BREAKING NEWS Thousands of Aussies rocked by magnitude 3.5 earthquake as shockwaves felt in regional town
A 3.5 magnitude earthquake has struck near a regional town in New South Wales.
The quake struck at a depth of 2km near Appin, about 70km southwest of Sydney 's CBD in the Macarthur region, just before 3pm on Wednesday.
'Felt it and heard it - Mount Annan. Split second and internet and computer shut off and off,' one woman wrote online.
'Just felt this! Parked waiting for school pick up and originally thought someone had hit my car due to how much it shook,' a second said.
More to come.
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The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Geographic narcissism': the battle to fund aged care providers in rural Australia
In the final stages of Angiolina Moro's dementia journey, she would revert to speaking Italian. 'She was in her late 20s when she arrived in Australia,' her son, Joe Moro, says. 'So as her dementia creeped in, she lost the capacity to speak in English.' Angiolina died in February. She spent the final five years of her life at an aged care facility in Mount Kooyong, 50km north of Mareeba, the far north Queensland town where she had lived most of her life. Moro says his mother would have preferred to stay in Mareeba, where language wasn't as much of a barrier. Ten per cent of Mareeba's population is Italian. 'I know the staff [at Mount Kooyong] spent a lot of effort trying to communicate,' he says. 'I think they did a fantastic job. 'A lot of older people in the [region] are the first lot of immigrants who came back in the 50s and worked hard and are now deteriorating and ending up in homes. So language is a big barrier up here for getting good outcomes in care.' Sign up to receive Guardian Australia's fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter Moro says because of the relative isolation of the region there are limited options for aged care. Some travel to Cairns, about 60km from Mareeba, to fit in with their adult children's work schedules. But, Moro says, most of their elderly parents would prefer to stay in smaller communities. Ross Cardillo sold his business several years ago to help around the family lychee and longan farm at Mareeba. He and his sister are supporting their mother, 77, who is providing in-home care for their father, 83. 'There's just not sufficient care in Mareeba,' Cardillo says. '[Dad] wants to stay home, which is fair enough. If he goes to an aged care facility, he will die. And my mother won't let him die.' It is a common story in rural Australia. In-home aged care services are limited the further you travel from capital cities and regional centres. Cardillo has many friends who travel an hour to access aged care homes and the distances increase as you move further inland. Cardillo is the chairman of Mareeba and Communities Family Healthcare, a social, not-for-profit enterprise founded five years ago to provide improved medical services in the town. 'We are trying to cater for our ageing population with little or no support from anyone else,' he says. 'As a community, we see it as valuable and important and we're pursuing that. 'It's about opening up funding to more providers that are available up here.' In May, the enterprise set up an outreach clinic in Mutchilba, 35km south-west of Mareeba, to service the 600 locals. 'Most of them are elderly, so we didn't want them to travel as far,' Cardillo says. Moro, who is also the Mareeba Chamber of Commerce president, says Mareeba and Communities Family Healthcare was set up to focus on general medical services but could expand to aged care if there was adequate 'dollars, cents and expertise'. 'We have an overall shortage here,' he says. 'There are numerous councils trying to get investment and there's talk of something going to happen – at the end of the day it's an investment issue.' A 2023 report by the National Rural Health Alliance estimated that rural Australians missed out on $850 worth of healthcare services each year due to a lack of access to or availability of services in their local area – equating to a total annual rural health underspend of $6.5bn. The Alliance chief executive, Susi Tegen, says many communities have resorted to raising funds on their own. She described the failure of governments to adequately fund aged care in the regions as 'geographic narcissism'. 'Some communities are coming up with models that are much better and allow for support from the local community,' Tegen says. 'However, they are often not funded. They rely on volunteers and they are often not considered by government funding to be good enough. And yet, we seem to see a population that is being told by the lack of funding that they're not as important as urban people.' In New South Wales, the Snowy Mountains community of Bombala shot a nude calendar to raise funds to keep the Currawarna assisted living facility open after it closed due to staff shortages in 2022. Tegen says rural communities need a commitment from state and federal governments to ensure they receive equitable funding to keep pace with the ageing population. The number of Australians aged over 65 years is projected to almost double from 3.8m in 2017 to 6.4m in 2042, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Tegen says it is difficult to attract healthcare workers to move to regional areas because they 'feel they're not being supported'. 'They're having to beg and scrape, and they're having to jump through hoops to get the money that everyone else seems to be getting in the city,' she says. The federal government in March said it would invest $600m in in-home care in regional Australia and for people with diverse backgrounds and life experiences. There is also almost $1bn in the federal budget for the Aged Care Capital Assistance Program, which provides grants to build, extend or upgrade aged care services or to build staff accommodation where older Australians have limited or no access. But Cardillo says it seems as though that money never filters down to his community, and the people at the top do not understand the reality of those in regional communities. He says the community will keep doing what they need to do to cater for their ageing population. 'They get things done themselves and they do it themselves,' he says. Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
The NSW floods were bad enough. But then came the mould, and getting rid of it in winter is ‘almost impossible'
Nadia Zarb can already see, and smell, the mould in her art gallery in Taree. The building on Victoria Street was inundated during flooding that hit the Hunter and mid-north coast of New South Wales at the end of May. Water filled the storage space below ground, the art supply store on the ground floor, and the loft exhibition space, reaching to just below Zarb's home on the top level. Water and mud still lies thick on the lower levels while her property is now filled with spores. Mould is forming on her art supplies, Zarb says, texting through pictures of wooden art models covered in black and grey mould. It's also in the walls, and areas she can't access. 'While it's cold and damp, it's really difficult to dry things and then you start to get that damp smell and that musty, mouldy odour,' she says. Experts are warning about the 'huge problem' of mould in homes and businesses affected by the recent floods. Because they happened in winter, it will be 'almost impossible' for many homeowners to dry out their properties and eradicate the dangerous spores, they say. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'This flood is badly timed for mould. That's going to be a huge problem,' says Ian Wright, associate professor in environmental science at Western Sydney University. 'Because it's so cool now … and because you're down low in the landscape, so the dew point [is low], it's going to be almost impossible to get rid of that moisture. If this flood had happened a couple months ago in early autumn, there [would have been] much better prospects of drying out. 'But mould absorption into timber, particularly, or chipboard or plasterboard – almost everyone is going to have problems with mould. 'It will make some places unsafe to live in. It makes me feel sick to think about it, actually.' Lab research published in the CSIRO journal Microbiology Australia in 2023 found there was an increased risk of fungi and mould after flood events, because of conditions such as high humidity, and 'an extra nutritional load comprising of debris, vegetation, dead animals, wet surface soils and other displaced materials'. The research found that the mould could colonise surfaces and 'penetrate deep into buildings', leading to 'a host of well documented associated health risks', including respiratory infections and poisoning from mycotoxins, particularly in 'already stressed or immunocompromised individuals, who may be suffering from displacement and psychological distress'. Elly Bird, the executive director of Resilient Lismore, said mould was a huge concern after the 2022 floods in the Northern Rivers region. 'After our flood, we had constant rain for three or four months, so managing mould was really a significant issue for our communities, and people were having to really stay on top of constantly cleaning and monitoring and preventing,' she said. 'I think it's important to not understate the risk that can come from mould and the impact that it has on people's health. 'It's really important to be vigilant and to make sure that you're drying out flood-affected properties as best you can, and treating mould as you find it, so that you can prevent further issues down the track.' Wright and Bird recommended people use fans and heaters to dry out their properties completely, and also urged people to consider rebuilding with non-porous building materials less likely to retain water and to become a breeding ground for mould. 'There's some really good guidelines that the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority have around flood resilience design that do things like: creating ways for water to move out of the property quickly, thinking about the types of cabinetry that you put back into homes, trying to avoid just using chipboard or gyprock, if at all possible, and using solid doors rather than hollow core doors,' said Bird. 'There's lots of tips and tricks that you can do to prevent more significant impact next time. And now is the time to start to be really carefully thinking about that.' Most of the construction of Zarb's 1950s building is hardwood and plasterboard – both of which retain water. After the 2021 flood, she replaced some of the lower boards in her walls with water-resistant weatherboard, and now is ripping out the rest of the walls to replace them this time around. Power is not yet fully reconnected at her property, meaning she can't use fans or heaters to help dry her basement floor, which is still waterlogged and full of mud. 'I'm just airing it out at the moment, and you know, some spots you can't really get air to, so that's where the mould started.'
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
When they chose to die together, my grandparents wrote the final chapter of a love story spanning 70 years
In their final moments, Ron and Irene lay together in a single bed, soft smiles on their faces. They wore special shirts picked out for the occasion; his a cranky cockatoo print, and hers the same white and floral print blouse she wore to their 70th wedding anniversary a few months previously. The only sign of what was to come were the twin cannulas, one in each of their intertwined hands, with long thin tubes winding back behind the beds and out of sight. It had felt like an eternity to get here – the reality closer to three weeks – with countless possible pitfalls. But it was about to happen. Ronald and Irene were about to get their final wish; to die peacefully together. My grandparents met in South Hurstville in the 1950s. Irene defied her father's wishes and married at just 19. As the youngest of seven, she was expected to remain in the family home and care for her sickly mother. Ron, whose parents and older siblings migrated from London in the early 1930s, met her through a friend, and was smitten from first sight. The courtship was fast, but the love endured. They had four children in Sydney before moving the family unit to Port Macquarie in the 1960s. My mum speaks so warmly about her childhood, growing up on the banks of the Hastings River, days of sandy feet and salty hair. Streets where they knew the names of every neighbour, and afternoons spent prying oysters off river rocks to slurp down. In the decades between my mother's childhood and my own, my grandparents travelled Australia in a caravan, with long stints in Perth, Katherine and wherever else took their fancy. In the 1990s, they bought a small hobby farm in Unumgar, inland dairy country on the Queensland-New South Wales border. By this point, they had five grandchildren and set about turning the property into a kids' paradise. Ultimately they moved back to Port Macquarie, to spend their twilight years with the wider family. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads I can't remember the first time my grandparents told me that they wanted to end their lives together. I felt like I'd always known, and to my surprise so did many others. In the lead up to them accessing voluntary assisted dying, we learned that they'd said it early and often to many people. Fiercely proud, Irene had nursed all her siblings through their final stages, seeing first-hand how painful the end of our lives can be. It was at least 10 years ago that she told me, vehemently, that when it was her time, she wanted to go her own way. Fate took away her sight first, with glaucoma making her almost totally blind, and then saddled her with a hideously cruel degenerative spinal condition. She'd lose dexterity and feeling in her hands and feet first, as her nerves were slowly crushed by the crumbling spinal discs, eventually leading to paralysis. She was tougher than an old boot, and barely let any of us see her pain – wrestling with my toddler even at the age of 90. In April, when the nerve damage turned into dysphagia and she could no longer eat, she decided it was time. 'I'm done,' she said. 'I've done everything I wanted to. I am ready to go.' NSW was the last state to legalise voluntary assisted dying, coming into effect in 2023. Each state has slightly different requirements, and it remains illegal in both the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory. Eligibility is strict; in NSW, a person must make three requests (two verbal, one written), be assessed by two separate physicians and a board, and, crucially, suffer from a terminal illness that is expected to cause death within six months. In the first seven months of legalised VAD in NSW, 1,141 people initiated a first request to access VAD and 398 patients died via the service. Irene's first assessment was tense. It was unclear whether the spinal condition would qualify as a terminal illness. Ron, overcome by the situation and his own myriad health problems, had a severe panic attack. These attacks were frequent, incapacitating him mentally and physically. One of the medical staff commented that he'd likely qualify easier than my Nan – and the room stood still. It felt like an obvious choice. A period of wonderment – would they really get their wish? Ron was crystal clear and adamant. He did not want to live without his love. They were ready to write the final chapter of a love story spanning seven decades. The next few weeks were incredibly stressful. They each had three stages to pass, in quick succession, with their primary physician walking a thin line in balancing medications to keep them comfortable without ever impairing their ability to make a clear choice. Any perceived impairment or loss of mental ability could disqualify them. For people in their 90s, that could be triggered by something as simple as a fever. My grandparents took it in their stride, instituting a daily happy hour – longtime friends and family could drop by from 4pm, for a last glass of 'bubbles'. Miraculously, Irene's dysphagia seemed to not include Australian sparkling wine. It was like a farewell tour, as they laughed and cried, treating nearly every visitor to their own rendition of Willie Nelson's On the Road Again, which they'd sing together with a smile, anticipating their final adventure together. My aunt made a last-minute, multi-leg journey from Western Australia to hold her parents' hands one last time. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion Some people struggled. It had only been a few months earler that we'd celebrated their 70th anniversary in the rec room, with balloons and a giant slab cake. A volunteer played the guitar, and my grandfather crooned Too Young by Nat King Cole over the microphone. Despite this, they were unwavering and emphatic in their decision. They had a wonderful life, they had done everything they had ever wanted, and it was time to go. Once the NSW Voluntary Assisted Dying Board passed that final approval, the date was set. Arrangements were made. Final meals were requested; honey king prawns for him, spring rolls for her, from one of Port Macquarie's many Chinese-Australian restaurants. I have no idea how my mother, their primary carer and an absolute saint, managed the process of orchestrating not only the death of both her parents, but also wrangling all five of us grandkids together from across Australia. Even with the approvals in place, there were still hurdles to jump. There were last-minute psychological evaluations. Anecdotally, we'd been told only half of VAD cases actually go through with it – data from the states puts the number closer to 30-35%. What if one of them changed their mind at the last minute? The night before the final day, we all gathered in my parent's Port Macquarie house, sitting around the table with our Nan and Pop for one last meal. A blur of tears and laughter. Holding my Nan's soft wrinkled hand, and her convincing me that this is what they wanted. I felt like a little girl, crying and being comforted by my grandmother one last time. In a way, I felt as though I had pre-grieved, particularly when I took my husband and two boys to say farewell two weeks earlier. My three-year-old climbed up on my Pop's lap to share his plastic insect collection, and they talked at length about grasshoppers versus praying mantises. My Nan toggled her head around until she found the one pinpoint in her vision that still worked, fixed it on my husband, and told him to look after me. I could tell that day that they were so sure, so strong in their decision. They would never go back, not knowing it was what the other one wanted. They told me my boys were special, and destined for great things, and in that moment I broke. Maybe that's why on the day I could be strong. The 'event', as we called it, was scheduled for 10.30, and we started assembling in their room from 9.30am. My dad opened bottles of champagne, and we all had our final bubbles together. The kitchen staff of their assisted living facility wheeled in a trolley laden with finger sandwiches, caramel slices and tea and coffee provision. Willie Nelson played. It felt like a party. It was a party. Both my grandparents chose to die via medical assistance, rather than self-administer, requiring four medical personnel in the room. The two doctors shepherded us through the process with an endless amount of patience, empathy and care. They gently told us it was time, and Irene laid down next to Ron on the bed. The cannulas went in, the cords winding back and away, so the doctors could step back and allow us to be by their sides. Ron and Irene held hands. The music changed to a soft version of You Are My Sunshine. I sat next to my Pop and held his other hand, while my Mum, brother and cousins surrounded my Nan on the other side. I whispered the first line of a favourite childhood story, and he smiled, picking up and taking over, telling it to me one last time. My Nan made a highly inappropriate joke – terrifying us that it would be her last words – before chuckling, and saying: 'Here I go – love you all.' And then it happened. Calmly, quickly, with dignity. In a room full of love, with smiles on their faces and without any pain. We'd been told that hearing was the last sense to go, so we repeated I love you, I love you, I love you, until we were sure that they'd finally slipped away.
