Queensland Branch

Speaker 1 00:07

It's up to you and me to shine a guiding light and lead the way, united by our cause. We have the power to pursue what we believe.

Speaker 2 00:24

[?] I'll achieve the realest

Speaker 3 00:28

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of New Horizons, I'm Vaughan Benison, thanks once again for joining us. This week we focus on the Queensland branch, note that there's no longer a Brisbane or Toowoomba branch, it's now a statewide branch, as are several across blind citizens Australia including Tasmania and Western Australia. Stefan Slukey is the secretary of the Queensland branch of Blind Citizens Australia, he joins us now. Stefan, thanks for joining us and welcome to the program. 

Speaker 2

Thanks Vaughan. 

Speaker 3

The Queensland branch of Blind Citizens Australia has recently become statewide and we'll talk about that in the moment, but I wanted to get a bit of a sense of you, your background and how you became involved.

Speaker 2 01:07

Right, well I've lived in Queensland for a number of years with my words and a request for people to step up and become members of the committee.

Speaker 3 01:22

Okay, tell us about Stefan, what do you do for work?

Speaker 2 01:25

Me, I have been a parish minister with Christian domination for 35 years, I'm now semi -retired.

Speaker 3 01:35

Okay, and do you live in Brisbane or some other part of Queensland?

Speaker 2 01:40

Ah, now there's an unusual aspect. I used to live in Maryborough, which is in the Wide Bay area of Queensland, and I've relocated to Melbourne. So, I'm now in Victoria, but still serving on the Queensland Committee, which is okay with Head Office.

Speaker 3 02:01

Well I'm pleased to hear that. Perhaps you could give us a sense of who else is on the Queensland branch committee at the moment. 

Speaker 2 02:07

Yes. We had our election most recently at the end of October last year. Adrian Watson, who most recently lived in Mackay. He's actually also down here in Mexico. He is currently down here, but he was around Mackay. Adrian, I'm totally blind. He's partially sighted. Neil Huth, who lives in Redlands. Everyone will be glad to know. He's in Brisbane. Brendan Donahue is on the committee. Joyce Jones is in Toowoomba. She's vice president. Craig McGill is in Brisbane as well. And Michael Hart, who is our really, really, he's recently joined. And he is Technology Wiz. And he's up in Gladstone.

Speaker 3 02:59

So fairly well spread around not just Queensland but the country. 

Speaker 2

Yes. 

Speaker 3

And what sort of things do you tend to focus on as a branch? 

Speaker 2 03:09

Thank you very much. Well, our main, since the committee was elected, our main thing was arranging, because communication has been a big thing because it became a statewide branch. And so we felt it very important to open up the ability to communicate with members all over the state. So we focused first of all on establishing a group of regional subgroups via email. And that took us a little bit of time to set up. And Michael did a lot of the legwork to get that going. So we have some 400 members.

And so to organise them into the various subgroups as to where they live and getting all those details sorted through was significant. And we've done that now. So there are groups in Brisbane, Toowoomba , [?] Hens, to White Bay and so on. So the idea is for people to be able to have local contact with one another and for us to be able to funnel relevant information about events coming up to them. And that's a work in progress expanding and developing.

Speaker 3 04:31

And how can people find out if there is a local or regional group in their area and how can they get on that list?

Speaker 2 04:38

Well, the first thing is to become a member of BCA and then that information will be passed on to myself, I'm the secretary of the committee and depending on which format they want to receive information is if it's email then automatically they will be gently directed into their appropriate subgroup. If they're not choosing to receive information by email there is another solution which I can speak about if you'd like me to. Absolutely. Okay and this is brand new information folks. We're concerned about folk in that situations, people who receive info by large print or Braille or other form and there are about a hundred plus members in that condition in that situation and so we have in our 1800 number for the National Office 1800 0336 0 a very nifty phone system.

Speaker 2 05:49

There are various options that you can press and so we thought well how can we communicate with those people. So long story short we are now setting out to produce short but informative audio messages which run at the moment for about five minutes we've just produced our first one and so to access those it's a question of choosing option one for BCA's current activities so you ring up and to access current activities press one then you are presented with a menu which says various things choose option three for state based activities and then having chosen that Queensland is number four so options one then three then four and hey presto you will hear our first audio message.

We're going to produce them quarterly and we're starting small but we want info anyone can listen to them not just people who don't get email and so in that way we're hoping to reach that group of people who don't get email and we're going to inform those people because we have ways of contacting people by either text message or by calling their landline to inform them.

Speaker 3 07:16

Well, Stefan, I wish you the best of luck with the Queensland branch, even though you're now living in Melbourne. And I hope the telephone system particularly goes really well. That's something that we've talked about across Blind Citizens Australia for quite some years. And it's a really important step for those people who don't have easy access to the internet, or in fact, who aren't interested in receiving communications by email. But once again, thanks for joining us on the program.

Speaker 2

Thank you for the time, Vaughan. 

Speaker 3

It's been some time since we've focused on Blind Citizens Australia's telephone system. And Stefan's interview is a good reminder that it exists and there's quite a lot of information available. Let's do a demonstration now, focusing on getting the Queensland branch information. Okay, we're about to dial the phone number. Well, we're Blind Citizens Australia, the national representative organisation of people who are blind or vision impaired.

For information about our current activities, press one. To leave us feedback, press two. For information on audio described content on television, press three. To speak with one of our staff, press zero. Press nine to hear these options again. And we'll press one for information. To listen to our latest important announcements, press one. To find out how you can get involved in our national campaigns or upcoming events, press two. To find out what is happening in your state, press three. Or to learn about our publications, press four. Okay, we'll press three. State specific information. For the Australian Capital Territory, press one.

For New South Wales, press two. For Victoria, press three. For Queensland, press four. For South Australia, press five. For Western Australia, press six. For Tasmania, press seven. For the Northern Territory, press eight. And we'll press four for Queensland. Press nine to hear these options again. Or press star to return to the main menu.

Speaker 1 09:32

Hello, BCA members. Welcome to the first telephone audio news message from the Queensland Committee of Blind Citizens Australia. We hope you find our new quarter of the year audio news messages informative and useful. A little further through this message, we will provide you with the Queensland President's phone number so you can get in touch with him and the Queensland Committee of Blind Citizens Australia. The committee aims to do what it can to represent BCA members throughout Queensland.

These are new audio news messages for those of you who do not wish to receive information by email. We do not want you to be left out. Please let the Queensland Committee know the types of information you want to have access to in the audio news messages. The Queensland Committee of BCA aims to deliver the best information in a timely manner, which is not out of date, and that is interesting to you and your friends. For your information, we communicate to the entire state of Queensland.

We have one announcement only email list, which we send out general news messages to. We also have several regional subgroup email lists that members can discuss between each other blind or low vision concerns, questions and issues relevant to Cairns, Tuwumba or Brisbane. When we meet as a branch, we meet by Zoom. You can join branch Zoom meetings by phone, and we can provide the Zoom phone meeting details, but you will need to contact us through the phone number we will provide now.

Please feel free to be in contact with the president of Queensland, Adrian Watson, by phone for more information about any topics related to blindness or low vision you wish to discuss, and he will do his best to assist you. Queensland is now a statewide branch and is no longer a Brisbane or Toowoomba branch. The Queensland Committee are keen to hear from you, whether you live in miles, Cairns or long reach. Your input to the telephone audio messages is extremely valuable to the Queensland Committee.

This time, we thought we would mention the Home Assist Program which is available to all Queensland pensioners with a disability. The program is run by the Queensland Government. The program can help with home maintenance and repairs. The Queensland Committee of BCA recommends you contact 137468 and ask about the Home Assist Program to find out about it, and if the program meets your needs. On behalf of the entire committee, thank you for listening.

Speaker 3 11:57

And that's the information system. And as a reminder, 1-800-033-660 is the number to call for the information system. And if you wanna check out the interesting information, you press one for information and then you can choose state -specific information and then hit the number on the keypad which responds to your state. In that instance, of course, it was number four. And you may have noticed that in the announcement from the Queensland branch that you just heard, there was mention of contacting the president of the Queensland branch. 

I did remove the phone number because we don't have permission to broadcast that. But if you would like to get Adrienne Watson's phone number, you can contact Blind Citizens Australia and look through the telephone information system and the phone number is there. Or you could email Queensland at bca - dot - org - dot - au, that's queensland@bca.org.au. I'm always keen to hear from you about things that you would like to hear more about in New Horizons. 

And just some follow-up from an interview we did last year with Sean Scott, who has written Night as Pigmentosa. And he saw improvement in his vision owing to going on a low carb and carnivore diet. I received an email from Sean recently to say that he's seen further improvement in his vision. So if you're keen to hear more about that, get in touch with us and perhaps we can talk to Sean again. Sean, congratulations on that and hope it continues to go well for you. If you'd like to get in touch with me, New .Horizons at bca .org .au is the email address. new.horizons@bca.org.au, as I said, always keen to hear new story ideas and new concepts for the program.

If you're interested in working with me on producing New Horizons, I'd be really keen to hear from you as well. New .Horizons at bca .org .au. That's it for our program this week, but as a reminder, if you'd like to contact Blind Citizens Australia, the all -important telephone number is 1 -800 -033 -660. 1 -800 -033 -660, and you know what you'll be presented with because you just heard it. If you'd like to contact BCA by email, bca@bca.org.au is the email address.  bca@bca.org.au. And of course, just a further reminder, queensland@bca.org.au is the email address for the Queensland branch.

Do take care. I'll talk to you again next week.

Speaker 1 14:28

[?] of a dream