On May 13 there was a stage full of junior athletes, followed by a stage full of senior athletes, all being recognised for excellence in their chosen sport. Incredibly, you couldn’t get onto the stage unless you were at least a state champion!  

This year, the icing on the cake was the special guest, Billy Peden. What an inspirational human he is. He exudes a sincerity, kindness and authenticity that our local community can be proud of.

He spoke glowingly about growing up in our area and about all of the wonderful things that he learnt as a child, right here, that have carried him through life. Billy is about to embark on a north to south crossing of PNG to raise money for the Mark Hughes Foundation (brain cancer). It will go from June 6-16 and will include, just as a part of the journey, the Kokoda Track, not to mention hundreds of kilometres of cycling.

If you can afford a few dollars, please go online to the Mark Hughes Foundation to make a donation.

I started making inquiries about flying foxes with the Minister for Environment in 2011. I was led to believe that the issue needed to be addressed by council.

Over the next two years, this became the standard line. Hence, any inquiries that came into my office from 2011-13 were referred off to council for action.

Then, during 2013, the Minister became aware that the flying fox colony was on Crown Land, making it a problem for the State Government, not council. As a result of this “shift” in who was responsible, my office embraced responsibility and started a campaign, with the community, to bombard the Minister with so many complaints that the Minister would fund the Management Plan.

We have all been working together on this for three years now, and I thank everyone that has written to me, which allowed me to write again and again to the Minister. In total, over the past five years, we have sent almost 100 letters to the Minister(s).

But then, on April 6, no doubt fed up by the delays from State Government, along with the ever expanding size of the flying fox colony onto council-managed land, Cessnock Council moved a motion to “take a lead role and prepare” a Camp Management Plan.

As a consequence, our most recent communication with the Minister has led to a Ministerial response that now reads “Cessnock City Council has resolved to take the lead in dealing with this matter”. So, I am not one for passing the buck, but the State Government and Minister certainly is. I wish Council every success.

As you could imagine, I have a deeper knowledge of flying foxes now than I ever dreamed that I would. One of the questions that I am asked most often is “why are the bats so bad this year?”

This has led me to some research and I will do my best to answer that in the following lines. It turns out that one of the preferred foods of the flying fox/fruit bat is the flowering spotted gum.

 As you would appreciate, the spotted gum is a protected species in the Hunter Valley.  Because there are so many healthy, flowering spotted gums in the Hunter, as a result of an “ideal” growing season, bats have been drawn to the valley at large.

Cessnock, with such an abundance of spotted gum, is an ideal roosting site for a bat colony. Bats are believed to have been drawn from areas as far away as Sydney, Taree and Dubbo.