News & Updates from Vicki Avcin ~ AusCrafts · Page 56

My grandson had his first Taekwondo competition last weekend and I am very proud of him.First time, so the nerves would have kicked in (no pun intended) but he did so well and ended up with a Silver medal.

Only a handful of students went from his club so to come out with second in his group was a fantastic effort.

It was all done with electronic scoring like they do in the Olympics so this was also new to him.

The Sunshine Coast Open is an annual event for Taekwondo and is hosted by Kicks Taekwondo. It is a friendly tournament for all ages and levels.

Both my son and grandson took up the sport 2 years ago, and Riley has already had a Most Improved trophy which he got in April last year.

His Aunty (my daughter) used to do martial arts and held 3 Australian titles so maybe he is going to follow in her footsteps.

Royal Caribbean Cruises has made an offer to all our volunteers who have responded to the bushfire season, either as front line firefighters or in operational centres that supported the fires.An opportunity for Volunteer First Responders to be awarded a cruise holiday!To acknowledge the bravery and selflessness of Volunteer First Responders during the recent bushfire crisis, Royal Caribbean are donating, across the country, up to 7000, four night coastal cruise holidays onboard the superliner, Spectrum of The Seas.

The cruises will be departing Sydney on the 29th February 2020 and 7th March 2020.Volunteers from all Fire Services across the Australian states as well as SES have to apply then a ballot will be done to see which cruise they will go on cruising the east coast in Australian waters.

The cruise leaves from Sydney Harbour, but volunteers have to pay their own fares to get to and from Sydney and any accommodation they might have before and after the cruise.

If people can get the time off work and can afford to go to Sydney then its a great holiday.

I know of one vol and his wife who didnt have a honeymoon so they are on the March cruise and using it as a honeymoon!

Spectrum of the Seas usually does the routes to China, but with the corona virus they have cancelled all cruises so instead of sitting idle in port they have made the offer.

Great gesture.

Well much of the drought and bushfire ravaged areas have had some good rainfalls over the past couple of week.

All fires are officially now declared Out. The photos show the Blue Mountains where fire climbed the side of the mountains and a week later were waterfalls.

Other photos show how the landscape has gone from dry and brown to wet and green. A lagoon that was nothing more than a puddle of mud is now full and the area around is lush and green.

Although weve had rain, most of the areas that were declared drought areas still are in drought as there hasnt been enough rainfall to get the ground moisture out of the range between being in drought and not in drought.

So a lot more much needed rain needs to fall yet.

But its a start and towns that had run out of water for the town supply and were getting truckloads delivered into the water supply daily or were about to run out of water by the end of February now have enough water to keep the supply going for another couple of months.

Great News!!

Even as late as last week, fire crews around Australia were battling mega bushfires. This week they are doing flood rescues and pumping out flood waters. West Australia got reprieve when TC Damien formed and is now bringing good rain to areasthat a month ago had fires.

This week Queensland, NSW and Victoria has had a series of troughs that have brought storms and rain to nearly all the fires that have been going for weeks.

What a difference a week or two can make! The country is looking green again instead of dead and brown but although places are getting torrential rain, believe it or not more is needed to break the drought.

The cumulative seasonal summary for the fires from all states: Over 12 million hectares burnt, 3093 houses lost, 33 fatalities, 9 firefighter fatalities, 171 Canadian, 237 US, 284 NZ, 6344 interstate resources/personnel deployed.

The final figure for Australian firefighter would be well over 20000. Staggering figures! We thank all the international personnel that came and assisted. The photos show a photo from the same position taken just 4 weeks apart and what crews are now doing…….

Storm and flood cleanups!

And its not over yet with TC Uesi going to cause havoc down the east coast over the next week.

Well for a few weeks weve been wondering where the little yappy dogs live. Thought there must be some new people in the neighbourhood as weve not heard them before. About 3 weeks ago while sitting outside in the cool one night, we heard them.

After a few nights we decided to investigate some more and tracked the bark to a tree up the front yard.

Was talking to the neighbour and theyve heard it too. So next night more exploring and we found 6 owls in one of the trees. Weve always had owls in the trees around here and they have their nest/babies yearly but they are tawny frog mouth owls.

So to find out what these owls are as they do not have the heart shaped face that the others do.

Turns out they are Barking Owls……… who knew there was such a thing!! Barking Owls are a medium-sized hawk-owl. Hawk-owls lack the definite heart-shaped face of the tyto-owls (which include the Barn Owl, Tyto alba).

There are two types of these owls, one that sounds like a small dog yapping and the other has a high pitch squeal (which they say sounds like a woman screaming).

Ill take the barking yappy ones thanks! They are found in all parts of Australia except the centre although it is estimated there is only 50 pair left in Victoria and they are on the endangered list in NSW.

Sadly there is a big possibility that a lot wouldve been lost in the big fires. They eat small to medium-sized mammals, birds, reptiles and insects. They breed August to October with 2 or 3 eggs/young and its about 45 days till they are out of the nest.

Well put up with the yapping I think!!