NAROO BIGGER AND BETTER AFTER 31 YEARS

Warialda’s Naroo Frail Aged Hostel turns 31 on 22 April this year. The Naroo Advisory Committee would like to share this milestone with the local community as we hold an Open Day at the hostel on Saturday 18 March 2023.

A lot has changed since its beginnings in 1991-92.

The need for such a community facility had been known for some time, and so a committee consisting of Yallaroi Councillors Jack Coulton, Libby Bailey, and Judy Smith, along with community members Kathleen Wilkinson, Jean Davis and Muriel Plain was formed.

A Development Application was submitted by Jim Gossage, the Yallaroi Shire General Manager, and a suitable architect was sought, with twentytwo expressions of interest coming from many centres across the state. Eventually, a Mudgee firm of architects accepted the challenge, and the process was begun.

Land was resumed and purchased for $12,000, grants for the project sought, and a community funding drive was commenced, eventually raising a contribution of #116,000 towards the final cost of just over $550,000.

The hostel, a ten-bed facility, was officially opened by Senator Sue West on 22 April, 1992, and we were off and running. During the thirty years since its inception, much has been happening at Naroo.

In 1996, it was extended to a 15-bed facility.

In 2007 major additions and alterations were completed and the hostel would now accommodate twenty-one residents, and in 2013, fifteen new beds were added to the hostel’s capacity, with ten of these new beds being dementia-specific beds.

Today, the hostel is regularly operating at its full capacity of 36 beds.

The Manager, Mrs Sharon Baker and her staff are working closely with Dementia Australia, making use of some generous grant funding to reconfigure the facilities to better comply with regulations.

The hostel today bears little resemblance to the hostel of 1992.

We would like to show interested people in our district what changes have been put in place over the years at our open day on Saturday, 18 March 2023. Naroo will be open from 10.00am until 3.00pm. Join us for morning tea at 10.30am and a barbecue lunch at 12.30pm.

Guided tours of the hostel will take place during the day, and an information session on financial obligations for prospective residents will be conducted by Mrs Baker.

The day is free, and we would be pleased to welcome all those Shire residents who are interested. For catering purposes, we would like to hear from you by Monday 13 March if you plan to be there.

Call: 0437 446 309 – Rod Smith or 0448 291 274 – Robbie Burge

Alternative Crop Opportunity

Gwydir Shire Council, in conjunction with TSARA Aroma and Flowers are seeking interest from local landholders who would like further information about growing alternative crops. Please read below, and contact Gwydir Shire Council on 02 6724 2000 to register your interest.

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Mr. Rajesh J Bhadarka, native Indian and the Director of Tsara Aroma and Flavors, a family company involved in cultivation, processing and exporting of premium spices like vanilla, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, cocoa and other tropical spices from Madagascar and also at other origins to the rest of the world for decades!

I did visit Australia in 2019 and in 2022 with an itinerary prepared by the Department of Agriculture (DAF) team and had the opportunity to verify on ground conditions of climate, soil and available landmass together with the Australian context of farming. I recently also had e-mail communication with Agro Commissioner of NSW.

From our analysis, it is clear that NSW have potential of becoming one of the Premium Herb and Spice growing hubs with suitable climate, soil, landmass and capable growers. We also noticed that in most of the cases, the existing commodities grown by the growers are inexpensive perishable commodities for local markets maximum up to either Sydney or Melbourne markets. Whereas the circumstances are meant for something more premium and value added crops for global markets. We intend to grow premium spices which are > 05X in value than current traditional crops with intention to also set up the value added processing alongside cultivation, we aim to serve the vast premium global market as it fits well to the Australian grown products and is beneficial to rural grower communities at large.

Our aim is to replicate cultivation, processing and exporting of premium spices like vanilla, clove, cinnamon, Paprika, Star Anise, nutmeg, peppercorns and herbs like Fennel, Cumin, coriander, black sesame along with the value added processing to serve the global markets. Most of these Herbs and Spice crops are almost non-existent at commercial level in Australia at this moment due to unknown reasons.

Though, we are made aware of the large farm setup, labour shortage as well as high cost structures in Australia, we are of the strong opinion that these crops with exemplary commercial rewards and are compatible with mechanical cultivation/harvesting with large demands for the global markets can be the future of diversified agricultural industry in Australia. It is our aim that out of $167bn global markets of herbs and spices, we only aims to serve 1% of the premium markets valued @ $1.7bn as these segments perfectly fit for Aussie context on commercials as well as “cleanlabel” acceptance.

For us the real challenge is to find the grower partners in the rural areas as we are unable to establish independently due to our smaller scale planning whereas the global clients are expecting large volumes of the clean-label value-added products from the country like Australia.

So in order to get more support on this, I am reaching out to you to request you whether the Council will be able to assist us in introducing or connecting us with some large growers within the region, especially Horticulture and Broadacres crop growers which we believe to be struggling to make enough money wherein with our premium spice cultivation project, we can utilise their existing plantations/infrastructure to intercrop the species while maintaining clean label farming, biodiversity, sustainability and CSR as a core of the business.

Also, please let us know if the council needs more information or has further questions, so that, if needed we can set up an online conference call together to precisely understand both sides as per mutually agreed date and time.

Appreciate your time and attention given to our email and we look forward to engaging with your team to take this forward.

Best regards,

Rajesh J Bhadarka

Society Tsara Flavors & Aroma, Madagascar