BRENDAN Dundas is, in his own words, a rock star.
And it’s true. Brendan was one of the lucky 12 residents of Hepburn
House who appeared in the 20/21 fundraising calendar with the theme of
famous movies. Brendan donned a leather jacket and a plastic wig to transform
into the role of John Travolta in Grease. And in the latest calendar, all about “ageing
disgracefully”, he is back just strutting his style again.
Celebrating his 70th birthday on December 4 this year, Brendan moved into
Hepburn House 12 years ago and clearly loves his home. “There are great meals, great
staff and great views,” he says. “I like everything here.”
On a Wednesday, “when I am not being a rock star”, he studies cooking at
Daylesford Neighbourhood House, where his favourite meal is snags on the barbie.
He also heads there on Tuesdays to get involved in their gardening classes and
happily joins in on trips to Melbourne for different excursions.
“I love being involved in different things. I enjoy my life, and everything is good.
“I grew up in Daylesford, went to school here, and I know a lot of people. It has
changed a lot but I like that, it’s all good.”
Brendan was born in Melbourne and grew up with nine brothers and three sisters.
His father worked in the cement industry and Brendan remembers lending a hand
and helping carry bags of cement for delivery. He still has fond memories of his pet
pooch at the time, a labrador called Blossom.
At Hepburn House, he keeps busy doing the vacuuming and still does his own
washing. He will often meet up with his brother Ross and head out for lunch and the
odd pot of beer.
As evident with his Grease role, Brendan loves listening to music and has quite the
collection of tapes from the local opportunity shop. Horses are also an interest. He
also has a ready smile and is always up for a chat with other residents or visitors.
Hepburn House is a progressive aged care centre offering a highly advanced, fully
personalised range of aged care services for residents.
The dedicated staff work to create a comfortable, friendly and diverse community.
Opening later this year is a LGBTIQA+ friends and allies wing along with a 15-bed
state-of-the-art wing to cater for residents with dementia with a gym and theatre.
For information call 5348 8100 or head to www.hepburnhouse.com.au
THE Drop, a $30,000 Hepburn Shire Council public art commission
by artist Yu Fang Chi, has been installed at the Glenlyon Dam.
The sculpture is a 2.5 metre high reflective stainless steel sculpture in the
form of a giant water droplet.
The work was chosen from a shortlist of artist proposals by members of the
council’s Public Art Advisory Committee.
A media release said the committee felt the artist’s concept connected on many
levels to the local area “through the environment, climate change, community
interaction with the dam, springs and river, the Djaara people and the overall
importance of water to our community”.
“A series of circular inlays on the concrete base of The Drop provide clues to
the artist’s intentions. The Dja Dja Wurrung word ‘wanyarram’, (meaning ‘water’)
connects the work to the importance of water to First Nations peoples. The colour of
the inlaid details references the role gold played in the area during the 19th century.”
Mayor Cr Brian Hood said the internationally renowned artist had created an
important addition to public art in the shire.
“This piece fits so beautifully in the landscape. It reflects the surrounding area and
is placed where it is visible right across Glenlyon Dam,” Cr Hood said.
“Public art is meant to be accessible and engaging. It starts conversations and I
expect this will get people talking.”
The track to the artwork is blocked by a locked chain on both sides of the dam.
A council spokesperson later said as “a water production reserve” vehicle access was
restricted.
The council will host an official opening on Thursday, May 4 at 2pm.
Yu Fang Chi is a Taiwan-born, Melbourne-based artist working within textile,
silversmithing, sculpture, and spatial installation.
Chi gained a doctorate from RMIT University and received the Diana Morgan
Gold & Silversmithing Prize in 2018. In 2019, she received Career Development
Grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and International Cultural Exchange
Grants from Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation.
Words: Donna Kelly | Image: Kyle Barnes & contributed

Words: Tony Sawrey | Images: Contributed

FILM director and producer Clayton Jacobson loves to tell a good story. And when he comes to the Central Highlands region to play double bass in the Duck Downpickers he can cultivate the emotional
connections of story telling with his audience.
Their music is old timey/Americana; irreverent and joyful, a perfect medium for
communicating tales directly from the heart.
We can often forget in these hyper-modern times the value of this ancient craft
and Clayton wants nothing more than to bring such an immediacy found in live
music to the medium of film. And his day job as CEO of Dreamscreen Australia is
helping to do just that.
Clayton is best known as director for his 2006 debut feature film Kenny starring
his brother Shane Jacobson, their dad Ron and himself as Kenny’s brother. But over
a professional career spanning 30 years he has worked in many areas of production
including the ever increasing use of computer graphics and green screen.
Computer graphics production workshops drive the film industry. From
superhero blockbusters down to commercials they provide the effects and scenery that
help maintain the illusion we hope to be immersed in.
Green screen backdrops on studio stages allow performers to perform roles placed
into those rendered virtual environments later on. The process is expensive, time
consuming and often difficult for actors to work with.
It is one of the many reasons that the film art form (especially at Hollywood
blockbuster level) has been criticised for losing its primary reason for existing; that of
a medium for telling stories.

As productions have become more and more complicated and expensive, simple
story telling has been buried beneath machinery and vast crews. Clayton, like many
creatives in the film industry, started thinking about alternatives. For him that turned
out to be the development of LED screens and virtual backdrops.
This is where highly detailed backgrounds, shot live or rendered on computer, can
be displayed as virtual scenery for actors to work in front of. It is a simplification of
the production process that is destined to take over the film and television industry
with the audience never noticing the difference.
“I first came to this sort of technology back in 2004,” says Clayton. “Later in
2009 I did an online web series called Mordy Koots with a gaming company called
Uber Soft. That was my first dip into this world of virtual backdrops and I could see
the potential, but still the quality of the gaming engine wasn’t quite there.”
The key advancement came around 2016 when gaming engines (processors that
live in a console allowing backgrounds in computer games to shift and change in real
time) were producing noticeably higher quality rendered environments.
At this point it was just a matter of projecting them on LED screens at larger
dimensions (they can be up to 12 metres high and 90 metres long) and since then the
take-up has been rapid.
Today there are over 200 LED Volumes (production stages) around the world
including Dreamscreen Australia’s 15×5 metre stage in Epping, Melbourne. And what
gave Clayton the time and motivation to turn his own Volume I stage into a reality
was the advent of Covid.
“When Covid hit I actually had a film I was about to make in Bulgaria with Guy
Pearce,” he says, “but that was blown out of the water and I could see that Covid was
going to be with us for a few years.
“So I decided to work on establishing Dreamscreen as a means to keep working
while the entire film industry was halted due to travel restrictions, lockdowns, limited
crews and social distancing.
“But I got so excited by this technology and getting the studio up and running
that I’ve been happy to walk away from directing etc to concentrate on this new
venture for now because I do believe this is the future of filmmaking.”
The new technology is set to catapult film and TV production through a
revolution as seismic as the adoption of CGI in the 1990s. Live backdrop productions
have created a disruption in the structure that normally dilutes the story teller’s
vision.
At the same time in Clayton’s view it is also a chance for those dreamers to
broaden the scope of their ideas and a vision to life with an immediacy normally out
of reach, something more like that a musician enjoys when interacting with their
audience.
“It is no coincidence,” says Clayton, “that one of the first phone calls I got when I
was talking publicly about Dreamscreen was from an Australian writer who does a lot
of television.
“He was saying: ‘Clay, I’m just so thrilled that you are doing this because it means
that I’m going to be able to dream bigger, I’m going to be able to offer up stories to
the networks that are on a larger scale and they won’t be cut down as easily due to
budget constraints’.”
Which brings us back to the Duck Downpickers and the satisfaction of telling a
story to an audience where the reactions and feedback are instant.
“I love it every time we play. We get to know the locals who come to watch. It is
something to look forward to.
“I can leave all the troubles of the day behind and put it all aside and unlike film,
the reaction from an audience is immediate, you get something almost immediately
compared to work in the film industry which takes days, weeks, months, even years.”

Words & Images: Eve Lamb

THE sky rolls wide and blue above Pig and Earth, a sustainable free-range organic pig farm set on the
volcanic plains just out of Kingston.
For owners Will Bennett and Emma Horsburgh, raising and selling fresh pork that’s been lovingly grown here allows them to lead a way of life that meshes with their ethos.
A walking tour of the 16-hectare farm quickly illustrates that the Old English Large Black breed pigs that forage here – and their cute-as-pie piglets – clearly enjoy their days.
There’s plenty of wallowing in troughs, snuffling for ground treasures, piggy pranks and luxuriating in that rich volcanic earth.

_{Will Bennett with one of the resident pigs at Pig and Earth. Image: Eve Lamb}

“Each pig has plenty of room to roam, and spends their entire lives outdoors, with access to shelter from bad weather,” says Will (pictured above here with one of the resident pigs at Pig and Earth).
“Because they’re social animals, our pigs are generally kept in pairs or small groups, and young pigs are kept in sibling groups.”
Emma is Sydney-born, has a degree in international studies, and also works for Environment Victoria.
Will, a Victorian local, has a degree in agricultural science, studied fine art at Ballarat’s Federation University, and tries to read 52 books every year – “only succeeding twice”.
Will and Emma, who have an 18-month-old daughter, met while walking 300km across South Australia, campaigning to build Australia’s first solar thermal plant.
Since then they’ve been activists, students and workers engaged in environmental conservation and social justice. The way they farm is strongly informed by their underlying desire to minimise the carbon footprint that goes into keeping human beings fed.
“We’ll have been here for six years in June,” Will says, on the farm that also features their 1930s renovated farmhouse.
“At the moment we’re looking to grow our membership, our subscribers, a bit more.”
Pig and Earth supplies fresh free-range pork – including bacon, sausages, chops and roasts – to the local community and beyond, through a Community Supported Agriculture system.
The system aims to connect consumer and farmer more closely by offering shares into the farm’s harvest for a season or for a year.
By purchasing shares members, or subscribers, receive a percentage of the harvest weekly, fortnightly, or monthly.
There are various share options to choose from depending on your needs as an individual, couple, or group – including some lamb options as well.
“At the moment we have 50 members and we’re now aiming for 60 and, in the long term, 70,” Will says.
Will and Emma use a holistic approach to farming, incorporating permaculture, free-range and organic principles, paired with a desire to let their animals live as naturally as possible.
“It’s very satisfying, but it can be hard work and pretty full-on,” Will says. “It’s very satisfying knowing I’ve fed 50 or 60 families for the whole month.
“We work with our animals to improve the land that we are on, producing only as much as the land will provide. We’re a small farm with a big vision.
“Because pigs are not ruminants they don’t produce methane and with their feed we are diverting food waste streams from landfill so we’re minimising the carbon footprint.
“In the paddocks our pigs forage the ground as they would naturally, which helps to turn the soil and improve its nutrient content with manure.
“We believe that the best way to produce high quality meat is to be as involved in its production process as possible.
“We’re not just getting covered in mud while trying to care for a small patch of land – although we do love that. We’ve also got big ideas.”

Words: Donna Kelly | Image: Kyle Barnes & contributed

THE Drop, a $30,000 Hepburn Shire Council public art commission by artist Yu Fang Chi, has been installed at the Glenlyon Dam.
The sculpture is a 2.5 metre high reflective stainless steel sculpture in the form of a giant water droplet.
The work was chosen from a shortlist of artist proposals by members of the council’s Public Art Advisory Committee.
A media release said the committee felt the artist’s concept connected on many
levels to the local area “through the environment, climate change, community
interaction with the dam, springs and river, the Djaara people and the overall
importance of water to our community”.
“A series of circular inlays on the concrete base of The Drop provide clues to the artist’s intentions. The Dja Dja Wurrung word ‘wanyarram’, (meaning ‘water’) connects the work to the importance of water to First Nations peoples. The colour of the inlaid details references the role gold played in the area during the 19th century.”
Mayor Cr Brian Hood said the internationally renowned artist had created an
important addition to public art in the shire.
“This piece fits so beautifully in the landscape. It reflects the surrounding area and
is placed where it is visible right across Glenlyon Dam,” Cr Hood said.
“Public art is meant to be accessible and engaging. It starts conversations and I
expect this will get people talking.”
The track to the artwork is blocked by a locked chain on both sides of the dam.
A council spokesperson later said as “a water production reserve” vehicle access was
restricted.
The council will host an official opening on Thursday, May 4 at 2pm. Yu Fang Chi is a Taiwan-born, Melbourne-based artist working within textile, silversmithing, sculpture, and spatial installation.
Chi gained a doctorate from RMIT University and received the Diana Morgan
Gold & Silversmithing Prize in 2018. In 2019, she received Career Development
Grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and International Cultural Exchange Grants from Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation.

Words: Donna Kelly

Gordon Legal has launched a ground-breaking defamation claim against
OpenAI’s ChatGPT on behalf of Hepburn Shire Council Mayor, Cr Brian Hood.
Gordon Legal alleges Cr Hood’s reputation was defamed by the ChatGPT AI,
which incorrectly identified him as an individual who faced charges related to a
foreign bribery scandal, rather than his actual role as the whistle-blower in the case.
Cr Hood previously worked for Note Printing Australia – a Reserve Bank of
Australia subsidiary – in the early 2000s, when he alerted authorities to officers of
NPA and another subsidiary, Securency, paying bribes to overseas agencies to win
contracts to print banknotes.

Cr Hood (pictured above) was not charged with any offences. Rather, he alerted the authorities to
the wrongdoing and was praised for his bravery in coming forward.
ChatGPT made several false statements when asked about Mr Hood’s
involvement in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s foreign bribery case. They included
that Cr Hood was accused of bribing officials in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam
between 1999 and 2005 and that he was sentenced to 30 months in prison after
pleading guilty to two counts of false accounting under the Corporations Act.
All of these statements are false. And Gordon Legal filed a Concerns Notice to
OpenAI on March 21 detailing the inaccuracy and demanding a rectification.
Cr Hood told The Local that one key objective with the claim was letting people
know that ChatGPT was not as secure or accurate as many believed.
“There is not much regulation or control around it. And the information coming
out of it has to be reliable. The really odd thing is that you can put in an enquiry and
it spits out five or six paragraphs and some are absolutely accurate, with names, times
and places all spot on, but then there are others which are false, complete garbage.
“That suggests it is going to certain sites to get the real information but where are
the garbage paragraphs coming from? Is it creating them itself? There is nowhere on
any site that suggests the sort of things I have been alleged to have done, nothing on
the record anywhere, so where is that coming from?
“It is a really weird mixture of fact and fiction and the average punter won’t know
which paragraph is right and which is wrong. It needs to be nipped in the bud. When
it is spitting out stuff that affects people’s reputations, or causes harm or doubt, that
is just wrong. You put garbage out there and some people will believe it.”

If the power, internet and mobile reception were out because of a natural disaster – who would you turn to first? Most likely it would be your neighbours.

In partnership with local Neighbourhood Houses, and through an Emergency Recovery Victoria (ERV) Community Led Resilience Grant, Macedon Ranges Shire Council has developed a card to get the conversation going with your neighbours.

In the Macedon Ranges we have experienced severe fires, storms and flooding.  Research shows that stronger ties in the community help individuals and communities bounce-back faster. With the Neighbours Connect card you can get ready to deal with any emergency by getting to know the people around you.

After an emergency, would you welcome a check-in from your neighbours? Let them know, and whether you are able to check in on them, with the Neighbours Connect card.

The time to build relationships is before an emergency hits. Use the Neighbours Connect card as an icebreaker to share a little about your household, and learn a little about your neighbours in return.

You can collect cards from your local neighbourhood house and your nearest Council Customer Service Centre. 

The Creswick market makes its monthly return this Saturday, April 15.

Creating employment for numerous locals the market is held on the first and third Saturday of every month, and open from 8:30 am until 1.00 pm.

Organisers say those who get along can expect free live music and specialist boutique sites, offering a variety of unique locally made goods ranging from arts and crafts to freshly made delicacies – “something for everyone”.

It’s also a chance to talk directly to producers and designers, and learn about the ingredients and processes that brought the item to you.

The Creswick Market features – gourmet take away food and great coffee, live music, kids entertainment and playground, beautiful gardens to relax in, an historic township to explore, hand made arts, crafts, jewellery, clothes, home grown fruit, vegetables, plants, and other produce.

It’s not the only market happening in the region this Saturday either. Others listed include the Glenlyon Village Market that’s held every 3rd Saturday of the month in the historic Glenlyon Shire Hall.

And The Trentham Farmers Market Third is also on as it happens on the third Saturday of the month in the Town Square.

A dedicated new online directory of local bands and musicians has been launched, making it easier for event organisers to search for local talent to complement their events.

Supported by the Macedone Ranges Shire Council, the directory is accessible on the Macedon Ranges Community Halls website alongside information about the various community halls and facilities available for hire around the shire.  

More than 20 local bands or singer/songwriters have already signed up to feature in the directory, covering a range of genres and offering something for every taste. Bands or artists can be contacted directly from the page, making the process of enquiring and booking easier for organisers. 

Council’s Director Community Maria Weiss said the initiative had been inspired by Council’s Arts and Culture team, which identified the opportunity late last year following a significant response by local artists to perform at a Council event.

“We have an abundance of extremely talented musicians in our shire and this is another way that we give them a platform to be seen and heard,” she said.

“Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive from both artists and the hall committees themselves – it’s a convenient yet simple initiative that we hope will lead to an economic boost for our music industry/artists that have done it tough during the pandemic.”

To see what local talent is available for your next event visit macedonrangeshalls.com.au/bands

Kyneton Museum’s important collection of horse-drawn vehicles will be improved even further thanks to an external grant helping to champion the area’s rich gold rush history.

More than $36,000 has been awarded to the Council-managed museum following a successful application to the Copland Foundation, with the grant named after avid collector Alexander Ewart Copland who had a special interest in historic houses and their contents.

Council’s Director Community, Maria Weiss, said the funding would go towards a series of improvements over the next 18 months including new signage, a soundscape, vehicle upgrades and model horses to display equipment.

“We’re grateful for this funding from the Copland Foundation, which will boost public knowledge and appreciation of the historical importance of the horse and horse-drawn vehicles and their intertwining with Kyneton’s history,” she said.

“We know residents and visitors to Kyneton are eager to learn more about the history of the area, and the museum’s dedicated exhibitions like this help to solidify the town as a key tourist destination.”

To celebrate the grant and to get the creative juices flowing, members of the Kyneton Museum team – Meredith Blake and Clare Rule – joined Friends of the Kyneton Museum members – Hanne Juul and Rose Latimer – earlier this month for a horse-drawn buggy ride in North Woodend, with Rose driving her circa 1890s horse-drawn canoe-front wagonette.

The wagonette was pulled by 12-year-old Percheron-cross, Patrick (pictured), who has been happily pulling carriages for eight years.

Kyneton Museum is currently closed for restoration works and is now expected to reopen by Friday 30 June, coinciding with the launch of the Stitch In Time exhibition.

The Macedon Ranges Shire Council is launching a reusable nappy, sanitary and incontinence product pilot rebate program to reduce waste in landfill and assist residents in accessing affordable reusable items.

The three-month pilot program is open to all Macedon Ranges residents in line with Council’s Waste and Resource Recovery Management Strategy and informed by similar programs run by other councils. The program offers rebates on reusable items such as cloth nappies, nursing pads, cloth pads and period underwear.

Council’s Director Assets and Operations, Shane Walden, said the pilot program would mean that at least 50 households – and potentially more – would be able to participate initially.

“About 660 million disposable nappies, sanitary and incontinence products end up in landfill in Australia each year – through this pilot, we’re encouraging residents to consider the products they use,” he said.

“We have seen this type of initiative offered by other councils and received requests for it from our community. We are confident that it will be well received and complement our ongoing efforts to divert waste from landfill.

“We will review the pilot program results, and if there is a strong uptake, we can then consider steps to make it an annual program.”

The pilot program will run until 31 June 2023. More information on eligible items, terms and conditions can be found here: mrsc.vic.gov.au/reusables

The rebate program is part of the ongoing reusable nappy program, which has regular workshops throughout the year to support families who are looking to learn more about cloth nappies: mrsc.vic.gov.au/nappies 

Rosario De Marco, gifted guitarist – composer is headed to the Daylesford Hotel to perform live Sunday April 16.

Rosario has performed live as well as for national TV and radio. He has released several CDs, including “Light and Shadows,” “Roots,” and “Intuition“. 

His music captures the warmth and passion of the Southern European lands, taking elements from flamenco, jazz, classical, folk and popular music. With this mixture of different musical inspirations, he creates his own personal and highly melodious style…

Successful performances include as support act for Omara Portuondo (Buena Vista Social Club), and Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Melbourne Concert Hall.

Reviews include the following:

This music displays harmonic sensibility and sophistication with fascinating and elegant harmonic structure.

It would be difficult for even the most jaded musical sensibility to become bored with this music. 

Rosario’s quality is easy to sense but hard to define – call it feel, soul or even spirituality.

In summary, the music of an urgent, passionate, romantic and very talented soul.

The Sunday evening gig at the Daylesford on April 16 is listed to start from 6pm.

D’Arcy Spiller crashed back into our ears in 2022 with new single ‘Curveball’, the fierce follow up to gentle ballad ‘Milk & Honey’ and rock anthem ‘Crave’.

Fans will be now be well pleased to see she plays The Palais, Hepburn Springs on Saturday April 15.

With a burgeoning canon of songs that embrace and attempt to verbalise her experiences as an empath, Melbourne-based D’Arcy Spiller’s music isn’t just a means of communicating her blues-pop sonic outlook but a way for the singer-songwriter to make sense of the universe as a whole.

Alongside her dedication to her craft, from her early teens D’Arcy had also begun to tap into a feeling of hyper awareness to the spiritual and non-physical world around her. Having relocated from small town Smeaton, Victoria to Minneapolis aged 15, the huge change in her surroundings and social life prompted a shift both in her musical ambitions and sensitivity to her intuition.

“Everything changed when I started listening to more rock music and blues; when I was there [in America] I thought right, this is something I could really intertwine into my own stuff,” she explains. “During that move to America a door must have opened, or something must have clicked, because bizarre things were happening and these experiences changed what I wanted to write about and how I wanted to be portrayed as an artist. I never did and still don’t quite understand why it is that how I feel in one moment can be altered in a second when a stranger enters the room. It doesn’t happen often but it can be difficult, and that started informing the tracks I was writing.”

D’Arcy is aware that her experiences are ones that might not be universally understood, but over her past two EPs – 2020’s ‘Little Demons’ and last year’s ‘Disarray’ – and heading into a forthcoming body of work heralded by new single ‘Crave’, she’s prioritising an increasingly honest lean into all facets of her personality. She describes her debut as a reckoning on the past and a way to get a host of “unresolved feelings” finally tied up and put to bed. ‘Disarray’, meanwhile, was born from a solitary lockdown that led the singer down some dark paths of personal exploration.

The Macedon Ranges community has nominated 79 local businesses for excellence in customer service in this year’s Telstra Macedon Ranges Community Choice Awards.

In what has been an amazing response for the first-time awards, residents and visitors to the shire are now being called upon to vote for the winner in each of the following five categories:

• Agribusiness and Primary Production ─ sponsored by Macedon Ranges Business and Tourism Associations
• Health and Wellbeing ─ sponsored by Macedon Ranges Shire Council
• Hospitality and Accommodation ─ sponsored by Macedon Ranges Industry Groups
• Retail and Service ─ sponsored by Telstra
• Trades and Manufacturing ─ sponsored by nbn Local

Council’s Director Planning and Environment, Rebecca Stockfeld, said it was amazing to see such a positive response to the call-out for nominations.

“It shows how passionate our community is about supporting and rewarding local businesses for good service,” she said. “The power is again with the people – I encourage everyone to follow up on these initial nominations and support who you think is deserving of this recognition with a vote.”

Voting closes Friday 2 June and winners will be announced on Tuesday 13 June. To view the nominees and vote, visit Telstra Macedon Ranges Community Choice Awards.

The Hepburn Shire Council says it will deliver grants through a more efficient, equitable and transparent process under changes recommended in a recent review and adopted by Council at its March meeting.

The council’s new round of Community Grants opened on Friday 31 March.

Mayor, Cr Brian Hood, said that grants play an important role in getting community projects off the ground and delivered.

“This review of Council grants has led to a report recommending some significant improvements, ensuring processes are streamlined and recipients receive funds in a more timely way, including through quick response grants,” said Cr Hood.

“We want to encourage more community groups to get involved in the grant programs and ensure that funds are more widely distributed across the Shire,” he said.

The review investigated Council’s five grants programs – Community Grants, Event Grants, Biodiversity Grants, Landcare Grants and Towards Zero Grants.

“Feedback from grant program applicants and recipients has been overwhelmingly positive, indicating the value and importance of these programs to our communities,” said Cr Hood.

Council undertook a period of consultation with the community and former grant recipients, and this feedback has formed the basis for many of the recommendations. The report also incorporates nine recommendations made by Victorian Auditor General’s Office to all councils after an audit in 2022. 

Some of the key recommendations include developing a Council Community Funding Policy to guide all grant making, strengthening the evaluation criteria and scoring matrix program, establishing strengthened evaluation panels, developing a grant handbook, and providing opportunities for community members to complete grant writing workshops.

Changes to the grants programs will be made over the coming year, the council says.

The Live4Life Central Goldfields Partnership Group is inviting community members to undertake the training needed to become a Mental Health First Aid Instructor.

Training, accommodation and travel costs will be covered and once trained you will be able to deliver Teen and Youth Mental Health First Aid training in local secondary schools and in the community during 2023 and 2024.

Applications close Friday 28 April, 2023. 

Youth Live4Life was established to independently facilitate and govern the expansion of the Live4Life youth suicide prevention and mental health education model, that has been operating in the Macedon Ranges since 2010.

The vision is that all rural communities across Australia are empowered to support, improve and invest in their young people’s mental health and reduce youth suicide. Youth Live4Life works with rural communities to implement the Live4Life model.

More information is available from David Leathem, Acting Manager Community Partnerships, at david.leathem@cgoldshire.vic.gov.au or on 0459 572051.