Regional Extra 140623

Bringing words to life

A SHARED creative passion has seen Stanley couple Janet Tweedie and Roger Timewell immerse themselves in the arts in their much-loved local communities since moving from Canberra six years ago.

With a love of the theatre, Janet joined Beechworth Theatre Company where she has taken on the role as president while the pair ignited the successful Winterwords Festival three years ago.

Janet’s love of acting began as a youngster and she then followed her creative heart in later years.

“I was one of those kids that did the shows in front of families with the kid next door,” she said.

Janet dabbled in piano and ballet when young, played the French horn a little in high school and loved singing.

While training to be a teacher in her early 20s the aspiring performer discovered a private acting school in a student newspaper advertisement with a free introduction.

“It was a group-based ensemble and I fell in love with acting and studied with the school for the next three years learning every aspect of the craft as well as directing,” she said.

Adding to her creative bow, Janet undertook classical singing lessons for

ANIMAL CARE

By CORAL COOKSLEY

several years too.

With a discovery of musical theatre, Janet’s acting wings flew when she scored a chorus role in the classical musical ‘My Fair Lady’ at Perth’s Garrick Theatre followed by an Oklahoma production with Western Australia’s opera company’s musical theatre group.

“I completely then fell in love with the combination of acting and singing,” she said.

“I also worked on the Swan River wine cruises as an entertainer singing while in and out of teachers college.”

With a move to Canberra where she lived for 27 years, the performer’s acting pursuits stalled as she raised a family over that time.

“I tried to go back to singing lessons but when you’re bringing up three kids and studying, it wasn’t possible,” Janet said.

“I undertook a degree in psychology, followed by honours then a PhD in psychology.”

When seeing her children become involved in music as well as her daughter participating in musical theatre, Janet’s passion for acting and singing rekindled and she started auditioning.

■ Continued page 6

HEALTH

YOUR GARDEN

◆ IMAGINATIVE COUPLE: Janet Tweedie and Roger Timewell had the idea to create a celebration of words that was more than a Writers Festival.

PHOTO: Coral Cooksley

with BELINDA

YOUR

with DIANA

Eye ulcers – ouch!

IS your animal winking at you, or are they trying to tell you that they have a sore eye?

Ocular pain appears in animals as holding the eye fully or partly closed, avoiding bright light, discharge from the eye and sometimes attempting to rub the eye either with their paws, on their legs or on other surfaces.

The most common cause of ocular pain is ulcers in the cornea and deeper layers of the eye.

Corneal ulcers can affect cats, dogs, horses and cattle.

The cornea is a specialised layer of skin which acts as a protective window for the eye.

A corneal ulcer occurs when there is damage to the layers of the cornea, often from a trauma.

Other reasons for ulcers include eyelid abnormalities, grass seeds, decreased tear production, problems with the eye blinking or infections.

These ulcers can range in severity from those just affecting the superficial layers, to ulcers which extend right through to the deepest layers of the cornea.

If left untreated corneal ulcers can potentially cause the eye to rupture leading to blindness and irreparable damage.

A veterinarian can diagnose superficial corneal ulcers by closely examining the eye and

with Lorna Undy from Wangaratta Veterinary Clinic

with the use of a fluorescent green stain. If an ulcer is present, it will soak up the stain and fluoresce under UV light.

Once a diagnosis of a corneal ulcer is made, the treatment will depend on the severity of the ulcer.

Superficial ulcers will usually heal by themselves, with a vet prescribing antibiotic ointment to prevent any further infection whilst healing takes place.

Regular re-visits to the clinic will be required to monitor the eye during this time.

Complicated or deep ulcers may require surgery to help the healing process, sometimes requiring referral to a specialist.

Corneal ulcers can deteriorate quickly, so it is very important that you have your vet examine any eye problems early with your pet. Some medications can even make corneal ulcers worse, so it is not recommended to treat eye problems at home but rather consult with your local veterinarian as soon as you notice any squinting, discharge or pain.

This Day in History, 1975

MORE people than the Springhurst Primary School had seen for many a long year turned up on this day.

Former student, Cr Colin Diffey, assisted by Cr Bill Diffey, opened the festivities.

The honour of being the oldest pupil to return for the school centenary went to Lizzie Wighton, at 88 years old.

A Centennial Ball was held at night and celebrations continued the following day.

THERE may not have been much snow around for the King’s Birthday long weekend, but the 2023 snow season still got off to a bang at Falls Creek, Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain.

Fireworks were just part of the range of activities, inside and out, to keep visitors and mountain residents entertained, with around 5cms of the white stuff from last week’s cold snap offering a glimpse of what we all hope is more to come.

In fact, the Bureau of Meteorology was forecasting potential snow falls today, with between 5-10mm on Sunday, and 1-5mm on Monday likely at both Falls Creek and Mt Hotham.

PET CORNER

With good snowmaking opportunities over the coming week, it will not be long until lifts will be open for skiing and boarding.

For the latest snow reports for both mountain resorts go to www.skifalls.com.au and www. mthotham.com.au websites.

One of the highlights of the opening weekend at Mt Hotham was the charity auction of 27 chairs from Mt Hotham’s iconic first ever chairlift, The Playground Chair, which opened in 1969 and was the main access lift back ton the village until 1993 when the Village chair opened.

A large group of people gathered at The Bird for the auction

WANGARATTA RSPCA has many lovable creatures waiting for the perfect family to take them home. If you want to add a furry friend to your home, call (03) 5722 2874 or visit the shelter at 1 Connell Street Wangaratta. Wangaratta RSPCA’s animal adoption source code is BR100934

PRETTY PRINCESS: Princess was named for her lady-like demeanor. She is a polite and beautiful girl with a gentle and patient nature who may be suitable to living with primary aged children or older. Princess wouldn’t be suitable living with cats but may enjoy the company of another friendly dog. She loves to snuggle and don’t be fooled by her age because she still has a lot of love and energy to give. Her microchip number is 956000016678750. PHOTO: RSPCA.

and raised $75,800 to support local charities through Hotham’s Epic Promise Foundation.

A further 30 chairs are available for an online auction via the Givergy platform on Sunday June 11, with bidding closing on June 18 at 6pm.

To bid on the remaining chairs visit: https://www.givergy. com.au/ HothamPlayground ChairliftAuction/

Mt Buffalo has seen some light dustings of snow, according to cross country ski school owner David Chitty.

He said while not enough for tobogganing, there is a good amount of snow for sightseeing for the next couple of weeks.

Gillian Bencke, Cope, 2020/21 detail, wool, silk, cotton, sequins, beads, brass,

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Winner WCTA 2021, Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection

◆ OPENING BID: The Bird at Mt Hotham was packed on opening weekend for the auction of chairs from the mountain's first ever chairlift.

Government funding for hearing aids

DO you wonder about why you might occasionally miss the message, especially in background noise?

What about the television volume?

What strategies might you use to help get the message better, whether in quiet or in noisy situations?

A hearing test can be of assistance in understanding these problems and your local Audiology clinic is a resource you can access.

If you are on a pension or hold an eligible DVA card, you can access hearing services, including a hearing test, at no cost.

This program is administered by the federally funded Hearing Services Program (HSP).

It provides subsidised high-quality hearing services and devices to eligible Australians with hearing loss through their voucher scheme.

The ongoing care through the HSP assists people to mange their hearing loss and improve the way they interact with their community.

Eligible adults who do not have a hearing loss can also benefit from an annual hearing check through the program.

Hearing services providers, such as Wangaratta Audiology, can help you find out whether you have a hearing issue and what management options are available.

A comprehensive hearing assessment means you can have a hearing device fitted properly.

If the use of a hearing device is recommended, hearing aids and other assistive listening devices fitted through the HSP include both fully subsidised hearing aids and partially subsidised aids. Follow-up appointments and annual review ensure the continued optimal function of your hearing aids.

The HSP program also provides support to manage the costs of looking after your hearing devices through an annual maintenance agreement.

with Diana Bienvenu, Audiologist, Wangaratta Audiology

HSP also funds Hearing Australia to provide hearing services for people under the age of 26 years, eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and people who need specialist services or live in a remote area.

For example, for HSP-eligible people who have a cochlear implant, maintenance for the implant can be organised.

Each client can choose their hearing services provider, provided that the next hearing provider is accredited with the Hearing Services Program.

If your circumstances change or you decide that you would prefer to see someone else you can contact a new provider and arrange a transfer.

Your information will be forwarded to the new provider.

Your maintenance agreement will also transfer with you, and you will then contact the new clinic about any question.

If you wish to check your eligibility of have questions about the services which you would like to receive, please contact your local hearing clinic, Wangaratta Audiology, on 03 5722 4433.

Our staff members are always happy to answer your questions and assist you in understanding the options available through the HSP Program.

Perfect time for home grown winter remedies

TEAS, oils and salves are the best-known home remedies herbalist have in their tool kit to help manage viral infections, cuts, grazes and basic burns.

Many of these can be made from plants grown in the garden over winter.

With a little preparation and early season planting you could have your own DIY tool kit ready to use by spring.

1. Calendula officinalis: Pot marigold is a cheerful yellow flowering daisy like flower that makes a beautifully healing oil used in creams for rashes and cuts.

It is freely reseeding annual, best grown in full sun.

Collect the petals, cover in olive oil in a jar and leave at room temperature for 4-6 weeks.

Ensure the petals stay covered by the oil.

Strain and apply oil neat or mix into vitamin E based creams.

Alternatively dry the flowers well and use in a tea to gently detox and promote healthy skin.

2 Melissa Officinalis: Lemonbalm grows like a weed in the right conditions and will add a lovely bright green patch to your garden.

Typically this one flourishes Spring, but I have noticed mine currently in full form.

It smells divine.

With its incredibly uplifting in scent and taste, this herb makes the perfect cup of afternoon tea for fried and frazzled nervous systems.

Fresh leaves are best.

Add 5-6 crushed leaves to hot water.

3 Peppermint: Like Lemonbalm,

Peppermint thrives in sunny spots and will overtake your garden in early winter if in full sun.

It won’t like the frost.

However, with good compost or a liquid feed in a pot you will have a plentiful supply.

Use Peppermint in salads or teas, fresh or dried work well.

4. Mullein: The flowers of this plant make a beautiful oil, which can be used used for its antiviral properties in the ear.

It softens ear wax, stimulates microcirculation in the ear and eases pain.

As a tea Mullein leaves can be steeped in hot water and useful for viral coughs, sometimes combined with thyme.

Make the oil using the same instructions as the calendula oil.

The seeds germinate in winter and thrive in cold harsh winters.

The flowers wont be ready until Spring, but use the young fresh leaves as soon as they grow.

5 Thyme: Perfect in a pot, thyme grows best with tough love.

Simply water as needed, but do not overwater. Thyme has incredible antiviral properties.

You can make a thyme throat syrup by filling a jar ¾ full of fresh thyme and covering completely with local honey.

Mix well and leave to steep for three weeks, ensuring thyme is covered.

Then remove the thyme springs and use the honey one tsp at a time for sore throats, or in your herbal teas.

with Naturopath Belinda McPherson (BHSCI. NATUROPATHY)

Bringing words to life

■ From page 1

Joining the Queanbeyan Players (QP), she performed in many shows in ensemble and principal roles over five years, and in 2015 Janet was thrilled to direct QP’s production of ‘My Fair Lady’.

“Besides Roger and I falling in love with Beechworth, one of the reasons in choosing to move to the town when we decided to leave Canberra was Beechworth had a theatre company,”

Janet said.

For her UK-born partner Roger whose work travels had covered Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, his approach to most things in life has been creative.

Roger has a degree in philosophy and worked in information technology (IT) for most of his career but has always had a passion for visual arts.

The pair revel in an exchange of ideas between them with a buzzing energy created from their different points of views and backgrounds.

“Great complementary ideas stem

from our conversations,” Roger said.

Among them had been the conceived idea of a celebration of words in every shape and form with Winterwords started three years ago to spice up cold, wintry nights in Beechworth.

Sitting in a pub in Bendigo, the imaginative couple had eyed posters advertising the Bendigo Writers Festival sparking an idea to create an event for a celebration of words being more than a Writers Festival.

“We wanted it to be inclusive, affordable, and more open, and to be created for the people by the people,” Janet said.

“We’re building it for the community and if the tourists want to join in, they are welcome.”

“Writers Festivals are great, but we wanted something different, to be more than authors and books, and to remain small and focus on as much local talent as possible.”

In fleshing out ideas the pair tossed around how words are

used in different ways.

“There’s all sorts of ways in which we use words such as in writing, music, art, poetry, playing games, drama, singing and much more.” Janet said.

“We engaged with local creatives to suggest our thoughts, who then came together with their own skills and amazing ideas for topics.

“From that point it grew to our first Winterwords in 2021.”

Janet said her contribution to Winterwords has been bringing everyone together with their creative energy as well as her organisational and marketing skills.

“It’s really hard work in the lead up to running 25 events, with most in two days, but it is so rewarding seeing people having a great time.”

In creating Winterwords, Janet and Roger feel they will leave a legacy of an inclusive event with everyone contributing as part of a team.

“If people take on our ideas and they are adopted elsewhere, that would be rewarding too,” Roger said.

“With my involvement in Beechworth Theatre Company, I would love to see a thriving theatre company financially secure and that keeps producing high quality performances a couple of times a year with a dedicated band of people willing to step up and organise to keep it growing.”

“You need to be the best community theatre company for a little town like Beechworth that you can be.”

“I’m big on cooperation, vibrancy and not competition, and if you walk away from something that you have helped to create, support or reinvigorate along with many other people, it’s rewarding to see those ventures continue.”

A non-profit organisation, Winterwords Autonomous Collective Inc is a registered association.

For more information about an exciting Winterwords program between June 21 and 25 visit www.winterwords.com.au

◆ CREATIVE HEARTS: Janet Tweedie and Roger Timewell created the Winterwords festival as a way to celebrate words in every way shape and form.

NorthEast JOBS

Circulating in Wangaratta, Myrtleford, Bright, Mt Beauty, Beechworth, Yackandandah, Rutherglen, Chiltern and districts

GREAT JOBS FOR GREAT PEOPLE

The following opportunities now exist for enthusiastic, safety focused people with suitable experience and qualifications. Please visit our website to find out more about current positions available across Mawsons business divisions.

Kyneton – Concrete Truck Driver – KYNE004

Myrtleford – Concrete Truck Driver – MYRT004

Rochester – Concrete Truck Driver / Batcher – ROCH001

Wangaratta – Concrete Truck Driver – WANG002

Mildura – Concrete Cartage Contractor – CCSMILD03

Shepparton – Concrete Cartage Contractor – CCSSHEP07

Mansfield – Concrete Truck Driver – MANS003

Lake Cooper – Quarry/Loader Operator – LKCQ004

www.mawsons.com.au/careers/join-us

Advertising Account Manager (Full-Time)

Wangaratta Chronicle is looking for a driven and committed individual to join the advertising team at our office in Wangaratta. If you can always see an opportunity and enjoy the idea of helping businesses grow, then we want to talk to you. To be successful in this role you will be able to demonstrate

Excellent work ethic, organisational skills & attention to detail with a drive to achieve results.

An ability to communicate with a wide range of people across various industries. Create innovative business proposals, develop collaborative partnerships and provide excellent customer service both internally and externally.

Taking over an established client list, you will be selling advertising and digital marketing opportunities to existing clients while looking to drive new business opportunities. An ability to develop and maintaining business relationships will be the key to your success in this role.

An attractive remuneration package is offered including a base salary, commission and employer superannuation contributions.

North East Media is an independent media group publishing award winning publications in print and online across North East Victoria and beyond.

Please forward your application and covering letter to Ian Pople Sales Manager at the Wangaratta Chronicle, ipople@nemedia.com.au

Bacteriophages - the super bug killer?

IMAGINE an organism that could hunt you down across a vast distance, attach itself to you via its long, spindly, barbed legs, and then inject it’s genetic material into you - effectively taking over your body and forcing you to incubate and birth millions more of these organisms which in turn burst out of your body and hunt down more of your kind.

Sounds like something out of Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’, right?

Well, I have some good news.

These organisms are very real, and you’re currently covered in them.

Billions of them, in fact.

Collectively known as bacteriophages, these microscopic organisms are, very fortunately, harmless to humans, but prove quite deadly to bacteria and may just hold the answer to the problem of superbugs - bacteria that have evolved and become immune to antibiotics.

Let’s back up a moment

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, people would commonly die of all sorts of bacterial infection.

The smallest cut, if infected, could prove terminal for people, and infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhea or rheumatic fever would often result in the death of a patient.

In 1928, Professor of Bacteriology Alexander Fleming returned from a holiday and discovered something peculiar in a petri dish containing Staphylococcus - bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses.

It was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing.

The zone immediately around the mold - later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatumwas clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.

Fleming found that his “mold juice” was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus.

About a decade later, pathologist Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford University began the work of turning penicillin from a laboratory curiosity to a life saving drug.

Wartime constraints made progress difficult for the researchers, but by the mid 1940s, commercial production and distribution was in full swingbeginning the era of antibiotics, a miracle medicine that has saved countless lives.

In the words of Jeff Goldblum, ‘Life finds a way’.

The invention of antibiotics might have been a ‘happily ever after’ moment for humanity, but bacteria is an organism, just like every other form

of life on Earth and, just like every other form of life, it evolves and adapts in order to survive a changing environment.

As the use of antibiotics became more widespread, and it’s usage became more spurious as production costs decreased, more and more bacteria was exposed to antibiotics.

As a result, the strongest strains of a virus would live long enough to reproduce and eventually superbugs were born - monstrous bacteria that are immune to antibiotics.

It’s estimated that around 290 people in Australia die each year from resistant superbugs, and approximately 23,000 people died in America in 2017.

Alarmingly, it’s estimated that if current trends continue, superbugs could kill more people than cancer by 2050.

Enter the bacteriophage

While the concept of injecting a genocidal, mass replicating virus into our bloodstreams might, at first glance, seem like an incredibly bad idea, bacteriophages possess a number of interesting properties that make them attractive as a treatment against bacterial infection.

Firstly, while antibiotics are a kind of carpetbomb solution to killing bacteria - killing off good

and bad bacteria in our bodies indiscriminately - bacteriophages are specialised killers, only targeting a specific bad bacteria.

They are so specialized, in fact, that they are unable to harm humans at all, our cells are simply too different.

Secondly, while bacteria have evolved and become immune to antibiotics, bacteriophages also evolve - effectively engaging in an arms race with bacteria that they are presently winning by a landslide.

Thirdly, even if bacteria did manage to evolve and become resistant to bacteriophages, current studies show that in order to build such resistance, bacteria must give up its immunity to antibiotics. This would allow us to trap bacteria in a catch-22 situation - die by bacteriophage, or die by antibiotic.

It’s still early days, and while some experimental bacteriophage treatments have been conducted with very effective results, authoritative bodies - such as the Food and Drug Administration - have yet to approve the treatment, leaving pharmaceutical investors reluctant to provide necessary funds.

The future will tell if humanity teams up with bacteriophages in the next major against superbugs.

with Chris Febvre NEM GRAPHIC ARTIST cfebvre@nemedia.com.au

◆ ASSASSIN: In simplest terms, a bacteriophage is an organism that hunts down and infects specific types of bacteria, and it is these properties make them a potential weapon against superbugs.

PHOTO: Shutterstock