Last week saw a great mix of the community, from people of the land to people from the government coming together to participate in the Regional Drought Resilience Planning Program for Burnett and Mary.
On Tuesday, 2 December, the Regional Drought Resilience Planning Program stopped in Kingaroy as part of the tour, where Regional Development Australia Wide Bay Burnett hosted members of the community and local government branches to discuss procedures for dryer times.
“It’s all those organisations working hand in hand together to build that resilience,” Regional Drought Resilience Program Coordinator Tim Sayre said.
“It’s really great to see such a turn out of such a diverse group of people representing this community.”
The aim of these workshops is for community members from the North and South Burnett, Cherbourg, Bundaberg, Fraser Coast and Gympie regions to come together and go through the drought plans that were written two years prior to ensure they remain relevant.
To ensure that the activities and procedures that were identified by the community remain relevant for the community, and if they are, what needs to be done first, what’s the correct order, and how can they be implemented to benefit the community.
“The whole program itself is about ‘how do we build resilience in not only our farming communities but in our wider communities as well,” Mr Sayre said.
“How do we build resilience in our businesses, in our individuals and the community at large, so when drought hits next, we’re ready for it far better than we have been in the past, and we can get through it better to make sure that we have strength in our communities and that resilience to get through it, and our communities to support it.”
The Kingaroy stop on the tour saw participants talk about “how do we get information out to people about what’s going on,” and “how do we find out from people on the land what they are looking for and what they need particularly as we go forward.”
Mr Sayre said, “the whole action plan has quite a number of things in there both on how we watch for drought. Activities that we need to be able to see when drought is coming, right through to the sort of things we can do to make sure that people are in the right mindset for when it happens.”
“Those sort of things on how we can do that. That’s what’s been talked about so far,” he said.
A total of six workshops were held across the region, with the North Burnett’s Gayndah workshop postponed from its original date, as well as one workshop online.
“It’s getting out to those communities, and more needs to be done, so we know there’s going to be more workshops in the future as we continue to ask if this is the right thing,” Mr Sayre said.
“So the tour is about that first cut at getting people to say ‘this is still relevant, this is still what we need, or these are the things that are now changed’.”
“We don’t want to preempt what communities are telling us. What we’re trying to do is find out the community’s need, want and order,” he said. “The things we are hearing from them is that people want to see action on the ground.”
This tour and workshops are part of the process, and if people would like to have their input in the implementation plans, Regional Development Australia Wide Bay Burnett is happy to collaborate and have these conversations and receive input.
“This is just the start of what we’re doing. It’s not the end of it, and people can still be involved if they want to be.”
For more information visit: rdawidebayburnett.org.au/
