months that I did. I mentioned that I was on holidays. Tell us about that. I sat in my holiday yesterday and I’ve given myself a few days before jumping on an airplane on Friday and going to the Maldives for eight days. I’ll be diving scuba diving off a boat for eight days in the Maldives skin. Scuba diving is a, is a, is something I started doing when I was a teenager in Canberra before I joined the air force and it’s just something I liked doing it. Talking about de-stressing. Yeah, it’s lovely because under the water, swimming around with beautiful colored fish and Carl and depending on where you are, I’ve been to Fiji and to Micronesia, but also been down the south coast of New South Wales and as Billy Connolly says, there’s no such thing as cold weather. It’s inappropriate clothing. So the different places in different places you go, you just put the different, different thicknesses of wetsuit on and enjoying the scenery.
I’ll have a thin wetsuit inn in the Maldives because the temperature is about 27 degrees. But uh, I’ve dived off Nelson buying dog down at the south coast where the water’s been about 14 degrees, so I had my six and a half mil semi dry on there. That was dive in the meltdowns. Most definitely, yes. And living on a budget so we don’t have to go back to the resort all the time. So we’ll get up in the morning. The first thing we’ll do is jump in our wetsuits to go for a dive and come back for breakfast.
That sounds like a really hard life theater, a little bit jealous
if you’ve got a distress, you’ve got to, you’ve got to be, you know, some people. It’s your holidays. We’ve got a very, I mean some people like walking around matching pitch you and some people like walking around Eastern Europe and, and, and some people like jumping on a, on a, on a cruise boat. I’ve done that too. I’ve been on a, on a cruiser out of Sydney for 12 days and that was quite relaxing. But um, but active tourism is good too, especially when you, when you’re fit and healthy.
Definitely. Yeah. And um, you’ve been with us at Rachael Goldsworthy realty for a number of years now, and tell me a little bit about that as a tenant. What’s your thoughts in regards to tenants and tenants in the Hawkesbury and, and that sort of thing?
Interesting, interesting question cause you’re my third property manager. Um, and I’m actually pleasantly surprised of the white people around who do business. Um, I, I haven’t been a longtime landlord owning investment properties myself and it’s kind of one of the tenants using the term in a different way. One of the tenants in, in real estate investment is probably manages a goal and I’m, I’m really pleasantly surprised at the way people do business here because I do a, well there’s certainly the property managers are active. I mean a previous, uh, property managers were inspecting every six months. You do a, you do quarterly, which is a bit different and you’re also bringing the, the owners round. That’s something I never did as a, as a landlord. I never went around. I just left it to my, to my property managers. But after seeing you do that, I now do that myself. I, uh, I, you know, I go with my property manager, inspect my property. So that’s a, that’s a, I think that’s a good way because you get to see the face of the faceless landlord, which is, which is good too. I like it.
Yeah. I think it ends all about transparency, isn’t it? Oh, absolutely. Yes. And I think too, it’s important to have everybody on the same page, making sure that, you know, not only as the landlord happy with the property, but also the tenant is happy with the property because it lives there. They treat it like their home. The home that you have is just immaculate. There’s no blade of grass that is out of price. There’s no, you know, the floors you could eat off. Everything is so clean and immaculate and we’re very lucky to have tenants like drew that do such a great job. So we really appreciate your tenancy.
Thank you. Yeah, no, I just, I, I met, I met, I met the new, the new, um, the new resident across the road the other day and we’re discussing this. She was ordering her loan and I said, I don’t want to be that tenant that, that rental across the road that has as weeds and grass and everything everywhere. It looks like a rental, you know what I mean? You got me on the straight and straight with all of owner occupiers and they very, very house proud. I don’t know, I don’t really want to be that guy. So
yeah. Now I think we’re very lucky. We’ve got a lot of great dentists like yourself that do look after the properties and we have no problems that inspections when we do the quarterly inspections and I’m very pleased to have you on the team, so thank you. Yeah,
there anything? I don’t have horses. I don’t have a dog, so I don’t feature in a Tuesday dog.
The top dog and which we have cats. Yeah. Well we could probably take a photograph of a stuffed dog. Wait, we’re not all inclusive. We’re pet friendly, all inclusive. Whether they’re soft or not, so um, you know, it’s, it’s all good. Happy to play that. Every Tuesday we put a what drew’s referring to, we’ve put a top dog up, a photograph in the facebook page and it’s just a different pits that I get to meet on the inspections that we do and we have anything from birds to rabbits, Guinea pigs to dogs and cats and pigs and sheep and cows and birds. Yeah. Everything. So definitely lots of fun and lots of smiles as a result of meeting all their animals. Yeah.
Interesting. You’ve got, you’ve got, you’ve got David sitting on your shoulder there.
Hello? David? Yes. No, David’s. I’m lucky enough to have him. I really like your mum and dad actually bought him for me when I had another property and I’ve just bought in with me. I couldn’t bear to leave him at the property that it was bought for so east. It’s proudly in the garden of the office and um, keeps me safe. So that’s a good thing. So tell me, is there anything, like if somebody wanted to become an air traffic controller, let’s get back to your original vocation, what would they have to do? How would they, who would they get in contact with? What do they need to do?
The, the, the primary guy to recruiting basically. Uh, I’m not quite sure where they’re recruiting centers are around round Sydney. Clearly there’d be one in town somewhere and I think there’s some inherent matter and parents as well, but a lot of it’s online as well. So it’s just a basic. It’s basically a case of the recruiting will direct you towards, um, uh, to do stuff that tests your capability to do the job because not everybody can do the job. Uh, so that will be, do, doing some sort of testing to, for capability and if you pass those tests then they will, they’ll start the ball rolling and you go through other things such as psychology testing. I’m board testing for officer qualities, that kind of stuff. So, um, it, it’s a bit, I think it takes a while. I haven’t been through that for a while, but talking to my younger peers and seeing what they’ve been through.
Uh, it, it, uh, it, there is a process. Yeah, there’s a lot, a lot of testing for, for, to see whether you’re suitable. And then of course there are two ways you can come in. You can either come in as a direct entrance as I need a or a this quite a few that I work with at the moment who are, um, ad for graduates. So if, uh, if there’s a student, if you know somebody has got a student that they’re looking at sort of year 11 and 12 and they are considering a degree and I want to do something in aviation, I’m, I’m either against a great deal. Yeah, you gotta you gotTa high degrees, not afraid degree because you actually get paid to do it and you don’t come out with a hex debt and you got a job to do at the end of it. So because she knows how you come out with a degree and it can be anything. Because I work with a girl who’s got a chemistry and geography degree and I work with guys that have aviation degrees and that kind of stuff. So they originally diverse dude straight from aviation science degrees and a at the end of it they do their initial employment training the nine months down at styled, doing their air traffic control training.
And tell me what’s the mix of miles versus females. I mean you obviously will work cohesively together, but is there a higher percentage of miles I would expect in that sort of a role
or is that control it force has been one of those domains. Certainly since I’ve been in it that has a high proportion of women mainly. Yes. Yeah, I’ve worked in. It was, in fact it was funny you funny because I was talking to mentioned to a friend the other day how when I’ve. Even though when I first started in, in, in, in uh, in the role 30 odd years ago, I worked in, in areas where they had built the buildings in the, in the, in the seventies when there wasn’t this large female presence. And it goes, the trouble with those is that there was a large male toilet and a locker room and showers and everything, and there was one female toilet toilet. Of course that’s all changed now, but certainly I think the percentage is about 35 to 40 percent women in air traffic control. But I’ve certainly worked in sections where it’s been hard in that certainly when I first got to Williamtown in the, uh, in the early nineties. So it’s 50 slash 50.
Wow. And is there a particular skillset that you would need to have, whether it’s detail or whether it’s, you know, something else that you think is really important. If somebody was thinking about becoming an air traffic controller, I’m wanting to study what key elements would they need to have to be a great air traffic controller?
The biggest thing is being able to establish and develop a mental picture, spatial awareness of mental picture of what’s going on. If you, if you can think in three dimensions, then you won’t do the job. So it’s a case of taking all the different inputs, whether it be from a radar screen or from looking at a window or from the or from the radio calls that you get, developing some sort of picture in your mind as to where everybody is and then making sure that you either don’t let them get near each other or you tell them where each other is so they can look out for themselves, depending on what sort of flight rules, fine by. So, um, and it’s also made your calculation. For example, if you’re trying to sequence aircraft and they want a crop, you’re doing three or four miles a minute.
We work in malls, in, in ideation, nautical miles, and one’s doing to Mars and make united the guy doing three or four miles minutes going to be just doing the fastest. But if he’s got twice the distance, you’re going to be in the same place at the same time. So while they might, one might be 20 miles north, the other one might be 10 miles south. In three or four minutes, you’re going to be in the same place. So you’ve got to develop the ability to see that that’s going to happen. So you need to put in place some sort of separation standard.
Yeah. That’s really fascinating because it’s so true to be able to think on your feet and to be able to assess what’s going to happen and how things are going to pan because you know, I’ve seen a lot of close calls on youtube of different planes going from one place to another and there must be a great deal of pressure on you as an air traffic controller to get it right.
Yeah. Well the thing about where I would like to, to uh, I like to try to relate paypal’s youtube, it is, they trying to control is a lot like driving your car, except there’s a third dimension. So it’s kind of like if you’ve ever watched the jetsons, how now the jetsons get around in, in flying vehicles. It’s kind of like that because you’re not driving on the road anymore. Were you actually driving in three dimensions? The road? Certainly do have, you know, there is this, the road trip road. So you generally can’t deviate off the road to go where you want so that you don’t have to add that randomness you do in the air. Um, but, uh, but there are rules. Sign was on the road, you know, you give it to the right, you stop at Red Lights and that kind of stuff. Same thing happens in the aviation world.
The big difference of course is that in a place like, like an airfield like Richmond, we have HIV. Can Charles that had that, that extra safety dimension because generally the pilots are flying, has said that they find a lot faster but don’t have the kind of visibility out of Saudia cargo aircraft, cockpit that I dropped her brother does. So there’s, that’s why we have the attractive jobs. Having said that though, there are a lot of places around Australia and the world where, um, there isn’t a air traffic control for Jabil. Yeah, you’ll go to if you fly, if you, for example, to um, to the west of Bathurst for example, is no hop trial at bathurst orange. And so aircraft going do, they will fly into the air and do the same sort of procedures that you do on the road and you sought each other out, but by looking out for each other and talking to each other on the radio,
that’s really interesting that, um, there is no traffic control down at those sort of, um, country locations, but you can understand it because they wouldn’t be as much. Um, you know, as many planes coming in and touching base. So I suppose, you know, it’s a cost thing as well. It would be very expensive.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a cost benefit thing, you know, it’s, it depends on some places have, it depends on how long you had the air traffic control going forward as well during the day. Some places, for example, coffs harbor has the attempt to try to thinking about, I don’t know, announced a date and it just covers the regular public transport aircraft coming in and out. Whereas you get more any Melbourne, Brisbane, which are 24 hours a day.
Yeah, right. Tell me the photograph that you sent through for the. The actual broadcast is in front of a search and rescue helicopter, I believe. Would that be right? And if you could tell us a little bit about that and during uniform at that time.
Sure. Um, I, um, I’m still in uniform as a reservist. I, I’m a reserve air force person as well, so I do occasionally do reserve work. That photograph was taken at Williamtown and williamtown like all of the basis that have a aircraft that have ejection capability have I a contracted search and rescue capabilities. Well, so the aircraft you saw there is a 60 year, 76 helicopter that is completely filled out for, uh, for search and rescue. So it’s got all, a lot of the infrared and it’s got a big, a big bright light on the front of it. It’s got all different kinds of radios but also has a billion back for taking leaders, has a winter and that kind of stuff. So they have them located in a place like Emily William Chan style piece and they had an agenda as well. And I go to where the, if there’s an exercise on where they’ve got horns or pc nines or hawks who are objection, capable aircraft, they had the search and rescue helicopters as well. So part of my role when I was at Williamtown, uh, I was a part of my role, whether it was to be involved with the search and rescue helicopter managing, helping them manage that contract.
And now you’re out of uniform in the role that you play. You’re the, um, what the air force did is that they decided they needed a little bit of, um, of a continuity and experience and they weren’t getting that because the, the HIV controllers have a career stream in uniform, I tell stream. So they either want to go backwards or they want to go off and join the air services and getting paid a lot more money and not get posted. And so places like Richmond were uniform. Air traffic controllers will come in, they’ll do work for the posting. Life is about four or five years. And then they’ll get posted somewhere else or they’ll get promoted and go and do some sort of staff job. So they needed a little bit more continuity in corporate knowledge in certain places like Richmond because they weren’t getting it.
So I wanted, I decided to do was employ some of the ex uniform people to come back and we were a public servants. We are employed by the department of Ed says public servants, but we’re ex military air traffic controllers and we do exactly the same job as the, we do exactly the same jumpsuit, uniform equivalence except most of the 30 something years of experience. And uh, we are supervisors and training officers as well. So a lot of the lot of people we get, a lot of the junior had controls. We get to Richmond for example, generally don’t make training option supervisor level before they posted somewhere else. Uh, and that’s where we’re at at Richmond. We have five, a public servant staff, air traffic control staff that provide that continuity and corporate knowledge.
And I think he’s said, you know, it’s really important to have that continuity because in any business, you know, in real estate, I mean, I was talking to Joanne who is the agency manager for my business and we, we worked out the other day. We’d been working together for nearly 25 years and um, it’s a long time and there’s a lot of things that you share in that time and you could almost finish one another’s sentences. Joanne, for those of you that don’t know, she’s actually my sister in law. So, um, you know, she looks after my brother very well and they’ve got a beautiful family that live in Portland, but she works beside me in what she does. And um, you know, it’s a very cohesive situation within work because I think you get to know what’s, what the next step is, what their thoughts are. But also for the new people coming on, like you said, there’s that continuity. They’re able to try and they’re able to assist and they know what your thoughts are in regards to certain, you know, things that you or processes that you do within the office. So it’s great to have that continuity for the RAF base and um, to have the knowledge from yourself to be passed through the ranks as it was
and you tend to, you tend to be the, the, the, not so much the limiting factor, but sort of the new people are very keen and have their good ideas and stuff, but you don’t want to reinvent wheels as well. That’s people kind of let’s do it this way. You Go, well, we tried that six years ago and this is what happened. So yes, try that if you like, but be aware that there are limitations in what you’re trying to do. Yeah. You know what I mean? The stick in the mud here, what you want to have innovation, but you also want to be a, a temporary factor.
Yeah. I really liked that, that concept to be able to, to have that there and try new things, but also look at what’s already the tried and true that’s already working and I’m trying not to reinvent the wheel too often, but just sort of tech when the wind is a little bit lower and make sure you’re hitting in the right path.
Yeah. Well the other thing too course with us is because we had the experience, um, if things get a little bit frantic as I occasionally do, we because a lot of, we turned it over before we, we don’t, we tend not to get us. Well, that’s our job, not to get fired. He can and we are that temporary influence, particularly the younger people with when I do get a little bit overwhelmed,
yes, you’d hold it together and make sure that they were steady oncourse. And um, I think too, having the backing of somebody that knows what they’re talking about and has the experience to be able to make that judgment call. Obviously they’re in there, the Hellman and trying to do the right thing, but if they’ve got that confidence, if somebody like yourself behind them going, yep, that’s the right, the right decision to make there or know, yes, bring them in at this angle or you know, that’s the, the weather conditions on the day and you can have learned in this particular way. I think that’s great.
That’s an example. The other day. We’re, the last sort of week has been brilliant. Autumn weather where there’s hardly been a breath of wind and the selection of the runway is the wind dependent. You want the wind blowing into the nose of the airplane. And uh, my junior colleague was watching it very because the wind here vary so much between a sandwich. The runway at Richmond is a sweat, so goes eastover, windsor or West over Richmond. And we were just watching the wind indicator vary between east and west. Old Guy. And he was trying to chase the wind as to the selection of the runway. And I just smiled and said, okay, I’ll let you do that. And then after, after you changed around my, about three, four times, I said just leave it there, just leave it and, and when the aircraft comes in or goes out, we’ll decide at that particular time and looked at me and says, that’s a good idea. Why don’t we do that?
That’s great. Well listen, we’ll leave on my favorite airplane when it goes overhead. The 17 tell me. It just has such a great presence. You see it in the sky coming from a distance, it’s almost hanging there and suspended. But it’s such a big plane. I mean, how big is it? What’s the wingspan and what’s the weight of it? And what’s the furthest. I know we touched on it slightly before, but it seems to be. I don’t know what it is, but I just love that flying.
Its wingspan from tip to tip is about 53 meters. And why I say 53 is because if it’s more than 54, we have to treat it differently at Richmond because of the limitations. So it’s just under 54 meters from wingtip to wingtip. So we’re talking half a half a rugby league football field length from wingtip to wingtip. Um, it’s about 200 times. So it’s a very big airplane, but, um, because it’s got such powerful engines, uh, it, the runway, William, sorry, Richmond is only about 2000 meters long, 2,100 meters long, so it’s just over two kilometers you’re applying can quite comfortably land on, on that runway. Um, and pull up within about a third of that, the to do the runway lengths, 2,100 meters. So it’s just out of two kilometers. So let’s say 17 landing depending on its white, will pull up in about sort of a thousand meters.
I’ve actually seen the Americans because the Americans come in here once a week as well, uh, from Guam and the character alice springs, they, um, the Chinese designers, I, as I said to you earlier, applying to flying John Light airfields and, and on short runways. And sometimes I like to practice it and I’ve actually seen an American 17 coming in and coming in over the top of Richmond land right at the front of the runway. And side of the runway and he’s pulled it up in about what are they in about. I hired a maintenance, so he’s taken this chartered airplane and doing about 240 ks an hour and he’s pulled it up in about 800. Made it so you know, in, in, in just over a couple of football, football field linked. So it’s pretty amazing airplane because it’s got the power to get it off the ground, but it’s also got the power when it lands to put it into full thrust and,
and uh, and pull it up really quickly and I presume it would take the pilot, you know, the skill pilots and be able to do that as well. Um, to pull it out. So yeah. No, that’s terrific. Well, it’s been. The whole interview has been fascinating for me. I hope everybody else’s enjoyed listening to drew talk about his career and the air force and what I’m, the ref base does and what it is like being an air traffic controller. I really appreciate your time coming on the show today, drew, and I’m looking forward to catching up with you at the next routine inspection. That way. Well, you might an impact because that’s next week and I’ll be in Maldives. Ah, yes. Okay. Just rather than that a little bit for everybody online, are we is going to the all. Yeah. You’ll have to let yourself eating. No, no troubles at all. We’ll have a fabulous time in the old days. Thank you for everybody being online and we’ll catch up with everybody on the next episode. Bye for now. Bye.
Thank you so much for taking time out listening to today’s episode. If you have any questions on the process of buying, selling, leasing, or strata management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Be sure to subscribe on itunes and I’d really appreciate it if you could spread the word by liking and sharing this episode with your family and friends. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury.

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On this episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury Rachael catches up with Naturopath, Kathryn Hams on the questions raised this week from last week’s podcast.

Lots to cover including Ghost Sightings at Australiana Pioneer Village, Hashimotos, Wholistic Wellness & Spiritual Expo in the Hawkesbury on Sunday 11am – 4pm, The Road to Fiji 2018 for Rouse Hill Rhinos U16 Team and more…

Something for everyone in this Community Noticeboard. I Live, Love, Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode.

I’m Rachael Goldsworthy, and welcome to The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, where I believe every home has a story, and I love sharing those stories on real estate in the Hawkesbury with you. Here we share the best ways to add value to your property, how to avoid the common mistakes people make when buying and selling property, and how to get the maximum return on your investment, with a focus on supporting local business. I live, love Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode with you, so let’s get started.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening depending on what time you’re watching this video. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I’m on the drive home joined by Katherine Hans, how are you today?
I’m good, I’m in a nice warm situation so I’m quite happy. It’s a lovely sunny day out there though isn’t it, but it’s like the winter chills definitely kicked in now.
Snow is on its way I would say, don’t you?
Definitely, you find that you get cold, and then you get that bitter.
Yes.
That bitter that you can feel, I feel it like it comes off the mountain and it’s like okay, it’s snowing up there somewhere, and you can bet your bottom dollar it is.
I know, and when you look over to the mountains and you can see those, the shaping of the Cumulus clouds that have got that particular snow look in them, you know it’s on its way. So, I definitely agree we’ve had a different change over that last couple weeks. It was sorta like when is summer going to end in the first instance, and then are we gonna get any cold weather for winter or coming into winter, and I think it’s finally arriving.
Yeah, I think it is. I’m wondering, do you think maybe the seasons are changing around?
Potentially, they could be, I mean we should get somebody on about the climates and how the weather, and how it’s changing. Actually, next week I’m going to be having a discussion with Drew Marshall whose one of the tower operators of the RAF base. So, he might be able to give us some indications in regard to the weather.
I’m sure he’ll have a lot to give us indication on about things like that.
Yes, I think so, and I think next weekend we’ve got the Holistic, Wellness and Spiritual Expo coming up, that’s on the Sunday at Panthers, North Richmond, so that should be a good day out.
So, are they doing that out in the car park at Panthers there, is that their idea or?
I think they’re actually going to do it within the complex, so if you enter into the complex, it’ll be inside and there will be stalls set up, local business. I will be there also, talking all things home and Feng Shui and I’m going to be joined by Michelle Segar, who is a co-creator of a lot of things Feng Shui, with what we’ve been doing. She’s a balmologist and working on healthy homes, and how to create a positive environment so you’ve got mould, or EMF, or things in the house that aren’t going to be that great for you, she specialises in that, and we can help you with the process with your home and make sure that it just feels better when you’re living in it; because you spend a lot of time at home and at work and you want to make sure that those environments are optimum.
We do, and we talk so much about the home and how much it means to us because it’s one of the most, or the most, expensive purchase we ever make isn’t it really?
Oh, absolutely you’re so right. Talking about expensive purchases, I know that we all sort of look at houses and cars and those sorts of things as expensive purchases, but the vehicles that we probably don’t put as much time and money into is ourselves. You had a great discussion the other week with a naturopathic, maybe if you share a few snippets from that, I thought it was a fascinating video that you both did on Hashimoto’s and how to overcome that.
So Sandra Stewart is a naturopath, she works in the area, we studied together at a naturopathic degree, and it so happened that she had Hashimoto’s and found out while she was doing her degree, and I found out in the later parts. So, she’s helped me a lot but the thing was, I think there’s so much hype about thyroid conditions that people will jump on the bandwagon of saying they have a thyroid condition where it could be something else. It’s extremely important not to misdiagnose, and not to allow a lot of self diagnosing. So, Sandra and I really wanted to get on and be, as I do all my talks, de-constructed and just talk about what it was like from our own personal point of views to have Hashimoto’s; and she made a lot of relevant sort of remarks about the situation. But what I really like, Rachael, is that we had people from Denmark, from the U.S., and the U.K. and I had a lot of follow up afterwards from that, and also the groups on Facebook followed up with this too; because we’re actually giving really good, sound advice, and yet we weren’t selling ourselves as Natural Paths, we’re basically selling ourselves with knowledge. So, people were safe.
Yeah, absolutely, I think that, that’s a great thing that you do because there should be more of it, and I think that’s essentially why we set up this. I mean, you’re a Natural Path, a hypnotherapist, I’m a real estate agent we’re not trained in any of this, but we just wanted to share different ideas, different topics, community things, and anybody that has ideas, or thoughts, or comments, we’d love your feedback. We’d love your questions, we don’t have no hold back with us is there Kath.
There’s not, and I mean the thing is from that one I did the other night with Sandra, she really enjoyed doing it, and we’re going to follow up by deconstructing the heart of thyroid condition even more, and we’ll do it monthly that’s a monthly thing we’re going to do. Myself, I’m going to do the pro bono’s on Thursdays and just open it up that if people want some free naturopathium advice, they can get it, even with hypnotherapy, and mind issues, anything. So, maybe later you could put up my website or something, so people can look into that. It’s about the people of the community of the Hawkesbury, and that’s exactly what you and I wanted to do. We wanted to pick up subjects, just not pertaining to our own fields, but other fields, and I think it’s good and sometimes you upset people, and sometimes you don’t, but that’s personalities, if we didn’t have that what would we have to talk about.
Exactly, and there’s always two sides to every story and it’s good to hear all the stories, it’s important that they’re read and it’s important that the community comes together and we can do that. Talking about community, I’ve got some exciting news, big shout out to Kylie McNamara, hello Kylee I haven’t spoken to you for a little while but I believe little Brody is heading over to Fiji. The under sixteens, it’s organising a fundraiser for the road to Fiji, for their Rouse Hill Rhinos, as it was. So, that sounds like a bit of fun, I might try to get Kylee to get Brody online in the next few weeks and see if we can help. They’re heading out in September, so we’ve got plenty of time, but if anybody wanted to support the local club they would be more than happy to receive your feedback, and your donations. Whether it’s for the jerseys, for them being on field.
Hi Diane, how you going, you really like this programme. Thank you so much Diane, we really appreciate your feedback. In regard to the team sports, anybody that’s got a sporting organisation or somebody that wants to get the word out there about some event that’s coming up, that’s what Katherine and myself are all about. We just want to share the word and we want to share the spirit of the local communities.
The thing is too, even if people have got things out there that they’re trying to raise funds for and they might be stuck for ideas, shoot it along to Rachael and I, because the things, we’ve done a lot of fundraising, being involved with a lot, so it’s always good to have that other person because when you’re involved in thinking on something so much, you tend to not look around, and you need that third person that’s not involved to give you that chip. I know that we’d both be very happy to help out with whatever we can.
No I completely agree with that, we’re here for you. Dane, he always tunes into our programmes, thank you very much. I haven’t spoken to Dane for a little while, but if anybody needs transport to and from the airport, he’s the best transport guy that there is locally and abroad; so, if anybody needs somebody like that to take them to the airport let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Dane.
So, I heard that you were saying something about the ghost tours that they do, or the sleigh was it that you did?
Yes, yes and it was so spooky.
Spooky dooky eh?
Spooky dooky indeed, it was absolutely fabulous, I went to the Australiana Pioneer Village, Peter runs the spooky dooky tours and the after hours spooky dooky tours. There’s some local spooky dooky tours as well, they do the ghost tours just before and you get all the history which is great; which I can put the website up for those ghost tours. But there’s also the one after, and they essentially call themselves the ghost hunters because there not actually having a look at the history so much, they do have a look at the different midral colleges and the different cottages throughout and what year that they’re all build and what application they had in the community. But Australiana Pioneer Village, for those that don’t know, it’s a little village with lots of history, and lots of new history as well; and on weekends you can go there and join in the fun and just walk down memory lane and see old buildings, and relics, and different places. So, there’s a lot of history there and essentially what they’re saying is that there’s a lot of spiritual activity too.
Yeah, it was fascinating and we went to three different houses within that, I won’t give too much away, but we made contact with a few different people, and what they are essentially doing is you go into a room and they would have you blindfolded and they would put white noise on your ears and then they would film this. So, they’re looking for movement, they’ve got special cameras that can video tape this, and they tried a particular technique to invoke the spirits I suppose. It was fascinating to watch and see and listen, and then there was another one that had an app, that I’ve since downloaded. It’s called echo vox, for anyone that wants to do that, and you can actually ask it questions and the answers can sometimes come through. So, what we were doing is asking those questions on the night, and it was coming though, like a radio. You know how in the olden, sixties or what have you, and they had those old radios, and tuning in it was almost like the aliens were coming in on this radio, so that was fascinating.
Then we went for a walk around, and I also learned something else new, on the night, it’s called, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it or anybody else has heard of it, but it’s called table tipping; and it’s essentially, you know your grandmother used to have an old table top and you used to put your coffee on there and it was only probably thirty centimetres, fifty centimetres tall, and you’d put your hands on the top of this table. Each one, you’d all sit around in a circle, say it might be five, six of us, and we all sit around in a circle, and the more energy in the hands on the table would be better; and just sitting there thinking nothing is going to happen, what could happen. But then this table, once we start asking some questions, this table starts to move, like literally the whole table tipped up and went to this side, so yes, no questions, and who do they want to contact, what was the name of the person, and we’re spelling out the name. Dylan came through, so he was in one of the back areas of the Australiana Pioneer Village and it was fascinating, a really good time.
If anybody ever wanted to go there, they do have them regularly, so I will put the website up for people, and you can go on the ghost tours. It started at 11 p.m. and went till 6 a.m. the next morning, and then I’m back straight out for work after that. It was terrific, and Lynn came along, she’s the local valuer. Hi Lynn, how are you, and Peter and Robin and Alex, and a few other people that we know, which is great. So, it’s just a terrific, fun night out, and just the equipment was fascinating that they had. Have you had experience with ghost tours or going anywhere on ghost tours.
No I’m too much of a scardey cat, I wouldn’t do that, no. I personally believe there’s something there, and I find it very fascinating. I was a very big disbeliever many, many moons ago, and then things like tarot cards and things like that, and people that know you. I think I told you just before my birthday this year I went and had a reading, which I do every birthday. It mentioned something about one of my aunts that was passing, and my aunt did two weeks later, so I don’t disbelieve, but going to where you did, on a winters night, I high five you because I like my warm bed and my hot water bottle, and that’s my options I’d have to say on a windy night.
I was definitely the michelin women that night, I was rugged up, upon rugged up, upon rugged up. I think I had four jackets on me, I had layers underneath that, I had a singlet on, it was all for the comfort because walking around in minus degree temperatures, it was minus I’m being dramatic it was probably two or three degrees; but it was very cold. One of the first exercises that we did was go down to one of the shearing shed, I think it was, and the shearing shed it’ll be really good because there’re heaters in there and you’ll be so warm, and I’m thinking, oh this is cool going on this tour, it’s freezing cold, walking down this dirt track. Then you get down to the shearing shed, you walk in and there’s this massive warehouse style, big open shearing shed and you know how big shearing shed are, and you know what the heater was… it was a bar heater on the wall. It was about that big and I’m thinking they oversold that, they talk about real estate agents, well let me tell you.
That could have been your karma too you know?
It could have been.
See, isn’t that amazing our expectations, because we’re cold and we’re thinking oh wow there’s gonna be all this, well they delivered, there was a heater.
Exactly, they did and it was a great heater and I was very thankful for it on the night, because it was freezing. You keep talking, I’m gonna try to find a video here and I’ll see if I can play that online for everybody whilst you’re doing what, just having a bit of a chat, and I’ll try to find one of these.
Well, what I’m gonna talk about is that yesterday, well actually yesterday evening, I was asked to go and do a speakers gig for Beyond Blue down in Balmain, and it was for one of the church groups down there. So, I went down to Balmain to do that speakers group, and it was only say maybe fifteen people that came out, but the likelihood of any of them listening today would be zero. But, anyway, they did come out, and they were a mature group of women and guys that came out, and they ask quite a lot of questions, which I love interactiveness when we get that. But, what I wanna do, Rachael, is last week we were talking about mental health, and I just wanna do the statistics, it’ll take me one second I’m not gonna go on about this. The statistics being that one in six women and one in eight men will experience depression, and that one in three women and one in five men will have anxiety. So, it’s very real, and for the people that contacted me after this past week and got in touch with me. Again, I welcome anyone that wants to contact me and find out what they can do, phone numbers and even if I can’t help them, to put it further so they can get help.
Look, I think that’s a really valid point, and listening to those statistics, it’s more prevalent than we think, and that segway’s to what the book of the week that I’ve been looking at. It’s a book that I looked at some probably three or four years ago “Falling Forward” by John Maxwell, and it’s all about that. It’s all about falling, it’s all about two steps forward, one step back, and I think that a lot of us, we don’t realise that everybody’s trying to do the same sorts of things, trying to make the best at what they have; and sometimes it is hard, like you said, sometimes you do need to put your hand out and say okay I need some help with whether it’s a business, or I need some help with things around the house, or I need some help with anything in life because I think a lot of us, we’re all too proud to put a hand up and say can you help me this weekend.
I think that’s true, and I think it’s sometimes not even help, they just want someone to listen. I know from my experience at Live Plan that we had people where you just listened. I will not go on about this, but the thing is that if someones not doing what they used to do, or they’re not enjoying themselves, or anythings changed for more than a week or so, make time, make a space, don’t have it in a crowded place, and make it so that person knows you’re actually with them and you’re listening to them. That’s the biggest help you can give. So, anyway, how’d you go with the video, did you get it going or what?
Yes, I think I did, it’s sort of more sound, I don’t know if you can hear this or not. Wrong video. It’s always it’s live.
This is back to me, and I now jump in again.
Can you hear that?
It’s very rough, very rough.
Anyone out there? Are you hiding in a rock? Robert, any messages for Robin?
Could you hear what that was?
What was it?
That’s essentially what it is, you put it out there through this echo box, and they have spirit boxes, there different transmitters, so essentially they put them out there, connect them, and then the voice comes through in different mediums. So, you’ll ask it a question, is there anybody in the house with us now? And you wait about ten seconds, twenty seconds, and sometimes they’ll say yes or sometimes it’ll say no, and so then you ask it another question. Did you die in this house, we’re talking about spirits obviously. So, we’re trying to find out the history of property, and it was fascinating actually. Some of them, somebody asked about a pit, and then the word pit came through in this, and you’re thinking I’m just wanting to hear this and I think this is actually coming though. But, it really was really, really fascinating.
Good.
The other thing that I wanted to share with people today too is every week on Monday we do motivational Monday online for Rachael Goldsworthy Realty. We put a post there, so if anybody wants to like or share we’re happy to share the love and the quote for this week is “Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” How many of us would achieve so much more if that’s what we had, if we had that thought that we’re so not gonna fail we just attempt everything. We’d say yes to everything wouldn’t we.
Well, I think that’s what you’re doing when you create your pathway and I think that you do it on a conscious and subconscious and you don’t realise. That’s what I’ve done before with people in training, in creating their pathways and their dreams are possible. It’s a great big thing to be said for fake it till you make it because that’s actually it, it’s actually true. If you’re living the creation of what you want, well then you believe it, then it’s gonna happen. If you don’t gotta believe it or live it, how would you expect anyone else to believe in you and that what it comes to.
That’s exactly right, I completely agree with that. I remember when I first started in real estate it was two puppy dogs and a cat and my place and I thought how am I gonna make all this happen. I really have no idea, and then I sat down, wrote it all down, where the vision was, where I wanted the business to go, what I perceived was going to happen and every day, it took years to get there, but you sort of get to that point where things start happening and then they start falling in to place and you go oh my gosh, I wrote that down four years ago. You go back through different things and it’s fascinating.
I think it comes back to what you were talking about in one of our earlier videos about the un=limitless thinking and I know that some days aren’t that great for all of us, and sometimes we’ve got to pick up sticks and move on and do what we’ve gotta do and be the best people we can be on that day with the energy that we have. But, essentially, if you keep focus and stay focused on that point that you wanna be, or where you wanna be, or what you wanna do, or how you wanna help out with the family, or help out with other people in your life. Stay true to that, eventually you get there. In some way, shape, or form.
You do, the thing is, and I take note of people saying oh it’s easy for you, you’re sitting here you’re saying it, and they could say it about each of us, Rachael that you’re sitting here, I’m sitting here. But, the thing is that when you listen to someone’s story, and that’s why Beyond Blue’s good and other places that advocate people to do stories. That the struggles, and things like that, that people go through and it doesn’t mean that anyones any better than another person.
No, not at all.
It’s that you’re just in certain places in your life and I think at times we have to remember that if we keep opening up the baggage we’re carrying, we’re going to keep wearing the same clothes. So, we have to get to a point that we put the baggage behind, we say the clothes are to small or there too big, or it’s not the fashion, and we have to choose a new lot of clothes. I think that’s it, and I like clothing because if you look at metaphors, as you take off each layer you’re getting rid of the old, and I think that’s great. It works very well in a subconscious manner too.
I think it’s a valid point though because we’ve all been through different things in our lives and we’re all have other challenges that we will have in the future I’m sure, but it’s all a matter of surrounding yourself with people that you love, and surrounding yourself with people that are on the same page, and can be there to support you through those as you can be to support them through other things as well. You’re saying about the awareness before, I didn’t realise that the stats were as high as that, what you’re talking about, so it’s fascinating.
I think that also what we need to do is that sometimes people they feel they need a lot of people around and to be able to do, but there’s also a lot of stuff inside and self empowerment’s extremely important and to learn to love yourself and to be happy being by yourself. If you can get to that point, if you can’t, there’re places that can help you to get to that place. Headspace is very good for young people, I really do highly recommend it, I’ve had a lot of good feedback over the years from Headspace.
What’s Headspace?
It’s a place where younger people can go and they can get certain counselling. It’s free, to a certain point, teaches meditation and things like that. So, for our young people, it’s good to have those things. There’re things for men’s line and all these different things. Wonder what we might do is we might put a list together and put them up on your site and I might put them up on mine too. It’s a really good thing because when I was talking to this group last night, they didn’t know, and a lot of people don’t know. Never be fearful to ask, never be fearful to drop Rachael a line, even private messenger if you wanna have that discretion because that’s fair enough you’re a person who deserves respect, and same with me. It doesn’t mean we’re gonna talk about you next Monday, we totally respect everyone like that. I’ve gone through my amount of baggage, I’m sure you have too Rachael, we all do. It’s what life is, it’s how we live and learn.
Those that say that they haven’t, I don’t think that there in the real world. It’s sort of part of the path so it’s part of the journey, it’s part of the whole process, and I think adversity is good because it shows you different lessons, and then you’re able to move forward and then go on and learn other lessons throughout the life. If people wanted to get in contact with you Katherine how would they do that?
They’d do it by the phone number you’re going to put up on your screen.
You know I’m not the fastest typer. 0408-411-865 there we go, I’m showing.
Everyone listening out there, what I’d like to do is to see if after ten weeks, we can see if Rachael’s quick at getting my phone number up there. We’ll do a survey and see how many people will say yeah she’s really good now she gets it up quickly.
She’s getting better she’s been practising .
She actually remembers your number now.
Yeah, I know I should practise, but that should be fun. Alright, and if anybody wants to get in touch with me in regard to homes or real estate in the Hawkesbury or abroad, my contact number is 45779964 I can speak faster than I can type sometimes. Equally, you can catch me on the website rachaelgoldsworthy.com.au.
So thank you very much for everyone being online and Dane for checking in and saying hello, and Katherine for your great advice as always, and we look forward to seeing everybody on the next episode.
See you next Monday.
Thank you so much for taking time out listening to today’s episode, if you have any questions on the process of buying, selling, leasing, or strata management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and I would really appreciate it if you could spread the word by liking and sharing this episode with your family and friends.
I’m Rachael Goldsworthy, and I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of the Drive Home to Hawkesbury.

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On this episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, Rachael speaks with Councillor Sarah Richards on local events and issues including one subject close to everyone’s heart the proposed Bells Line of Road Castlereagh corridor. Please share this community link and join us online for the open discussion, thank you.

Sarah is a local resident, dedicated to her family and community. She is a former Lawyer who is passionate about the Hawkesbury and serves the local community in many ways including Human Services Advisory Committee, Hawkesbury Civics and Citizenship Committee, Waste Management Advisory Committee, Hawkesbury Sports Council, Hawkesbury Tourism Advisory Committee and Community Service as Director, Fitzgerald Aged Care, Member, Community Board of Advice – Hawkesbury Hospital, Secretary – Hawkesbury Torch Bearers for Legacy, Secretary – Rotary Club of Kurrajong/North Richmond.

I Live, Love, Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode.

I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and welcome to The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, where I believe every home as a story. And I love sharing those stories on real estate in the Hawkesbury with you.
Here we share the best ways to add value to your property. How to avoid the common mistakes people make when buying and selling property. And how to get the maximum return on your investment with a focus on supporting local business.
I live love Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into to today’s episode with you. So let’s get started.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I’m on The Drive Home to Hawkesbury joined by Councillor Sarah Richards. How are you Sarah?
I’m really good Rachael. How are you today?
Really well thank you. I do apologise to the people that have been waiting online for us, we have had a bit of a delay in regards to internet, so sometimes when the wind is blowing the wrong way, we can get bumped off. So, apologise to everybody that’s watching, but thank you very much for everyone being patient.
So tell me, Sarah, what’s it like being a councillor?
I love being a councillor. To me, as someone who’s worked in the community and in the not-for-profit sector for many, many years, it’s a great way for me to be able to be involved in other aspects of the community. And actually be able to take things to the chamber, to get voted on where they can actually can be implemented and make changes to our communities. So, I’ve had some initiatives since being elected that I’m really proud of. And to me, it makes sure that you’ve got that voice and that ability to actually make positive change.
No, that’s terrific. And we met many years ago at one of the first Hawkesbury Rotary meetings that I went to-
We did.
When I first had into Hawkesbury and it was fantastic. And you’re, I believe, still involved with Rotary in some scale?
I am. Yes. So we met about eight years ago through Hawkesbury Rotary, which was a breakfast club. Which met getting up very early and dragging my little kids along with me to those meetings. But now I am, I’m still a member. This time I’ve carried on North Richmond Rotary. Although, their meetings are on Tuesday nights and so are my councillor commitments, so I’m unable to actually get along to many of those meetings now, because of that Tuesday clash. But I do try and get along to other things if I can.
Yeah, it’s hard to be everything to everybody, and I think that it’s difficult sometimes to get to all of the meetings. But at the end of the day, you’re a great community advocate and you’re doing a good job at what you are doing. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Just one minute, Rachael. I’ve got a deliveryman who’s just turned up at a door. So, sorry, I’ll just tell him-
That’s okay.
Yeah, no –
Back to reality, there you go.
Your life is a reality indeed. And tell me, what is a day like in the life of Sarah Richards? What do you do? What do you get up to?
Okay. So the day always starts with the kids. Got three little ones. Two girls and a little boy. So getting them ready, dressed for school, lunches backed, off to school by 8:30, is always the start to my day. Or weekdays anyway. Weekends is always around sport. Netball, soccer, things like that. So, once they’re taken care of at school, during the day, that’s when I fit in all my other commitments.
I try to fit the meetings between the school hours, although I am out, try to keep it about three nights a week as well with other commitments. So, a day would involve meeting with residents. Talking to residents. Answering emails. And also meetings with my other charities that I’m on the boards of as well. Organising fundraising events. Doing all that sorta stuff. So I never really get a day off. I’ve always got some commitments during the day. Usually centred around the community. So it keeps me busy and honestly it’s my passion. It’s what I love.
No, terrific. I’ve always known you to be a big community advocate and you’re involved in so many boards and community organisations as you do. So, what is a councillor for those people that are watching? What’s involved? What do you have to do when you go to the meetings? Those sorts of things.
Yeah, sure. So, just to explain people, when you say you’re a councillor, you always have to clarify that that means you’re an elected representative in local government. And not somebody that people go in, explain their life issues to, so you have to always clarify with that. But being a councillor is, in Hawkesbury, we have one LGA, there’s no wards, so it’s one group of 12 councillors. The 12 of us sit in chamber. We debate things. We have business papers where the staff provide us with reports and recommendations to vote on things for the community.
A lot of that used to involve planning and DAs, but those, actually going out to what’s called an IHAP, which is an Independent Hearing and Assessment Panel. Where we have professional people with a background in planning, who actually decide those sorts of things. Though we are more focused on community aspects. Things don’t just happen in the chamber, we also have a range of committees that councillors also sit on, that meet regularly throughout the year.
I’m on quite a few of those committees. Waste Management. Human Services Advisory Committee, where I get to be involved in affordable housing initiatives, which is something that’s passionate for me. And also looking at the homeless issue. I’m council’s representative on the Hawkesbury Sports Counsel, which I absolutely love. And that goes to the whole four-year term. So we meet additionally once a month, on a Monday night, to actually talk about the sporting grounds and make sure the facilities are up-to-date. And they’ve got amenities on the grounds and things like that, to make sure that our local kids, and actually adults alike, actually have really good sporting facilities. Because I’m always a big advocate for sport and the benefits, socially and physically that that brings.
No, absolutely. I’m exhausted just thinking about all those things in your day. Trying to keep up-
Well, I’ve got a lot of help. People help me. And the kids actually love it, and they love what mum does. And sometimes, they’ll be an odd meeting, 3:30 or 4:00 of an afternoon and it’s quite a few of us councillors who do have young kids. And we might just have to bring them along to the chamber, not a proper council meeting, but a committee meeting or something. Or a residential meeting. Bring them along to the chamber, they know the room that they need to go in, with the big whiteboard and they behave while we do that. So, they’ve become accustomed to doing that as well. It’s become part of their life really, is knowing what mum does.
No, that’s great. And essentially you are a mum and you are a councillor, but I guess when things get involved locally, we’re very passionate about what we do and so forth. But I guess too, with messages that come across when you’ve gotta deliver good news and not so good news to people it’s not always an easy task to do. How do you manage that and have you noticed that there’s been anything that’s happening lately that might be affected by that? Or some people are feeling that way?
Absolutely. The biggest thing in our community right now, and it’s at both ends of our community, in Oakville and also Gross Vale, Kurrajong area. Is the corridor announcement by the state government that happened a few weeks ago. That has probably been the most predominant issue of late. Other than probably the rate rise, which is something we can talk about later if you like? So-
Absolutely.
The corridors have caused anxiety, I understand that. A lot of uncertainty in the community. Especially with people, where the corridor has gone through their home or their property, but not only that, those adjacent to it as well. So, I think working behind the scenes, looking at other ideas and ways, and pathways the corridor could take. Also speaking to people. Asking them if a corridor is necessary at all. And also, making sure that in any discussion that involves corridors, where I’m taking feedback directly back to Dominic Perrottet, Stuart Ayers, and state government. Is that we actually do get a third crossing at Hawkesbury River, no matter what political party or where you stand, we all are agreed and united on the fact that we do need another crossing of that river. To actually help alleviate some of the traffic concerns. And we do need a significant infrastructure investment in the Hawkesbury.
So, while I’m taking that corridor feedback back to state government, I’m also letting them know, “Do not take a third crossing or another bridge off the agenda, because that is extremely important.” But something I do want to make known to everybody, who may not all have been following what Council’s doing, because this is a state government initiative, it’s nothing that Council can have any power to stop or put forward. But at our last Council meeting, we did come up with a 12-nil resolution moving forward on the corridors to show the community that we’ve listened to them and we’re behind them. And that Council unanimously agrees that we need to actually come up with a better solution than the one that has been put forward.
And I can absolutely confirm that the state government has listened to that. Dominic’s listened to that. He’s holding forums today, at his office, at the University campus at Richmond. Separate ones for the M9 and also for the Bells Line of Road corridor. And consultation, this is a consultation period, I can’t stress that enough, that finishes on the first of June. And from that point, the government will look at all of those submissions and then give, hopefully come up with some sort of announcement or an outcome based on all of that data.
No, terrific. In regards to that, with people that are watching and don’t know where those roads are going, where’s pretty much the start point that’s proposed for the corridor for Bells Line of Road? And also the M9? Or X9?
Yeah. The Bells Line of Road corridor connects to the Castle Road corridor, which is something that has, the initial one had been gazetted, I think it’s since 1951. Oh sorry, not gazetted, sorry, actually drawn on a map. So people sort of had bought property or made decisions in their lives based on where they thought that was going to be. The current proposal deviates from that. It crosses the river at Castle Road and comes up, when you look at the map, quite far left of Bells Line of Road, up through Gross Vale. And then it tunnels underneath Kurrajong Heights and connects to Bells Line of Road from there.
With the M9 Orbital, it goes through Shanes Park, Marsden Park, and then connects up to Oakville, but it does stop at a certain point there with plans in the future to connect it to the Central Post. Although, where it stops now, isn’t giving anyone any certainty about where it’s going to go from that point on. So, I know that a lot of people have taken those concerns direct to transport for New South Wales. And I’ve taken them direct to Dominic as well. So the only thing I can stress, like I said all along, is just keep emailing, sending your letters in. All by the first of June, that is the cutoff date. And the government will definitely be assessing from there, what they can do to try and come up with something better for the community.
Yeah, absolutely. You make some good points there. And I think the Bells Line of Road Corridor Action Group, they’ve organised for submissions to be written and I know that you’re in support of submissions to being written. And obviously you would be available to help people if they needed some support and you’ve been active in that group as well ’round the stand.
I have so people in that group, I’m very active on Facebook, so people in that group tag my name so that it highlights to me that they’ve got a question. And I go on and I answer those questions and I’m engaging with people all of the time. As much as I can. I’m emailing people, they’re emailing me. Contacting me by phone. I give out my private number to people all the time, because it’s usually the one that’s in my back pocket. The Council one’s usually in my handbag. So I’m more than happy for the people to contact me on my private number, I don’t have any barriers in that regard. And I just wanna make myself as available to people as I can.
And that’s what we love about you, Sarah. You are available for people. You are accessible. You do answer your phone. She messages back very quickly. And she’s always been a great community advocate, so we do appreciate that. Thank you.
Thank you. I try my best, although at some circumstances I do have to put the phone down and actually, maybe do some homework with the kids. So, try and balance, it’s all about balance, right?
That’s why you are a good mum too. Those three beautiful children. So there’s lots of responsibility for you, but I’m gonna ask you a couple of hard questions. And maybe they’re not hard questions, but they’re certainly things that have been raised in the community with the people that I’ve been speaking to, and the acquisition process for the corridor. 200,000 barrier for people. They’re looking at purchasing a property. If they’re wanting to sell their property. If they wanna add value to their property. There’s questions around whether they should or whether they shouldn’t. What’s your opinion in regards to that?
Yeah. So that’s absolutely valid. And we had that discussion about the 200,000 cap on DAs in counsel at our last meeting. And our general manager addressed a lot of those concerns. So if a corridor does get gazetted. If you are in that pathway, you will have a limit. Up to 200,000 dollars on putting in DAs or Development Applications. To do things to your property. Now, I understand that causes people grief and concern, because you know they’ve made an investment in a certain area that’s their home. And now they’re like, “What can I do with my property? Should I do anything with my property? Should I even spend that money if I wanted to do something?” So those concerns are valid.
I can’t stress enough at this point, the road is not gazetted. So, even though that’s a genuine question people have, at this point it’s not something that they need to be 100 percent relying on. Until something does get gazetted. Which then of course, brings in to play the compulsory acquisition. On those properties that would be in the pathway.
And I was at the Transport New South Wales meeting at Oakville on Wednesday night, where a gentleman had this specific question. He said to me, “What happens to my property?” He was an elderly gentleman. He said, “So in 30 years, I probably won’t be around anymore, so what happens in seven to eight to ten years, if I want to sell and go somewhere else for my retirement?” And I said, “It’s absolutely a valid point.” And apparently there might be some criteria for early acquisition? I need to double check on that. And see if that’s possible.
But what I’m reiterating is, you don’t hear in the media a lot of negative stories, or a lot of bad stories about the government ripping people off. The government won’t do that. They make sure that people are fairly compensated for their land. There’ll be the odd case where someone does take the government to court because they believe their entitled to more. But those are usually settled and the government then moves forward with it’s project plan. So, I would reassure people that the government’s not out to rip them off. If anyone is in that pathway, of any infrastructure project, like West Connects or anything like that, they do get fairly compensated.
No, that’s a good fact point that you make. And I think it’s important for people to have an awareness, I suppose, and an education as to what’s actually happening. What has happened. And what’s potentially going to happen as opposed to what hasn’t happened. So, yeah, I think also too, in regards to the corridor, the Bells Line of Road Corridor Action Group, they’ve got the website. So if anybody, sorry, the Facebook page, so if anybody wanted to go onsite to that, they could have a look at that and see what’s going on in the community. But equally, you said that you are available. You’re happy to be tagged in different things on Facebook-
Absolutely.
Yeah, you’re very contactable to discuss those matters with the local residents.
Yeah. I’m happy for people to send me text messages. Private messages on Facebook. People message our Liberal Party page. All the time. Our Facebook page. It doesn’t bother me, whichever way they want to get in contact. Details from the Council website. So feel free to contact me anyway you want.
Yeah sure. And what is the Council website, whilst were on that?
It’s hawkesbury, I think it’s .newsouthwales.gov.au, I think it is.
AU? Yes. That’s okay, we don’t get you to look yourself up that often, so-
No, I really don’t look myself up that often. To be honest, I do go on to the website quite a bit. To access other documentation, because they really do file and store things there really well, and someone says, “Oh, I wanna know what the latest community results are?” Or, “Where was that flood strategy document?” They are really well stored on Hawkesbury Council’s website. It’s actually run really, really well that website. And it’s an absolute wealth of information for people to go on there and find things. And it’s updated all the time with what’s going on.
Great resource to have and we’ll certainly, I’ll put a link up on the web here just so that people have that later on. And Dane’s saying, “Hello.” Thank you. Hello, Dane.
Hi Dane. Hello. Excellent. Well can I just say, with the website, I’m just bringing up something on my phone to have a look at the dates. We actually have, right now, some community consultation meetings, booked in. Because part of since being elected, or especially with our fit for the future strategy, which was to put the options of a rate rise to the community. We had to engage in quite heavy community consultation. And we’re actually doing some more of that coming up soon.
And I’ve just got the dates here, if I could run through them quickly, Rachael? If that’s okay?
Absolutely. ‘Cause the rate rise was next on my list to cover actually.
Perfect. Okay. So, the rate rise we’ll probably be the hottest topic at these next round of community consultation meetings. But what I want to stress to people in saying these dates is, the last round that we had, which was similar venues, we sometimes only got two or three people turning up. So, when people are quite engaged on social media and they’ve got a lot to say, either being critical or praising counsel or councillors. We really are trying to make sure that we’re engaging with the community face-to-face. One-on-one. Our head staff and directors and general manager are coming along for these meetings to make themselves available.
So, please get along to these consultation meetings as much as you can. I’ll just run through them very, very quickly. Excuse me, taking my eyes off the screen.
Windsor is Wednesday the 6th of June. North Rich on the 7th. Glossodia is the 12th. Pitt Town the 14th. Kurrajong the 18th. Colo Heights the 20th. Maraylya the 21st. And Saint Albans is Saturday the 23rd. So you can go on to Hawkesbury Council’s website or Facebook page and find those dates. And head along to your local meeting. Meet the councillors and meet the staff. If any concerns you have about any DAs on your property or anything like that, comes straight to the directors themselves.
Yeah sure. And in regards to the rate rises. Is there big rate rises on the horizon? Or what’s the forecast there?
Yeah. So, which is the independent body that needs to agree to any counsel raising their rates above the rate pick. Agreed this week to raise Hawkesbury City Council rates by 31.3 % cumulative over the next three years. So what that means is that every year for the next three years, your rates will go up 9.5%. Plus whatever rate picking would be for the next financial year, that’s to be .3%.
So as of the first of July, when your rates come out again, the whole of the Hawkesbury is going to have that increase. Now, there’s no lie that all councillors didn’t vote for this rate rise and I’ve been, quite vocal in making sure people know which councillors did and didn’t vote for the rate rise and why. We are bound by the local government act to uphold resolutions of council, so I have to be very careful, what I say and how I say it. Because once a resolution does go through council, such as their endorsing the rate rise. That is a policy of council, the council laws need to support.
However, I can stick to the facts and say what I did and didn’t do and why. So, the four liberal councillors did not support the current rate rise, because it was based on a ratings structure that we believe was inequitable to certain sectors of our community. Predominantly, for people around Oakville, Maraylya. That had a spike in their land valuations during the last round of New South Wales actually looking at land values again.
Now under the government act, which is where Council has certain tools available to structure their rates. There’s what’s called a base rate. Now, a base rate is capped at 50%. So what that does, and then the rest, other 50% is based on the land value of the property. The current council structure, only caps the base rate at 30%, which meant 70% of people’s rates were based on the land vaulations. So, the four liberals did fight in the chamber, we wanted that 50% base rate capped at the highest possible legal limit that it could be. So that our residents who were facing higher land values, had the highest proportion, well the lowest proportion they possibly could to pay on rates based on their land values.
So, we were unsuccessful in putting that argument forward, 8 to 4. And the 30% base rate went through. So we do not and still do not support that structure. We’ve had a range of briefings, or rating workshops, since that day, where the 12 of us have sat in a room with the staff and tried to see if we can find another way forward for a different structure. But unfortunately, we haven’t come to a resolution in that regard. And as of the first of July, when the new rates come out, it’ll still be based on that ratings structure that was voted on last year. So, the SRV, so the Special Rate Variation, which then comes in to apply, or basically the rate rise from the first of July, will be based on a structure that I voted against when it was implemented.
So, I know they’re saying on average, it’s only going to be around a hundred dollar mark or so, for most people. But, when you’re talking about averages, you’re not talking about your pig and your pets. You’re talking about a few people in the middle, so there’s going to be some significant people who are hit. The people in Oakville who had their rates double overnight under the current restructure, from 1,900 to 41 dollar rate bills. Have now got the rate rise on top of that.
Now it’s come out that, while we said that we wouldn’t support this rate rise on this new structure. There was always a case that we probably did have to increase the rating call of funds that we have by a certain amount. But two thirds of our community, throughout our previous consultations, said that they did not support that option three. Which was that 31.3% that went through.
So two thirds did not support that. Although two thirds of the community also did support maybe some sort of a rise. Which maybe, it was option one, two, and three. Option one was to stay the same. Option two was a small incremental rise. And option three was your, gold-plated option. So there could’ve been room for option two, but again, I’m gonna be honest. Even though we consulted the community, it went out to public exhibition, all of those sorts of things. We really didn’t get back huge numbers from the community during that process. On what they wanted us to do.
So, to me, moving forward as a councillor. And that’s why I wanted to make sure I highlighted those dates of those next round of consultations coming up, is because community engagement is extremely important to me. But I find that people sometimes on the whole don’t get engaged ’til it hits them personally. Which is the way life works, that’s a normal thing. So part of my role moving forward is to make sure people can get as engaged as they possibly can in their local government. And what their councilor’s doing and what’s going on, so that they are informed. And that they can actually have say.
Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. I mean the message I’m getting from you is that to get involved. To go to the meetings. To have your say. To have a discussion, an open discussion that can be constructive. ‘Cause at the end of the day, you’re a mum. And you’re a person, just like all of us. And we all have different personalities and lives and families outside of our work. So you’re just there doing your very best that you can do for the community and you’re in support of the community and available.
So we do appreciate that and it’s great that you’ve highlighted those dates. I’ll try and put up a link to the website, so that people have that. Moe’s saying hello, he’s on the line. How are you Moe?
I met up with Moe in the Feng Shui conference in China, a few years back-
Ah, excellent!
I hope he’s doing well. We’ll catch up with you again soon. I’m going down to the conference in Melbourne, so basically the next weekend or the weekend after that. But it’s been really good to talk to you today, Sarah. And I think it’s unpacked a few myths, possibly. And also, people will know the real Sarah Richards and where you’re at and what you’re doing for council. And I think too, in regards to the community, it’s so important to get involved. Put your hand up and just interact. And I’m sure Sarah would love to hear from you and help you with any solutions that you have. The date is the first of June for the corridor, to get those in, is that right?
First of June, absolutely.
And then, if we look at doing any other submissions or if you’ve got any other comments in regards to what’s going on the community, definitely get in contact with Sarah. If they wanted to contact you, how would they do that? Other than Facebook?
Yes. All our details as councillors are on the council website. So if you just go to the Hawkesbury Council website. Look up councillors, they’re there. People are also free to contact me on Facebook, private message me. On my Sarah Richard’s private page. Or they can also go to Hawkesbury Liberal Team, where I have a page as well. And all councillors were also given a page, up and running through council. So, Councillor Sarah Richards is another Facebook page they can go to. Email me. Call me. Whatever they want to do. I’m available to chat all the time.
No, that’s terrific. Well thank you so much for your time today, Sarah. I really appreciate it and thank you to everybody being on the line and saying hello. I think Margaret featured earlier.
Well thank you to your community. I appreciate you giving me this chance to come on and have a chat. I think it’s a great thing what you’re doing. And bringing on different aspects of the community on to your show just to have a chat and highlight these sorts of things. I thank you.
No, you’re most welcome. And that’s what I’m all about too. And we’ve got a common bond in that regard. Community and advocacy in the area. And I just want to help and get the best outcome for everybody. So, thanks for joining me on this episode. Thank you to everybody and we will catch up with you on the next episode. See you Sarah.
Great. Thank you. Bye!
Thank you. Buh-bye.
Thank you so much for taking time out, listening to today’s episode. If you have any questions on the process of buying, selling, leasing, or strata management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes. And I’d really appreciate it if you could spread the word by liking and sharing this episode with your family and friends.
I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury.

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On this episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, Rachael speaks with Megan Lawrence representative from Hawkesbury BLOR Corridor Action Group (BLORCAG) on the developments of the proposed Bells Line of Road Castlereagh corridor.

BLORCAG says the proposed motorway aims to destroy the beautiful valley along with other natural, heritage and historical areas.

I Live, Love, Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode. Please share this community link and join us for the open discussion, thank you.

I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and welcome to The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, where I believe every home has a story and I love sharing those stories on real estate in the Hawkesbury with you. Here we share the best ways to add value to your property, how to avoid the common mistakes people make when buying and selling property, and how to get the maximum return on your investment with a focus on supporting local business.
I live, love Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode with you. Let’s get started.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on what time you’re watching this video. I’m Rachel Goldsworthy on the Drive Home to Hawkesbury, a local real estate agent in the Hawkesbury and joined by Megan Lawrence.
Hello.
How are you?
Good.
That’s good. Just wanted to catch up with everybody and I guess have a bit of a chat in and around what’s actually happening with the Hawkesbury and what people are doing in and around the Bells Line of Road.
The corridor.
Yeah, that’s it. Tell me. This is the picture that I’ve got, that has been advertised out there.
Actually, let’s start there because you’ve just introduced me as someone from the Bells Line of Road. Coincidentally, I don’t live on the Bells Line of Road. I live on the pink line, which you can see from there, is some distance away from the Bells Line of Road. I now live under the Bells Line of Road corridor or proposed corridor.
That’s the beginning of this. The naming is problematic. The greater area thinks this is all about what’s happening on the Bells Line of Road, which is green there, as I’ve said, the Bells Line of Road corridor.
Okay. Let’s have a look at this then. As you can see, the green line here, that’s actually the Bells Line of Road. Then, it crosses over what the corridor is in the red line there.
For those people that are looking at it now, as Megan said, it can be a little bit confusing because we’re looking at it from the point of view of where the location is but just for the people that don’t know, you may be a local, you may have heard about it but equally, you may not know. Where’s it start, where does it finish, and what’s involved with that?
Okay. It’s a proposed corridor that runs from the other side of Kurrajong Heights. It goes through a tunnel underneath Kurrajong Heights, pops out on the other side … You might want to hold that map up while I’m talking. … at Kurrajong Heights, then swings back around and crosses the existing Bells Line of Road up near the Café on Bellbrid Hill. Then, comes down Baddey’s Lane 00:02:28], runs as you can see then in a diagonal trajectory down to Yarramundi so it goes through Baddey’s Lane, it goes through Willow there.
Baddey’s Lane is at the top and then …
Then, the Willows area in behind the church on Grose Vale Road. It crosses Grose Vale Road near the roundabout, above Pattersons Lane, goes along through those lovely properties through there, crosses over again on Grose Vale Road in the vicinity of the base of the road going out to Boyne Mountain Road near all goes then runs across, continuing in that going along line through the top of Cabbage Tree Road, straight down through Grose View Public School, the back of that and then continues on down through Grose Vale to where it crosses the Yarramundi, which is a number of properties up, a significant distance from nature Reserve.
This has nothing to do with any form of conversations that have been held about what’s happening in Nauvie Reserve. We don’t have any answers on that by the way, as a local traffic solution. This is a corridor that is being proposed as a long-term road. That’s part of the problem.
Then, you talk about building it for 50 years.
Yeah. There’s obviously options available, looking on the screen because we’re a bit behind but yeah, there’s options available to people but there was five options originally.
No. Actually, there’s many more than that. If you look at the SEA, Transport for New South Wales came up. They told me yesterday, day before yesterday, they went to a meeting, that there are hundreds of options were put forward. Once they fed all their data into the quantum programme and they come up with a number of options. There was a long list and there was a short list. Then, there was a third list that are five, which as we understand it, aren’t the ones in the SEA that was booked for cabinet. They decided ours. That’s what they put out as a proposed corridor.
Yeah. Okay.
That all makes it sound like there was a lot of thinking and planning and costing and all the rest of it behind it. There is none of those things. This is a draught document that supports a proposal. It’s not a document that can be prosecuted in any way. It is a proposal.
Just to clarify what that means. It means there is no actual environmental impact statement. There has been no work done on what lies in the corridor. No work on koalas. No work on platypus. No work on anything with very endangered plants. Plant communities that are actually covered by other government legislation. No knowledge about any of that that’s in the corridor.
They’ve done no structural designs. They’ve done no social impact studies. They’ve done no heritage studies that the average, settlement. For our side of the river, this is a proposal that is not thought out, costed. It’s not decided that this is even buildable within the finances that would be suitable to be applied to make the end date.
They said to us the other day, “You throw enough money at anything and you can build it.” Sure. That’s true but if you’re looking for an outcome that is going to meet the need and it’s going to be done in a costly and well-managed way, this isn’t it. This proposal is not it.
Talking about the proposal, going through some of the documents, I believe you received a letter with something similar to that …
Yeah.
… which had a photograph of the proposal …
That’s it. March 26th.
… on March 26th of the year. How did that happen? What happened as a result of people receiving their letters, and what did you do when you received your letter?
Okay. I’m property owner within the corridor. My property is partially effected, so about 50%, about 10 acres is affected. I would happen to be in my driveway at 10 o’clock in the morning on March 26th. Two fellows walked in the door and said, “You Megan Lawrence?” I said, “Yes.” They handed me an envelope. They said, “You may have heard about the corridor announcement this morning.” Actually, I had heard about, just briefly, I walked in and out of the kitchen and heard it on the radio. Didn’t have any clue that it applied to me in any way and opened the envelope. There’s a picture of my property just like that with the yellow cross hatching and some pink lines going through it.
As you can see, there’s no bigger picture of what’s happening there. I had no idea of where it was going. I did ask the fellows that gave me the letter, “Okay, can you tell me who had … Are my neighbours are affected? Where are you going after you leave my driveway?” They wouldn’t even tell me that.
Really?
The idea that the beginning of this engagement with Transport New South Wales has been started from the very beginning in any way that has helped private land owners, I would refute very loudly. Oh, I had because I actually looked at the letters that I had. There was nothing online that I could find. Maybe there was something but I would say there was nothing online that morning.
I jumped in the car and looked at the map to see where I thought it was going and I went and spoke to a few neighbours that were home who knew nothing about it because they didn’t happen to be in their driveways at the time. Yeah. That’s gone from there, basically.
Yeah. It’s an interesting proposal. It started a few years earlier …
Yes, that’s what the SEA says. They did hold some public consultation sessions, which, again, I didn’t know anything about those. I don’t live one on Bells Line of Road but I do remember seeing something. It was in a local paper or somewhere that said that there was something going on where you could go and have a chat about what was proposed for Bells Line of Road.
I don’t live on Bells Line of Road so I didn’t bother to go, which, yes, okay, I should have had my civic duty hat on but given that I live numbers of kilometres away from Bells Line of Road, I had no clue that what they were talking about was anything to do with me.
Because you can look at that diagram and see the green and the red lines as where Bells Line of Road is. The green line. Then, the corridor is actually the red line that’s coming through, so completely different. Sometimes, I think you’re quite right, Megan, that could be some confusion in and around this, so what it is, whether its people are affected by it or not affected by it and possibly what’s happened in this case but …
But actually, let’s go back to what actually happens, so, no, I didn’t turn up because I didn’t know that it was for me but we’ve now spoken to a number of people that were involved in those sessions. There were very few people, very few people involved.
The documentation that was shown at the time was nothing like that. I was shown a picture of Bells Line of Road with a large green glob put over and I mean large. It was the whole of greater Kurrajong and the other side of Bells Line of Road. I didn’t happen to be from here, but seriously, it was a large green blob. They were now say, “Tell us what you think about it.”
That is not genuine, real, public consultation. If you ask the wrong questions, you’re going to get the wrong answers. If you’re going to have disingenuous attempts at public consultation like that, don’t come back to us with a letter on March 26th and say, “Oh, but we asked the community about this.” No. I’m sorry. Nothing that went on before March 26th has been effective or, in my opinion, genuine attempt at public consultation.
Just, can I leave this here, too? If that is what New South Wales Transport thinks is adequate public consultation, this process has done nothing else but giving a resounding refusal of that. We would disagree with that statement on every level.
If they were to consult the public in a more reasonable and, I guess, open manner, how would you like to see them or how would the group like to see that be done?
Actually, let’s go back further. If you were going to put forward a proposal for anything for infrastructure in New South Wales, let’s start from there. You will need to go and talk to the people that are managing like those local communities where their infrastructure is going to be put, which I would add councils, because the first person you would go and talk to about one. What you’d like to do, you’d need to determine the need for what you want to do. You’d have to have a little bit how that’s going to effect the people locally. Talk to them about what you’re trying to do in terms of the greater good for the state but make sure that you’re aware of the short, medium, and long-term needs of the locals, the greater community, the broader community again, and then the state. Then, be very clear about if you’re planning for the future, what version of the future you’re talking about. Don’t just use big terms like the future. Tell us right back at the very beginning what your vision as in this is a governmental vision of just what the future looks like.
I have to tell you, having read about this in the last six weeks. I’ve read a lot and I’ve spent a lot of time talking to the people in the southern parts of this, the LSO. The sort of things that we’re getting a picture of is a vote that’s designed to carry large quantities, for example, of things like coal trucks. I don’t know but they’re not part of my 20 year vision at all. Just as an example of where we’re coming from, the process, get it right back to the beginning there and be up front.
Yeah. Okay.
Then, I might add, start looking at who’s coming to ask you the questions, because if it’s coming from a body like the Greater Sydney Commission, get used to the word quango, quasi-autonomous non-government organisation. That’s a new term we’re organised to understand. Ask yourself, “Who’s talking to me? Did I elect any of them? Are they answerable to me and this agenda that they’re pushing?” You can ask that from your own personal viewpoint. You might like what you see but if you don’t, then start looking at who’s on those bodies and who’s agenda is being pushed. Ask yourself what does it mean for me? That’s where planning starts from my point of view. Don’t start coming back to me with another crayon line on a map. It goes back to that.
Yeah. It’s really interesting the way in which they have or have not consulted with the process. I think there’s a lot of passion behind what you say. There’s a lot of discussion around it. I feel that a lot of people are affected by or potentially affected by the corridor and the changes that are coming. I think one thing’s for certain. There’s always change in life but I guess there’s ways in which it can be …
Okay, just put aside what I’ve just said. The other way and now, they’re on the ground and getting your letter. Even if you agree and you think that proposal’s okay and you think, “All right, they might have a far lot to go. You want my land. I’d like to go.” Come to the consultation session with real legislation that offers those people an opportunity to get out when they want with dignity, with a fair price for their property that allows them to go buy another property in the same area, if they wish. Their children go to the same schools. They get to stick in the same jobs. If they want to go somewhere else, great, but don’t come to them with legislation that doesn’t allow them to get out under any circumstances before the government wants your land for any reason other than hardship.
While you’re at it, give us a definition of hardship that we can lean on because there’s nothing on the table for that now. That’s causing one of the biggest problems out there. People have ripped out from underneath them and no one will answer their questions on what it means. Who they approach, when they approach, what’s available, under what terms can they get it? There is nothing coming back to us. It’s been six weeks since those letters were put out. There are no answers that can be relied on legally coming back to us from anywhere.
Tell me, coming back to the basics, what is the action group and how can people get involved with it? Who are they? Are they residents? Are they people abroad? Are they people that have had other experiences with roads? How can they get involved with the people that are online?
Okay. Our group is literally a group of people that got together after they got their letter. There are people in our group that got a letter. They’re in the corridor. They’re people that live beside the corridor and they getting nothing in this, I have to tell you. At least we’ve got these questions to be asking. The people who live on the side had no legislative right to anything anywhere in this process apart from right at the end of the market in their condition. They’ll be soundproofing in 50 years time. They get nothing so there’s those in there.
Then, in terms of the Facebook page that has come from nowhere, there’s …
Let’s put that up on the screen there.
Okay is the group. There are people coming on there that have been involved in and people that are telling us all about their experience. We’ve covered their position in New South Wales. It’s not great. There are people that have been struggling and looking at this whole big picture under the banner of an airport group fighting, asking questions about, valid questions.
While we’re talking to Hawkesbury, we need to be asking big questions about what their airport means for us because I hadn’t looked at that previously but I’ve been told recently that it’s going to operate for 24 hours. In other words, we get no purview. One of the major flight paths is coming down the Grose Valley. Yeah. I’ve read about that in the middle of all this as well. Most of us don’t know about that.
There’d been some really interesting groups coming forward with information for us. While you’re looking at your road, you might want to look at what the airport means for you. Of course, this infrastructure is all about servicing the airports. This isn’t just something that popped up from nowhere. Once a decision was made to plunk an airport in the back of Western Sydney, everyone on the OSO and the Bells Line of Road corridor because collateral damage.
Yes. Back to the core group that you have. What are we pushing for?
Okay. Our key message is withdraw this proposal. This proposal has been barely thought out. It’s not planned. It’s not designed. They have no idea what’s in our area west of the river or of the points that I went through previously, so withdraw this proposal. You do not have the basis or the past practise for, frankly, since March 26th, to be going forward with this with any credibility. We have no confidence in New South Wales Transport’s ability to go further with this proposal well or competently.
Withdraw this proposal, give everybody on the ground a chance to take a breather, going back to our local council and other local councils. We’re talking about our situation. Go back to our local council and start to consult from the ground up. A local council passed a resolution recently about their stance on this. That is exactly what they’re asking for.
Because there was a meeting there this week. Essentially it was fairly busy meeting, it way, eh?
It was. It was.
There was a lot of people in support and a lot of people wanting to know what’s going on. A lot of people potentially against …
Actually, no. It was unanimously supported by all the counsellors so it was really nice to see our local council coming together and supporting what is going on for.
Not only what’s happening to us now, but looking for short, medium, and long-term solutions to what our problems are. We all sit in traffic every afternoon. We’ve got lots of time to think about this. I have to tell you, yeah, look to our local council to get our voice out there. They have the data. They have the history. They have to knowledge. They have the stakeholder groups in the community of which we are one now to get the answers on this to make the solutions, to suggest and work on the solutions, that they’re going to solve things for the Hawkesbury.
Having someone like Lucy Turnbull and her Greater Sydney Commission walk on in, and she probably never been here and tell us that, “By the way, this is what you’re getting and you’re not getting it for 50 years,” I’m not happy about that.
It’s great to have the support of the local council. We will be having some of the representatives from the council on air as well, just to get their thoughts and how they can support, how they can help and what they
Mary Lyons-Buckett made a very, very wise and well-based statement the other night in council. I have to say that, as a general statement, BLORCAG is behind her 100%, I think she has a really good picture of what’s happening. She has a very good picture of what she’d like to do with the council, and she has the information to back her up and the knowledge.
Yes. No, and it’s great. It’s great to have the support of the local people and also the local constituents and the local council, because without that, we can’t
The thing is, that’s why we have governmental structure like that. We had counsellors there for all the bigger parts of government to be able to refer to to get the information they need to do it properly.
Exactly.
They’re coming in over the top with a quango, quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation, doesn’t work. It isn’t working. It doesn’t work.
We’ve got some people online. If anybody’s got any questions for me, I’ll be happy to take those live so you can just punch those questions in for us and we can see that in the comments. Happy to bring those forward but with the proposed corridor, 192 kilometres, I think, that they’re talking about in the meeting the other night, who do you think out of our area, what sort of people is it affecting? Does it affect farms, does it affect individuals, does it affect families that have been there for years and years?
All of the above. Then, if we look at the people that are directly in the line of the corridor, yes, the majority of the people in the corridor are small 5 to 10-acre block homes. Some have been there for many years. Some who’ve recently arrived. Certainly, from what we understand, the data that was fed into the quantum programme, they came up with this idea as part of the process of it goes. They were looking for rural residential rated land. That was land that they were looking for to put it through. Then, whosever agenda that is coming from, I’ve got some more information on that, too, because to me, it seems to be in direct contradiction to the liberal parties. Ideas about individuals, working hard, buying land.
The idea that residential is, it’s okay to target them, yes? Where’s that idea coming from? Is it coming out Transport New South Wales? I would genuinely like to know who decided that that land is okay to use when there is trail land available. Let’s jump to the other side of the river. Maybe in Castlereagh. Who’s agenda is it that said that their land’s okay to take? You’ve got a corridor sitting there that’s been available since 1951. That’s a big question.
Yeah. Allison online, she’s saying that it does affect various people, as Megan said. Thank you for that Allison. Good to have you on the line with us.
And actually, bringing you back to that point, Allison, so yes, the land owners within the corridor are affected. The people on the other side of it are drastically affected now. Ours is gone. We have nothing but their property prices has gone drastically. Who wants to buy land that’s going to be looking at an expressway? So, there.
Then, you look to the water community. Your Kurrajong Village, for example, the traffic implications for that village as the local traffic comes through to jump onto that road, if it’s ever built, there is only one on-ramp and it’s near ,which is roughly in the middle of that diagonal line. All of the local traffic that we’re trying to gain access to that road, if it’s ever built, will come to Kurrajong Village. Whether or not it comes through the main street, whether or not they’ve got a nice little side plan worked out and there’s more properties involved, they can genuinely not tell us because they haven’t done their planning.
This proposal is not supported by any studies on how it affects local traffic, how it’s supposed to improve local traffic going forward. They made this most amazing statement at the dropping session at North Richmond and the woman who is the second in charge. She’s , if you are. Made a statement there that that day, which was two weeks into the process, two weeks since we got out of the … Was the first contact they’ve had with RNS. How can they design the corridor without even talking to RNS. The contact came with a phone call. “Oh, hi. We’re here.” What are you doing?
A big disbelief that the governmental agencies can be given the power to take people’s properties away without the instruction to, by the way, have a bit of a ring around and see how it’s going to fit the RNS and whoever’s looking after planning where it comes to koalas and platypus. You might want to have a chat to them, too. None of that’s been done.
Yeah. Look. Now, Mary made some interesting findings and also put up some questions that were put forward by Andrew Simpson. I’m glad …
From the OSO that’s down south.
That’s right, yeah.
He’s doing a great job down there.
It’s good that she’s brought that to everyone’s attention. One of them was …
Can I just actually … Sorry, Rachel. This press release was put out because they’re in exactly the same boat as we are. I’m trying to get answers from the government agencies. If you look at the preamble to his press release, this is put out because they can’t get any traction with anybody to get answers. That’s where that press release comes from. They’re in the same boat as us.
One of the things that I mentioned in the press release is about land owners also adjacent to the corridor and saying that the New South Wales government does not consider that you could potentially be affected but how do you think that that will sit with people? Do you think that …
They should have every right to be very annoyed. The legislative framework that we’re supposedly operating under makes no provision for people that are adjacent to the corridor. Interestingly, though, if we’re looking at the word adjacent and in the vicinity of, let’s jump to the Metro Act.
Yes. The Metro Act is …
The Metro Act is a piece of legislation that has been put before New South Wales parliament at the moment.
Hasn’t been cast as yet.
No, no. It hasn’t been. There’s going to be a whole lot of discussion around it before they do because, let me get my wording on this correctly. That act is what they’re proposing to do under the Transport Administration Amendment Act, knowing that’s a Sydney Metro Bill 2018. Under that act, Sydney Metro will be authorised to “Carry out, finance, manage and otherwise participate in residential, retail, commercial, industrial, mixed-use development, community, open space and recreational facilities.” That’s a long list of things for a metro authority to be involved in.
But it keeps going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. Goes further. “Community, open space and recreational facilities on land in the locality of …”
Also known as vicinity, looking back to either the Back to, yeah, the adjacent properties. So, “Locality of metro stations, depots and stabling yards.”
If we unpack that, to use the terminology expressed by Jeff in one meeting, if we unpack that, this legislation allows a government authority to take land from private land owners, their luck, not just for the purpose of building metro, and that comes back to the court case that we also were excited about a few weeks ago where RNS was slapped down because they tried to take some land under the guise of building a road for green space. The court came back and said, “No. You’re only authorised to take land to build your road. That’s it.” We all said, “Yay!”
Then, we found out, this handy legislation is in the wings waiting to remove any safeguards to allow government authority to do what it likes.
Then, the implications of this is huge. What does in the locality of? I’m finding it very interesting that they’re enabling the government department to have control of the locality.
But let’s go back to the poor people that are living in the locality of the OSO or the Bells Line of Road. They have no claim although it looks like they’ll be having government knocking on their door sometime soon to bring them under the wing of acquisition.
That’s the new bill that’s proposed but the previous one allows people to … Or they’re a little bit more each restricted.
That’s right.
Each government authority has its own . Main roads is left, roads is left but roads, transport allowed to build transport, national parks, all this stuff for national parks. National parks don’t get to put their hand up and say, “We’d quite like to build an expressway to our national park,” at the moment. They don’t have that power …
They don’t.
… because their job is to look after the national parks.
Yes! And, Sydney Metro’s job used to be to provide, you know, the greater transport authority used to be to provide good train services which took Canberra and Richmond, they’re not doing a great job on that but all of a sudden, they’re now going to be allowed to be developing properties and managing it as well.
Not only are they buying it, they’re financing it, managing it, in other words, participating in their process. I don’t know who’s going to be driving the trains because they’re all going to be busy doing this. The window this opens is huge and it.
Yeah. No. I understand what you’re saying. I was just going to comment that the act is absolute crap. Just saying. Us personally will lose up to 400,000 to 500,000 on our property if they go ahead and gazette this corridor. Thanks for those comments.
Allison, exactly but then you need to add to that, that you’ll be very lucky to get even that amount this side of 50 years because your only easily accessible way to get the money out of your asset is to go to the open market. No one wants to buy a property that’s within this.
If Allison’s looking to get that vastly reduced amount of money, there is no mechanism for her to get that under the current legislation other than under the hardship provisions. To get that before the road is built, which in our case is 50 years. That’s what we’re coming down to, our local situation. Our problem is doubly hard to bear because we’re not going to see any resolution in any way in the next few years.
Parts of the OSO will be built sooner than later, so those people are going to be in the process and talking to government about getting something back of their land within 5 to 10-year time frame. We’re not looking at being able to access any of those provisions under that forced acquisition situation for 50 years. There’s a lot of people in this who want to retire. There’s real families that might want to go and live somewhere else.
My case, yeah, that’d be great but actually, I quite like to build a house at some stage because if I’m going to be stuck here for 50 years, I’d like to actually live in a comfortable house. I can’t even do that under the provisions where they said you can’t put a development application in without being sent to Transport New South Wales for anything over $200,000.
If I go to my council, day one after the gazettal, I guess that happens, which notice will happen, withdraw your proposal but if it does happen and I want to build a house or doing anything over the value of $200,000. My choice to do that on my land with my own money, is going to be referred to Transport New South Wales. If that proposal does anything to potentially add additional costs of the delivery of the intended infrastructure, they can say, “No.” I have to
Essentially, somebody could spend 200,000 or they could spend a million dollars and …
They can’t spend it. They won’t let you because they will not pass your DA if it’s over the value of 200,000, and also adds value to your property.
But if they added that or if they did allow the DA, that would be your expense and you potentially lose the rest of the money that you .
They must have that choice. They will not allow me to build it. I don’t get that choice anymore. Under that part of … This is the document that we’ve been given at one of the sessions. I don’t even know what legal basis this document has, given that it’s got so many contradictions in it.
question asked on the document. There was no answer.
Actually, these question have …
infinity of them. Yes.
We’ve had two chances to have one on ones. My husband went to one. I went to the other. We have asked numerous questions about how this is going to work, who’s going to administer it, what triggers this process, who makes decisions, on what basis they make decisions. There are no answers out there on this. The reason for that is that they have not written their planning rules around this.
That was another question I asked about one on one. I said, “All right. Okay. You can’t answer the questions now but on day one after this happens, if it happens, which again, I don’t want it to happen and I really hope it doesn’t happen, on day one after that, when I turn up to my council, are they going to be able to answer these questions?” They all looked at me and they said, “We don’t know.”
I said, “So, what’s the planning behind the actual gazettal announcement? Are you going to have all of the planning laws and the instruction and the education for councils? Is that all going to be in place?” Apparently, nobody’s going to plan to have that in place.
At the meeting, it was mentioned that there is a 192 koalas of corridor that’s proposed and that one thing for certain was that that corridor would change. There was …
No. Actually, it depends on who you ask. When you say, “One thing for certain is that corridor for change.” What does that …
That was what was said on the night by the minister.
Oh!
Yes.
Jeff Carhill said that, did he? Okay. Actually, I had Jeff Carhill at North Richmond and his helper to the side. His name I don’t know but another high-ranking official in that team. We asked him that specific question, given all the lack of planning and the knowledge of what’s there. “Is there any chance that you will be moving this corridor?” He categorically said that we might move it with in the corridor. The corridor’s 150 metres. “We might move it within the corridor but we will not be moving the corridor.” It’s what he said in North Richmond.
If Jeff Carhill’s up on stage two weeks later or a month later, the night on May 2nd at our meeting said that it will move. That’s interesting. Where’s it going and what community consultation process have you carried out to let everybody know where it’s going?
I think it’s an interesting topic and one that will be ever changing and the landscape that will change as well because obviously, if they go into some sort of construction or build and they find something, that will move the corridor in essence but equally, prior to all of that happening the action group is not wanting it to go forward, which is essentially what you’re saying here today. Whether you agree with it or whether you don’t, I think it’s important as a community that we’re all aware of what’s going on and, as a community, we come together, depending on, it doesn’t matter what your opinion is, it really doesn’t. It’s a matter of us all pulling together and just saying, “Okay. How can we make this a better place to live for all of us? How can we make this work for everybody? How can we be more consultative?” What happened, we talked this through and had real discussions around it because …
All questions that are not currently being answered, that’s all okay for currently by Transport New South Wales or, I would argue, the greater government.
Yeah, because, I mean, it’s affecting not only families but generations of families. You’ve got people that their livelihood is reliant on, that their actual land, we’ve got endangered species. You’ve got koalas that I’ve seen some beautiful photographs of that area that will be affected.
Which just interesting let us sell at illustrious premiere recently. Last week, came out and said that she’s now very interested in koalas and she’s put in place some means of where they’re being mapped and recognising areas and that’s great. But back on March 26th, she put a corridor right though, take koala habitat and our koala populations are one of the healthiest wild populations in the state, in the Hawkesbury. They’re right from to, right through
Yeah, but they once said they’re going to survive long term because they don’t have Chlamydia in the main design of standard. They are a compilation of koalas that have huge worth, I think individually but as a population of koalas, they’re surviving at the moment.
Yeah. They’re doing really well overall.
Yeah. I have to tell you that a corridor go through the middle of it isn’t going to do much for them long term.
Is there other animals and plants that are actually affected that you can tell the people that are watching online?
Good question. Transport New South Wales haven’t done the service to find that out but our group has been a great mechanism for people to come together and say, “Well, look at what I’ve got. I know I have a platypus in my creek at Windy Creek.”
All right. I know I have platypus because they’ve eaten my chickens. I know I’ve got these rare and endangered plants because last time I asked the council if I could do anything, I had to do a study on that. Locals have knowledge about their area. They have not been asked about it on any levels.
Essentially, what your group is getting together and trying to get the word out there and please, if you’re watching this, whether it resonates with you or not, perhaps share the word, please let everybody know that it’s going on. There is one last meeting, I believe, that people can get involved with before the gazettal. Can you just tell people about that online?
Sure. There’s a meeting on and then, you’ll have to check the page. I’m pretty sure it’s the 16th of May. 16th of May at Oakville?
Yeah.
Yeah, 16th of May at Oakville. It’s the last Transport of New South Wales’ drop in session that they’re running for residents. I might add, it’s the only one that the people at Oakville have been given close to home so pretty late in the day for that for them but those sessions aren’t just for the people in those areas. We saw that at Kurrajong when the first one happened. We had 500 people turn up to it, completely terribly run drop-in session there.
These drop-in sessions of everyone. If we want to send a clear message out there right across the Bells Line of Road corridor and the greater OSO corridor in our area, that is your last chance to go and see Transport New South Wales in action on the ground and ask them some questions. Go and ask them the sort of questions we’ve discussed now. Go and ask them the questions that you might have put in your submission. See if you can get some real answers. Then, I suppose, the most important message to leave everybody with is go home and write your submission. Whether or not you’re in the corridor or next to the corridor, you live in Kurrajong, you live in any local road that is going to be effected. If you’ve ever had coffee in Kurrajong and you quite like the place, write a submission. Write a submission. Send it to Transport New South Wales because it’s not just about the content. It’s about the number of people that participate in the process.
If we can’t get people in the greater Hawkesbury to participate in this process, the greater Hawkesbury will be left with a long-term plan that is not doable. It doesn’t function on any level. You are not getting any short to medium-term solutions for what you’re going through today. The great Hawkesbury’s been treated very shabbily, in my mind, on this, particularly as west of the river but this is the greater Hawkesbury issue. We’re just not getting solutions, answers at all at the moment.
No. Okay. The next meeting, that’s the last meeting. If they take the proposal off the table, you’ll …
They have to withdraw it. Don’t give us this shelving bit. The terminology that was used in the recent television segment that caused a lot of widespread, more misunderstanding about this. It didn’t clear anything up. The terminology used in that was shelving. That is disingenuous. That says, “We’re going to park it until after the election and we’ll come back and we’ll do this when the people on the ground don’t have any power to argue against it.”
Withdraw it. Acknowledge that it’s in the wrong place. Acknowledge that the work that needs to be done behind it hasn’t been done. The need hasn’t been determined. The council hasn’t been consulted. Acknowledge all of those things. Withdraw the current proposal and start from scratch.
All right. If they withdraw the proposal and start from scratch, do the consolidative process with local council and what we’ve talked about today, you feel as though that will be the best outcome for the community?
Yes. It’s really the only feasible outcome. These things are going to cost a lot of money, short, medium, and long term. We’ll pay for it. New South Wales is paying for it. Do the best job you possibly can and provide the people of New South Wales with infrastructure that works for them locally for the greater state and be up front about what is driving that. What are your goals for the future?
The isn’t piling up the money so fast. Let us know what those goals are? Let us know what those goals are. Show us what you’re proposing really meets those goals. Then, we’ve all got a choice whether we agree or not but the proposal you’ve got in front of us for Kurrajong, it just doesn’t solve anything for anyone.
Actually, if there’s anybody west of the ranges listening to this, and they were central in pushing for some sort of solution to solve their problems getting to Sydney, the fact that the rest of the road between Kurrajong Heights to Orange and, you know, has to go through World Heritage national park. How feasible is it to build a road, that’s apparently going to be the solution to all their problems, that has to go through World Heritage national park?
Then, make sure you realise it’s going through a tunnel at Kurrajong Heights because you can’t drive fuel trucks through there. If this whole design is around freight and all these things that need to get to Sydney …
The legalities around that.
Make sure what you’re trying to get from Orange or the greater west, the way they’re building it down the Bells Line of Road is the best way to do it or even if it’s a legal way to do it. They’re making the other side and they tell us how you’re going to go through the national park. How you going to come through a World Heritage-listed national park in order to link up with a road you’re proposing in our end?
The proposal at our end doesn’t do anything for anyone, really. You can even come back to another basic problem that’s been mentioned a lot is the whole ability for this area to evacuate people in times of flood. This proposal doesn’t even touch on that. You’ve got beans being thrown on the road that does nothing to fix problems.
The road that’s proposed, there’s been a lot of different proposals like the users you’ve said. Is there any way that the top surface doesn’t need to be … If it goes underground in any way … Has there been any proposals about that?
Yeah. Lots of people in the community have said, “What about tunnelling?” I don’t know anything about tunnelling.
I don’t either. I’m just
Right? There’s fantastic roads in Europe that do that. We’ve all seen what amazing things happen with tunnels elsewhere in Sydney and how it solved problems. They’re expensive but yeah, if we’re going to go right back to the beginning stages of this. If we’re genuine in getting these right, then throw all the options on the table. There’s been a lot of mentioning of tunnels in the discussion around this.
Yes.
Yeah. Why not have that discussion happening? Then think about where you want to start and where you want to finish. Then, have a chat to the people that are about to leave the … The beginning and end of that tunnel.
Yeah. Look. Again, anything that you’re going to plan, anything that’s going to be proposed …
There’s always going to be people that are affected.
Of course, but run your process better to find a need. Talk to people about where it’s going to go. Give them a way out. Give them fair properly laws. There’s a whole suite of laws and backdrop plans that need to be in place for any planning process to go forward. Consult, determine the need, design it really well. Then, give everybody a means to move away from it if their property’s involved fairly.
Mmm (affirmative). Because as a real estate agent in the Hawkesbury, I find that any property, if it’s new. Whether it’s a river, it’s affected by flood. If it’s near the bush land, it’s affected by fire. There’s a train that might be nearby. That’s great for some people because they love walking distance. Other people don’t like the train noise that it creates. Others like living closer to amenities. Others don’t. Others like being in the space, so you say
All these things you just listed are things that people are aware of, they go and look at a property and they have four winners for all of those things. They can make an individual choice as to whether or not they would like to buy that property, put their money into that property, live how they want on that property. Yes and we all do that but what’s happened to these people is they’ve looked at all those things. They’ve even looked at where existing are and there’s an corridor running down the existing Bells Line of Road. Just let me get that out there. We’ve all made decisions about buying properties with all of that knowledge. This knowledge wasn’t part of the decision making process for us.
No. I understand.
It’s not.
Essentially, what I was saying was that any property that has certain things, whether it’s a train, whether it’s a proposed corridor, whatever it is, they all affect the end result for the consumer. It’s important that the due diligence is done.
As you say, people have been affected in some way and it’s been unfortunate the way in which the circumstances have gone but unfortunately, we have to move forward. We have to make the best of what we have and make sure that everybody’s aware of it, come together as a community, and see …
Move forward with knowledge.
That’s right.
Move forward with knowledge and planning.
Absolutely.
That’s not in place at the moment.
No. I think that it’s really important that getting all of the local constituents on board together with the local council, because they’ve been great, as I say, and we’ll have a couple of the counsellors on in there, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, just to give you more insight into what their thinking and what they’re able to bring to the table.
Look. Mary Lyons-Buckett had some great things to say at a local council meeting. I really enjoyed listening to her speak about that. I enjoyed seeing that someone that is representing us has the big picture in mind, has the knowledge and has the backing of certainly behind what she had to say but I’d say genuine back into the wider community.
Yeah. That’s good. It’s great to have a great mayor. It’s great to be supported with her as well but I think that there’s a lot of questions that have gone unanswered but there’s also some topics that need to be discussed. I think it’s important to move forward with this. We’ve got the meeting coming up on Wednesday on the 16th. If it doesn’t get gazetted in the proposals off the table, that’s great. The consultative process, what happens if it does get gazetted? Which way do you see this going?
Okay. Obviously, our first aim is to have this proposal withdrawn but as I’ve said, we can’t get any information what happened. Day one after gazettal, which apparently, it’s supposedly happening before Christmas and what happens before then. Let’s go to end of June.
First of June, we’re missions in. From now until the first of June, go away, everybody and find submission, get it into Transport New South Wales.
After first of June, Transport New South Wales is supposed to be looking at everything that’s been written, going back to people. Well, you would hope, people at councils and things. But if nothing else that the people looking at the corridor, their remit is to go and read everything they’ve been sent in the submissions process.
I would really like to see an interim report from them, knowing who sent a submission, when that was sent, before or after June 1st, how many residents sent in submissions, where they’re getting submissions from and where they’re not because I would suggest that where they’re not getting submissions, that’s not a tested approval. That’s people that didn’t know about it.
Let’s get the figures and the table of where submissions have come from and then get a fair chance to look at what those figures are suggesting. Don’t come back to the saying that, you know, there was 500 submissions, therefore the rest of New South Wales thinks it’s a great idea. No. That’s disingenuous. We’re not copying that but come back with the information as an interim part of this and then keep the people, the broader community, aware of where this is going. Don’t just come back to us, I’d say, day before Christmas or day after’d be a good day not to come back and say, “I probably won’t. We’ve gazetted this.”
If you are getting close to Christmas and you think you’re going to gazette it, make sure that you have the underlying legislation from a planning, property acquisition … You have every possible question and problem facing people going forward with this answered in a written document that you can go to a solicitor with and say, “Look. This is where I am. Help me through this.” Answer everything before you do it.
Mmm (affirmative). The opportunity that people have is to go through the process, go to the meeting on Wednesday of next week. If they’ve got some ideas or if you’ve got some letters, submissions, those sort of things, put that forward. Who would they write that to where they
It’s to Transport New South Wales and if you look at the BLORCAG web page, we’ve got information on where that’s going to. If you’re on the OSO, Andrew Simpsons’ page has got all that information but if you want to go straight to the source, Transport New South Wales’ website has got that information. We can either send it in electronically. You can send it in writing. There’s a number of opportunities.
There’s an interactive map you can get onto and have a look. There was an opportunity to drop a pin on that and write a comment. Submissions don’t have to be a formal letter. They come in all shapes and forms. I might add that every letter that the BLORCAG has written to the premier on this has also been sent back as a submission. Apparently, everything you write to the government at the moment is considered a submission.
A submission?
Yeah. Really, there’s lot of opportunities to get a submission in. And if you’re waiting for a replay to a letter, you might have to wait for the submissions process to come back because we’re not getting any answers from the letters we’ve written to the premier on this.
Yeah. At least you’ll still be able to submit the letters and put the submissions to
Yes, up until June 1st.
Up until June 1st.
Write a letter. Write a letter and really think about what this proposal means for you. Is it answering? Is it doing something a problem for you? How is it impacting on you? How is it impacting on your community? How is it impacting on your environment? Has it impacted on your bank balance or your financial plan? Your future really. Send it off.
Participate in the process now because I’ve said in the wider community, if you don’t step up and start participating on any level at this stage, you’d be left with this as a fait accompli and you’ll be living with the badly-planned results of this going forward. The wider community will because this is going to be this big line that controls future traffic management going forward. We’re all going to, as I say, we spend a lot of time sitting in traffic.
If you’re not sitting in traffic … Let’s start from there. If you spend any time in the last week sitting in traffic on the Hawkesbury, write a submission.
I guess the message from today is anybody that wants to get involved, they can get in contact with BLORCAG. What’s the website or the Facebook page that they can contact on?
It’s on Hawkesbury BLORCAG … Hawkesbury Bells Line of Road Corridor Action Group.
Yeah.It’s very active Facebook page.
It is.
You can join the page. They’ll let you interact and have a look at what the proposals are and also get involved with the meeting coming up. If you wanted to write a submission, you might feel as though it doesn’t count or what
It does, though. The numbers matter on this. Every submission that goes into this makes a difference. Please, yet, participate in the process. However badly run that process has been run, don’t use as an excuse not to participate.
If I hear another person say, “We can’t change anything. I’m not doing anything,” I’ll probably … I don’t know what I’m going to do. Write a letter. Write a letter now, otherwise don’t come back to us in five years time when you’ve discovered that you’ve got a feeder road going through your place leading onto an expressway that you didn’t bother about when you could.
Yeah. No, okay. Thanks so much for your time today, Megan.
Thanks.
I really appreciate it. Allison, thanks for being on line. Maurine, thanks to you. Thumbs up. Appreciate that and all the other comments that we’ve got. Last to finish off, Allison’s putting here about koala habitat is so precious to us, our kids would never have seen anything else if they haven’t have been there. Warren’s joined us in the chat at the back end of the conversation.
Yeah, I know. It’s been terrific to catch up.
Thanks, Rachael.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for the opportunity.
No, that’s okay. Look, I’m all about community. I’m a local real estate agent. I’m no expert when it comes to the proposed corridor but I just want to …
Neither was I since March the 26th, I have to say. Yeah. It’s been a fascinating trip.
Yeah, but it’s good to be involved with they community. It’s good to be involved with what everybody’s doing and understand as to what can be done and what the possibilities are when we all work together.
Allison’s also put up #wecandothis and we stand together.
Add the #yougazzetteyoubuy. That’s another one that some of our members have been working out of the whole property acquisition bit.
Excellent. I also put some of the links up. I’ll put the links up, too. The mayor’s comments in the BLORCAG and also some of the maps that have been there. We’ve got some interactive thing that you can have a look at. Have a look for yourself. Put the submission in. Support what is going on. Whether you do or you don’t, Just be aware of what is actually happening and how it may or may not affect your property. Maybe, if you might want to help somebody else with their process or you have some sort of skill sets involved.
Actually, can I have a little mention there?
Yeah. absolutely.
There is another public event then that will be very suitable for people, if they don’t have the skills. We’ve got a submission writing workshop that’s happening on Monday the 21st of May at the Richmond Club. It’s a great venue. You can have dinner there beforehand. We’re having David present that. It just gives people some help with how to write it and how to organise it. It’s their ideas. They bring their ideas with them and they will be given help on how to put it together.
True.
If you need a bit of help or encouragement or you’ve just been sitting on the fence, thinking, “Oh, I’ll get to it,” May 21st, Richmond Club, 6 o’clock for 6:30 start. That’s available to everyone. From the OSO, from the corridor, and the greater community that wants to have a say on that, this is your opportunity to get some help.
There you go. No excuses for any of us. If we want to get involved, put your tail in the water and jump in the water as well. No reason I’m putting your tail in, you go all feet in, don’t you?
Oh, I . You can write a letter and then go away, not worry about it. If that’s how you want to participate, it would be great. That level of involvement’s fantastic.
Yeah. Even if it’s a one line or two line, it doesn’t really matter.
That’s a submission.
It doesn’t need to be … That’s right.
Every word, everything’s a submission.
That’s right, so get involved. If you got any questions, Megan’s very approachable and very easy to talk to.
As is the Facebook page. I have to say, it’s not open yet today but the BLORCAG community is a broad community, the people that have got this off the ground, there’s a group of 10 to 12 people that have been spinning little, add knots on this. Yeah, it is. That page actually has brought the community together really beautifully and just for things like koalas, to see people discussing about what they’re strong . In their back yard. There hasn’t really been a mechanism for that information to be coming forward. That experience has been a good one.
Yeah. The Hawkesbury community, once again, is coming into the fold. We’re all helping one another out. That’s terrific. Get in contact with BLORCAG on the Facebook page. I will put the links up if anybody’s got any other questions, don’t hesitate to message them. I’m sure Megan and the other team would be able to help you out. I guess maybe you’ll come back on and tell us how you went at the meeting and the updates in the next couple of weeks?
I’d quite like to get some sleep in the meantime. That sounds good.
Yeah, terrific. All right. Thanks again for coming on the episode. Thank you for everybody participating.
Thank you.
As I say, I’m local real estate agent and I don’t have any opinion one way or the other. I just wanted to get the message out for people just so that they could get an idea of what’s actually happening in the local community.
All right. Nice to see everyone. Thanks very much, Megan. We’ll catch up with you …
Thank you.
… on our next episode.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for taking time out and listening to today’s episode. If you have any questions on the process of buying, selling, leasing or Strata management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Be sure to subscribe on iTunes and I’d really appreciate it if you could spread the world by liking and sharing this episode with your family and friends.
I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury.

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In this episode of The Drive Home to Hawkesbury, Rachael speaks with Sensei Mark Lendrum from GKR Karate ~ Strong + Humble + Brave ~ about a fun in-school Karate Fit Program being held at Windsor South Public School – 77A Church St, Windsor South NSW 2756. Their goal is to teach children the basics of self-defence, how they help build the confidence of those who attend, and some great tips on how to get fit with karate including stretching and flexibility training.

Mark is the Senior Instructor and Regional Manager of Sydney. He oversees the training and administration of over 70 classes, 60 branch instructors and literally hundreds of students who train each and every week.

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I Live, Love, Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode.

I’m Rachael Goldsworthy, and welcome to the drive home to Hawkesbury, where I believe every home has a story and I love sharing those stories on real estate in the Hawkesbury with you. Here we share the best ways to add value to your property, and avoid the common mistakes people make when buying and selling property, and how to get the maximum return on your investment with a focus on supporting local business. I live love Hawkesbury and can’t wait to get into today’s episode with you, so let’s get started.
Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on what time you’re watching the drive home to Hawkesbury. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and today I’m lucky enough to be joined by Mark Lendrum, I just punched him into the show.
How are you Mark?
Good Rachael, how are you?
Yeah good, really good. Mark, tell me a little bit where you started with the karate and GKR and a little bit of a history on that for me.
No worries. So, I started with GKR karate when I was 19 years old. I had no martial arts experience prior to that, but I used to play rugby league, and a lot of competitive sports and that kind of stuff. I had an opportunity to come in and become a member of GKR and start training in karate and, yes it’s been really great for my confidence, I was a really shy person when I first started I really hated public speaking, and that kind of thing and my confidence just sky rocketed since I started with GKR. I’ve always fantasised and had dreams of learning martial arts. I used to read the old Blitz magazines and things like that, try to learn the different moves out of there, but just for whatever reason never got involved as kid, but I’ve been training since I was 19, so I’m 28 now, so nearly 10 years of training.
I’ve seen some great videos online and you’re all very active in the karate community, and you’re obviously very talented. My little nephew does karate, little brown belt that he is, and he loves it as well. It’s a great discipline for the kids to learn and also adults to learn as well and I think it serves you well in the community if you feel, you’re walking down a dark alley, you make sure you feel safe doing that I suppose without endangering yourself.
Oh, definitely. Yeah, although I mean 65 or 70% of our students are children. But, I think adults maybe realise how beneficial it is to do some fitness training and martial arts training even in your 30’s and 40’s or even older. Some people are even training in their 70’s. I had a guy I had lunch with today, he’s an instructor with us and he started training when he was 62, and he’s about 64 now so, yeah.
Wow, yeah. And how long does it take somebody when they start karate, to go from the first belt right through to the black belt? Or whatever the belt is that you need to get to to become the master.
Yeah, great question. It depends on the individual, you know, some people are just natural at it and they can up and run with it. Some people take a long time, and it depends how often you train and that kind of stuff. If you’re serious, you take it serious, you get serious results. If you’re kind of casual about it, it’s a really GKR really too is a very community, family kind of orientated club. You know, people just come down just like being around us, and doing a bit of training, not really taking the grading and not too serious about getting a black belt, but then you get the people who are really serious about it and then
Little bit competitive, it doesn’t matter how old you are, there’s still a competitive streak in us all.
Yeah, for sure, yeah yeah definitely.
Yeah, and tell me, you’ve started a programme which is in schools and GKR seems to help the young kids in those school programmes with the karate and there’s a couple focus points that you do and what they get out of doing those programmes in schools. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Yeah, well it’s kind of started I guess over the last year, was going into public schools, and running two types of programmes. We’ve got a stranger danger safety awareness programme which goes through 10 traps to avoid when being approached by someone and how to get around those things, and we also go through, in those programmes go through three self-defense, or escape tactics I guess it’s called, like for little kids if someone grabs them and that kind of thing and how to get out of those kinds of situations. And the other one is more of like a karate fit programme, which is an ongoing, you usually go for the term, and it goes over 10 weeks, some of it is just 5 week programmes, and here with those we just go through, we sort of start small with the foundation, the basics, which is their and then we move onto more advanced things as the term goes on, but the main part of that is teaching self-defense and giving a bit of head start I guess if they want to further their karate career after.
I’ve seen some terrific videos on GKR’s Facebook site, that the kids just love it. They love turning up, it doesn’t feel like a chore to them. It doesn’t feel like it’s a “Oh, gosh, I’ve got to go to karate,” it’s they can’t wait to get to karate, and they can’t wait to get the results as a result of attending the classes with all the teachers and senseis.
Did you manage to check out the Region 2 Facebook page?
Yes, I did, and it’s so cool.
Did you watch the try not to laugh challenge?
I was going to say, the laughing challenge or the, you know, the win. It had me in stitches, I think even the photographer and videographer behind the scenes, she was struggling to keep a straight face as well.
Yeah, Natasha, she’s one of our students as well and I think she enjoyed it a lot too.
Big shout out to Natasha, she had a lot of fun and a big shout out to everybody from GKR and those people that are watching online and if anybody’s got any questions and they want to interact as we’re going through the broadcast, feel free to put them on the screen, we’re happy to get Mark to answer those questions and anything that you might have in regards to karate. So, in regards to the school programmes, is there some way that people can help out with those, because I know it’s only a small donation that might help a child be able to do these courses. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Yeah, well, the last few we’ve been running, we’ve got sponsorships from external companies to run the programme so it actually cost the children at those schools nothing, and it cost the school nothing as well so that’s a bonus. It’s probably as little as $2-3 per child to do a 5 week course. So it’s really not that much and it can help get kids through their stuff, and we really I guess rely on those companies to funding those things so we can run them to their full ability as well.
And you’re doing one in the Hawkesbury at the moment aren’t you? You’re just about to start a programme?
Yeah, we’re just about to kick off 2. We’ve got 1 at Hobartville Public School, which is great, I think they’ve got about 400 students there, so we’re going to be running that a whole day actually, so we’re going to be spending all of Thursday there, it’s just in term 4, so we’re spending all of Thursday there just teaching every one of them karate basics and stuff so it’s going to be a massive day, a lot of fun. And the other one is Windsor South Public School, so we ran one there term 4 last year, and it was massive, it was really really good. That was a 6 week course there, and it was awesome.
I think the kids just love it, and they love being there with their mates and just learning and just sort of playing a bit of team sport together and working out how to do one on one challenges. What do you find with karate is the most challenging for people that want to start?
Good question. I guess maybe seeing themselves as being someone who can do it. Seeing themselves wearing the white outfit and the belt and badge and that kind of stuff. Maybe they feel like it’s a bit beyond them to do and maybe they don’t have the self belief to stand up in front of a group and do the training I guess, but once you start doing it you see some success and you start feeling like “I’m getting the hang of this” and you see the overall health benefits of doing it, you stick around longer and you form a relationship with the instructor and they kind of coach you and guide you and try to get you to each of those belts and levels and hopefully one day you can even get a black belt.
Yeah, absolutely. It seems to me, with what you do and what the team at GKR do, is a real sense of belonging, and a real sense of community. Would that be right?
Oh, definitely. Yeah, GKR karate massive family club, as moms and dads are trying together, with their kids and grandparents as well. There was a tournament a couple years ago and there was a thing called a team kata and kata is basically like a pattern of moves where, it’s sort of like a dance routine, but basically in this team kata there was three generations, so those three people in the team kata, so they had a granddaughter, the mom, and the grandmother doing a kata together and they won a bronze medal at the tournament.
Nice to have the generations through the family and obviously they’re getting a lot out of it, and not only that, you all get to train and have fun together and get on the field together. What do you call it, the mat? Is it the mat in karate?
Yeah, well you can train on the mats if you’re doing like a tournament, sparring, that kind of thing you want to use those, but we mostly train on hardwood floors.
I think you’re a bit of an iron man behind the scenes or even on the scenes with your Facebook page and what you do, but what sort of training does somebody like you have to do to keep as fit as you are and win what you do?
That’s a good question too, I had a couple people ask me that question not long ago, like the last few days. “What do you do to keep your strength up?” I think it should be a rule for yourself, I mean when I go to the gym I don’t like going there, sometimes I don’t like going to the gym, sometimes I don’t like waking up and going to work out that kind of thing. And sometimes I don’t like training, but once you’ve made a decision to do that, now the new excitement is the discipline of doing it every day. It’s a really rare day if I don’t exercise.
I think, too, it’s all about aligning our behaviours with where we want to be, because if we set a goal that we want to be fit or we want to be the best sensei or we want to be the best trainer in karate, you can’t do that by sleeping in, you can’t do that by eating hamburgers and chips for lunch and by not doing the exercise that you need to do. You’ve got to be disciplined I would imagine, and just set those, that ideal week and just go for it.
What you mentioned with the iron man thing, though, that was actually, someone took the photo on the right, which is me. Someone actually made that up from a tournament we had last year at the end of the year, and I did a kata, just the performance, and someone stole that photo and put it next to the iron man kind of doing a similar thing mashed it up and sent it to me. So, I stole that and yeah, I don’t think anyone calls me iron man or anything, I just did the video to be fun.
Well I’ve seen some of the videos and you look pretty iron man to me and you’re out there doing lots of things for the crew there. Who is Mark? And family? Those sorts of things, are they all involved in karate as well?
Yeah, my daughter, she’s six and she tends to tag long to class and that kind of thing. She doesn’t train so much and get involved in the process of doing the grades and that kind of thing. Her and I occasionally spar, and kick and just muck around that kind of stuff. I think sometimes, when you try to be tough, and play that role, that sensei role in the class, you know, I’ve had my daughter come and train with me before, and she gets freaked out because sometimes I’ll be a bit of a different person teaching. So she’s like, “why is dad angry at me?”
Yeah, and yet you’re just putting on that iron man mask that you have to do, and part of what you are on the field or on the mat as you say.
I think she knows how laid back and how fun I am at home. Especially when you’ve got large classes with kids, adults, everyone, that you can’t, you know we have fun, and we get casual a bit too, but you gotta have that serious look sometimes, otherwise kids can, you know you give them an inch and they take a mile kind of thing, and they think everything’s okay.
And, for those that are watching that don’t know, what is a sensei, and how do you become one?
A sensei is a coach, or a teacher, and to become one with GKR, you need to be super keen, super passionate. You don’t have to have the best karate technique, but you gotta have a real passion for helping people, and passion for your karate and train really frequently, and have big goals and that kind of thing. I guess have good communication skills, and be able to communicate that with other people to help them get to where you’re at. Each of those people that we select, go through a 6 week intensive training programme, and then at the end of that, hopefully come out with their sensei degree, and they start helping out in classes for a bit and then one day getting up to teaching their own classes.
Okay, that’s terrific. And how long would it take somebody to get to that point?
Again, I guess it depends on the individual and their background. Going from scratch, with a good personality, probably a year and a half, two years, of good training to start to help out in classes and teaching and that kind of thing. In region 2, which it has split up into regions, my region is region 2, we’ve got around 80, 86 instructors who teach nearly 60 classes throughout the region. And all those guys are volunteers, and they volunteer their time each week to teach those classes, and help the students get to the next level, and I help them get to the next level.
That’s terrific. And the regions that you cover, you talk about region 2, where do you go from in 2, and is this region 1?
Yeah, good question. So, region 2 is probably the largest region in GKR geographically we go from Katoomba all the way through Cherrybrook and Castle Hill and that kind of thing so, it’s a big area with about 34 suburbs that we’re in and 60 classes in those 34 suburbs, and it’s a big thing and we’ve got a big responsibility I guess with that big area to bring high quality self-defense classes and karate classes you know martial arts classes to those people.
Yeah, for sure. And so if somebody wanted to get involved with GKR, they wanted to start becoming either a sensei or even start with the basics, and just get the first belt down pat, how would they get in contact with you, who do they need to speak to?
Yeah, probably the best bet would be to call me directly, I’m not sure if we can share my number maybe in the comments.
I can share your number, please tell me what your number is and I’ll type it in.
04 50 86 1018. So, my name’s Mark and I’m the region manager in Sydney, karate instructor for Sydney region 2. The other thing they can do is jump on the GKRkarate.com website and just send an inquiry through the, fill out like location tracker, or location finder and just find the closest location, you can send an inquiry in and details in somebody will contact you and get your local classes.
Now that’s great. And with Mother’s Day coming up, we always love to reward those special moms that do so much for us. In the karate world, how can we help the moms that want to get fit or just continue their karate journey?
Yeah, definitely, I mean like you and I discussed before we went live, and you know, any mom who would like to get involved between now and their Mother’s day, we’d be happy to organise a free membership and some free gear and stuff to get them trained and say thank you for being an awesome mom. And you get them training and if they have an interest in it, they can take it further and like you said they can become a sensei or a senpai and things like that.
What’s a senpai in comparison to a sensei?
A senpai is an assistant instructor. Well, actually one of my really good instructors is Davy Wujay and he told me that sensei means big brother and senpai means little brother, and shihan, which is, actually the definition of shihan, which is a top instructor is classified as an expert in karate, so shihan is actually like father. So you have a shihan, sensei and senpai, so it’s like a family, and teaching classes with family as well.
I was just going to say that it sort of basically resembles a hierarchy of a family and big little brother and looking out for one another and somebody who’s the an expert and mom and dad sort of looking over the clan and making sure that everybody’s holding steady and on the right path in life. Well, it’s been great to speak to you today, I’ll put the links up as well for people to find GKR karate, but I really appreciate your time and if anybody wants to you know GKR karate and putting some money towards some of the programmes for the schools, if you’re a business and you’d like to support locally to the Hawkesbury or to any of the region 1 or 2 for GKR I’m sure Mark would love to hear from you. I really appreciate everybody being online today and quite a few people who have been online, and we like to say hello to everybody and if you’ve got any other questions that you can’t get through to Mark and you want to speak to me and I can shoot them across to Mark, I’d be happy to do so. So, thanks again Mark, really appreciate your time and look forward to catching up with you on the next episode.
No worries, thank you so much.
You’re welcome.
Talk soon. Bye.
See you later. Bye bye.
Thank you so much for taking time out, listening to today’s episode. If you have any questions on the process of buying, selling, leasing or management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and I’d really appreciate it if you could spread the word by liking and sharing this episode with your family and friends. I’m Rachael Goldsworthy and I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of the drive home to Hawkesbury.

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