East Gippsland Zone Conference

10 Dec 2013

Latrobe Ladies Probus Traralgon hosted the East Gippsland Zone Conference at the Traralgon Tennis Centre. All the other East Gippsland clubs were represented and joined together to discuss management matters and to share what their clubs had been doing over the previous 12 months.

Many had travelled quite some distance to the conference, so morning tea was the first order of the day. This gave the members a chance to renew friendships. During the previous year, many of the clubs had combined with others in their local area, for friendship and fellowship, also.

The gathering was addressed by John Lewis, a Director with Probus South Pacific, who spoke on the workings of PSP and addressed constitutional matters. He also stressed the need for Probus clubs to work more closely with their sponsoring Rotary Clubs and to keep that relationship open and vibrant.

Following lunch, ably catered for by the Traralgon Anti-Cancer Council Group, the Deputy Mayor, Sharon Gibson, welcomed the visitors to the conference.

Latrobe Ladies President, Marie Moulton, introduced the keynote speaker, Mr Doug Caulfield, OAM, RFD, MIAEM, MAIES who presented Expect the Unexpected: Emergency Operations in the Gippsland Region. Mr Caulfield is a principal consultant at Emergency Management Network Solutions.

He clearly defined all the emergency situations which have occurred in Gippsland since 2006 through result of bushfires and wild fires, flood, lightning strikes, earthquake, mine flood through the river bank giving away, open cut fire and the resulting carbon monoxide poisoning of some fire fighters, blue-green algae bloom, wind storms, potato crop nematode attack, road accidents, chemical drums washed up on coast, tsunami alert and the train incident where 258 people had to be taken off a train outside Traralgon and more.

There has the need to be prepared for Influenza pandemic and even to intercede when some Gippsland school students were quarantined in China recently and they were supported through internet counselling.

He outlined the developments in handling these situations across the six Local Government Areas in Gippsland in a cooperative way, which is ongoing within his work developing a strategic plan to co-ordinate all emergencies and areas. Many of the solutions already put in place are being rolled out in other LGAs across the state.

The day ended with fellowship over afternoon tea, before the club members went back to their East Gippsland areas.