IT’S easy to see why end-of-year celebrations involve alcohol. The party starts in a buoyant fashion with the highs of the previous 12 months toasted and progresses to optimism for the year ahead. But it finishes the next morning with a headache when reality hits – it’s back to work, there are more challenges ahead.
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South-west Victorians had every reason to celebrate 2015 with fireworks and frivolity.
Warrnambool hit the silver screen thanks to the feel-good movie Oddball, which romanticised the protection of Middle Island’s threatened penguin colony. The movie is now driving the region’s tourism.
The city’s winter tourism drawcard, the Fun4Kids festival, had a resurgence, the region’s fixed wireless broadband improved as the National Broadband Network roll-out gathered pace, Warrnambool’s inaugural Aus Music Festival was a success and countless individuals achieved on various stages.
It was a year South West Coast MP Denis Napthine called time on his 27-year parliamentary career and passionate mayors Michael Neoh and Chris O’Connor stepped aside. Each left significant legacies.
The new year will be full of challenges, not just for community leaders but all of us.
The region has experienced its driest December in a decade and a long, hot summer is predicted. Australia may well have ridden on the sheep’s back from the 1870s to the 1960s but the south-west’s prosperity has a considerable reliance on dairy and beef farming. Below-average rainfall and warmer temperatures are far from a rosy prediction. Farmers are facing challenging months ahead and as a result, so too will various other industries. How we support those doing it tough will be defining in 2016.
Politically, new state MP Roma Britnell has challenges ahead – making good on her pushes for a fourth daily passenger rail service and better roads. Federal MP Dan Tehan is touted for a ministerial portfolio next month but before November he will go to the polls. South-west residents will also vote in council elections with an intriguing race expected for a spot in Warrnambool’s seemingly split chamber.
As a community we need to continue tackling the epidemic of the drug ice; there have been positive steps with a new program but that is just the start.
Before you think 2016 is going to be gloomy, there is at least one high point – the long-awaited opening of the region’s cancer care centre. That will be a life-changer and let’s hope the year in general is, too.
