News & Updates

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And the year ends – not with a bang but in white. Just days off Christmas and with the world not ending – despite the dire predictions around the Mayan Calendar!

In my last blog I described visiting Rouyn Noranda (Quebec province, Canada) – then in the summer – and looking for a Moose.  The end of the year finds us back in RN visiting our daughter Jocie, her husband Pat and grandsons Alex and Beni – but with a very different landscape!  Everything is just white!  Snow is covering cars, houses, roads, lakes and trees – and is still falling.

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Travel has been a regular theme of my blogs – and this one is no different!  The last few months have seen me back in Chile running some enjoyable workshops on extension (“but what do we do differently in our extension work once we arrive at the farm?”).  I also had a good excuse to visit the Netherlands to take part in a PhD ceremony – this time on the examining committee’s side (last time was my own public PhD defence in 1994!).  We also managed to go to the Dutch Floriade – a once in a decade flower expo!

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It’s already April and getting cooler.  Leaves are already falling from the few deciduous trees we have in Toowoomba – not quite New England in the Fall!  The year started on the run and hasn’t really stopped.

I’ve found myself (more) involved in two local groups.  I have been in Toowoomba Landcare Group (http://toowoomba.ddrlandcare.org) for a number of years and am now doing my stint as Chair!  It changes the way you are involved when you have the extra responsibility – and have to face issues like getting funding needed to continue the work!  But it is great to work within your own community with a group of people who have the same aim – improving the environment of our community.

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This year has seen more international travel – for work and pleasure!  In the last blog, I reported on my last trip to Chile providing extension training – a great experience.  I have also had further opportunity to visit Hamilton in New Zealand with my DairyNZ monitoring and evaluation work – always a pleasure!

But travel has not always been about work.  In September/October, Robyn and I headed off to Canada to visit Vancouver and catch up with Ben (our IT and survey analysis guru), before heading off to New Brunswick to spend time with our grandchildren (and their parents of course!!!).  So between apple picking, admiring autumn leaves, reading and listening to stories – I managed to keep up on my Australian work when the others went to bed.  It was a good experience!

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I really didn’t expect to get back to Chile – or at least not so soon!  As you will see from an earlier blog, I travelled there to work with the dairy industry on the subject of “extension” in 2010.  I had thought it was a nice ‘one-off’ opportunity and enjoyed it on that basis.  Then I found myself back – this time running a more formal extension training course that I developed “ Camino a la adopcion – Extension de formacion”  – or “Pathway to Adoption – Extension training”.  Of course, I didn’t do the translation! – that was organised by the Consorcio Lechero who brought me over.  This organisation plays a coordinating role across the value chain within the dairy industry – and saw a need for improved extension approaches if Chile was to make the gains they wanted in the dairy industry.

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