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Photos: Courtesy of Brad Mustow, Lismore

Lismore comes out for Tropical Fruits festival

Once confined to the homophobic closet, the gathering of like-minded souls and sexualities known as the Tropical Fruits is now being hailed as one of the Northern Rivers’ major festivals, and a major earner for local businesses at a usually quiet time for host city Lismore.

The now-annual Tropical Fruits festival, which peaks with a glitzy all-night party on New Year’s eve, is not only out in the open but being welcomed by Lismore City Council, and much of the local citizenry.

It has even begun to put Lismore on the national and international lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/intersex map, attracting an estimated 5,000 participants, half of them from elsewhere. The financial trickle-down to the local economy from the 2015-16 events was put at around $5 million.

The highlights were a colorful street parade through Lismore, with Mayor Jenny Dowell perched in one of the classic cars, an opening event at the NORPA-managed City Hall, and sold-out performances by Scottish actor-raconteur-gay activist Alan Cumming.

Details: Written by: Robin Osborne; Published: 09 February 2016

One-in-20 Australians can’t afford GPs

Although the national bulk-billing rate for GP attendances now stands at 84.6%, around 5 per cent of Australians say that financial pressures meant postponing or delaying seeking care. Moreover, 7.6 per cent of respondents delayed or did not purchase prescribed medicines due to cost.

Around 64 per cent of those who did visit one of the nation’s 33,275 GPs reported waiting less than four hours for urgent care, while 11.1 per cent waited up to 24 hours, and 25 per cent waited longer.

Overall, 20.8 per cent of people who saw a GP for any reason waited longer than they felt was acceptable to get an appointment.

Details: Written by: Robin Osborne; Published: 07 February 2016

MyHealthRecord FAQs

The government has updated the My Health Record FAQs for individuals, healthcare providers and contracted service providers. The information is more detailed than the versions released under the PCEHR, as it was previously known.

Registration with the My Health Record system is straightforward using GP medical software and the upload process has been streamlined.

These improvements coincide with the government's push to increase uploads to the PCEHR by tying eHealth Practice Incentive Payments to a minimum number of uploads. Many in the profession have had reservations about the effectiveness and utility of these incentives.

Details: Written by: David Guest; Published: 27 January 2016

Jodie McRae, Lismore’s Australia Day Citizen

Lismore’s Australia Day Citizen is top cancer fundraiser

The founder of local charity Jodie’s Inspiration, which has raised $105,000 for medical equipment at Lismore’s oncology units in six months, has been named Lismore’s 2016 Australian Day Citizen of the Year.

Jodie McRae was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer in 2013 but after being given the all-clear was diagnosed with secondary cancer the following year.

Details: Written by: Robin Osborne; Published: 27 January 2016

‘Scratching out’ an artistic career

Penny Evans produces her beautiful ceramics on a kiln in the backyard of her home in suburban Lismore, on the traditional land of the Widjabul people.

As she explains, “My practice includes producing ceramics and collaged, mixed media work on paper. Each work created is unique and an evolution in my artistic practice.”

Her techniques are varied, ranging across pieces thrown, pinched and coil built using raku, terracotta and white earthenware clay bodies. The technique of sgraffito (from the Italian “to scratch”), is a major focus. This is a pottery decorating technique produced by applying layers of colour/s to leather-hard pottery and then scratching off the parts of the layers to create contrasting images, patterns and texture, revealing the clay colour beneath.