Tuesday, 28 October 2025

 Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (12:58): What a month it has been in Eureka.

Over the last two weekends we celebrated our vibrant multicultural community in Ballarat, first with the Bangladeshi community spring carnival and then, on Saturday night, the 16th Diwali event hosted by the Ballarat Indian Association. Congratulations to the committee, in particular the president Ashish, and the wonderful MCs Geetha and Manoj.

On Sunday I visited two CFA open days, at Dereel and Morrisons. Dereel do such great work with community outreach, and while the rain kept the numbers down, it was a fun celebration of CFA values at work. In Morrisons Second Lieutenant Ken showed me around the upgraded shed, and it was wonderful to see so many other brigades like Wallace, Rowsley and Ballan attend to show their support.

I attended the second Veterans, First Responders and Families Expo. It was just wonderful to see how many organisations there are out there supporting our wonderful veterans and first responders.

I had a really lovely visit down to Inverleigh to see the new public hall upgrades, which were made possible by a wonderful Tiny Towns grant. But the sweetest part of all was that they had a cake made which was emblazoned with ‘Hooray for Tiny Towns’. I know that my regional colleagues feel the same.