Urrbrae Agricultural High School Reunion – 30 years on …

November 28, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

It is always with a bit of in-trepidation that you attend a school reunion. Today was one of those days with the 30 year reunion of the leaving class of 1980 from Urrbrae Agricultural High School

How have people changed over the years, will they be recognisable? Even though we spent 5 years together – it was 30 years ago!

Well even with the passing time, we had all managed it well. OK there was a little bit more grey and maybe a few more kilo’s but all hadn’t changed all that much over the years.

Out of the leaving class, 14 made it today to Hahndorf to catch up and talk of old times and what has happened over the last 30 years. There were a lot of messages from others that were interstate or overseas. Paul Hancock did make the trip from Hong Kong to make it though and was good to catch up.

We were friends back then and the friendships were rekindled again today.

Hopefully it will be a little less than 30 years til the next one.

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Out and About

John Farnham the “Voice” in concert

November 20, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

One of our Station Officers at the Metropolitan Fire Service took part of in a run from Los Angeles to New York to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary and to raise funds for the victims of the attack. It was called the Tour of Duty.

It involved firefighters from Australia and United States together making the 4600 km journey over 31 days. John Farnham heard about the run and wanted to help out the cause and he provided 500 tickets to the Fire Service in each city he was doing a concert after the run.

Adelaide was one of the cities and the tickets were for a night on the green style concert at the Coopers Brewery. I scored 6 tickets in the end, getting Jenny & I, Danny & Diana and Bronny and Val Jackson (big Farnham fans) into the concert.

The night was warm and we had a good night with Val Jackson enjoying it the most thinking that she would not have got to the concert – she has not missed one of his concerts in South Australia.

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12 of 12, Family Life, Scott at Work, Scouts, Work Life

November 12 of 12 …

November 12, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

Another month down and another 12 of 12. This month a bit of work and a bit of play.

I woke up this morning at the State Training Centre at Brukunga as I was taking part in the first Senior Officer Bushfire / Emergency Management Forum. This involved the Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs of the Emergency Services (MFS / CFS / SES) and the Police Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners of SAPOL. The high level forum discussed the Victorian Royal Commission for the 2009 Bushfires and came up with some resolution on how South Australia will tackle bushfires in the fire season to come.

The forum concluded at lunchtime and it was time to head back down to work for a few more hours before heading out with the family and 500 other scouts to the Distinctive Home Dome to watch the Adelaide 36er’s take on the NZ Breakers in basketball. The Scouts had a promotion on tonight including a half time show with abseiling, tent pitching and sand buggies. The tickets for the game were free as part of the promotion.

The game was an exciting one with the 36er’s being down by points early in the game before levelling in the 3rd quarter but ending up losing by 3 points. Not bad considering the NZ Breakers are leading the NBL competition at the moment.

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Family Life, Home Life, House Renovations

Birds in the attic …

November 6, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

Was heading home from work last night when Jenny rang through saying there were no lights in the house with the RCD tripping and not going back on when reset.

We knew that we had some young birds in the roof space. We thought there was 1 or 2 birds in there. This is the second year they have been there but they were no trouble last year. The original plan was to let then grow and leave the roof as they had before.

This year was to be different. When I got home, I checked the attic and found where they had chewed through a Gyprock panel creating a hole 500mm x 100mm. Not only that I counted 3 young birds.

It was then time to start lifting off roofing iron to see what else they had been chewing. I removed 5m of roofing, to find about 20m of wires and 2 light fittings chewed to death.

The hardest part then was to find an electrician who would do the job. Many I rang told me Xmas time so it was a phone call to a family friend who hasn’t quite retired yet and three hours later at 9pm, the wires had been replaced.

Today was spent putting the roof back on after bird proofing it. Just after I got the roof back on, the parents tried to get back in but thankfully the bird proofing worked.

In the end, I found 6 young birds which have now been relocated to our local Fauna Rescue person who already is hand rearing 7 parrots. The birds were Crimson Rosella’s.

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Firefighting, Geocaching, Scott at Work

A week in Port Lincoln …

November 4, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

One of our Regional Fire Stations is in Port Lincoln which has just been replaced with a new station. The new station is an impressive show-piece for the Metropolitan Fire Service and forms part of the Emergency Services Precinct where the Country Fire Service and State Emergency Service have also had new stations built.

I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Port Lincoln. The trip was to exercise the Regional Staff at the new station and integrate operations with the CFS for an notional wildfire occuring in our area then a second wildfire starting in our area then escaping into CFS area.

The exercise was on the Wednesday but I flew in a couple of days earlier to ensure that the crew were all familiar with the equipment and processes that are used by the MFS and CFS. The exercise went well with lessons learned by both the MFS and CFS personnel and hopefully the SAPOL Officers as well.

Even though it was a work trip, there was time after hours to get some caching in as well. There is a very active geocaching community in Port Lincoln with around 150 caches hidden around the town. In the 4 days I was there I managed to find 42 of them.