Albert informed the meeting of many completed and planned projects and the financial arrangements of the city of Launceston, which now has a population of 68,800 residents.

• The move of UTAS to the Inveresk precinct and the recent opening of the UTAS library, which is available to the general public.
• The planned relocation of the city bus depot and the City Heart Project. The sections of St John Street and Paterson Street have been identified as having huge potential as more people-focused spaces. They link a range of important public spaces, including Civic Square and Quadrant Mall, as well as retail and dining precincts like Charles Street, George Street and the Brisbane Street Mall.
• Riverbend Park. Albert is proud of what has been achieved and of the public acceptance.
• The planned establishment of a sporting complex in the Mowbray precinct incorporating basketball, bowls and golf.
• Improvements to the sewerage system, Tamar Estuary, planned road works, the Launceston Tip And Recycling Centre, Albert Hall and “The Big Plant” project to plant many trees on council land.

Brocklands Pty Ltd, specialises in assisting with management of imported plants and is an  accredited Nursery under the National Nursery Garden Industry Accreditation Scheme Australia.

Karen won a Nuffield Scholarship in 2014, enabling her to explore extensive cutting-edge research from the world’s key researchers.

Karen was named as the Tasmanian winner of the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award for 2020. With this award came a $10,000 bursary which helped her important work in delivering improvements to the food production and cut flower sectors. Also this assisted her work to reduce plant input costs and producing disease-resistant and climate tolerant plants and crops that produce higher yields per hectare.

Karen also partners with others to teach plant tissue culture and assist with food security production systems in under-developed countries.

Guest Speaker April General Meeting

Dr Stephen Ives is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Division of University College and a Research Fellow at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture. He is interested in integrated cropping and livestock systems within a value chain context, together with understanding drivers of practice change within local and international agricultural communities. Stephen is an advocate of clear education pathways into Agriculture, the interaction of industry, education providers and the learner.
(Ref https://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/tia/stephen-ives, 3/5/2022)

Stephen currently leads research projects in Vietnam and Laos in conjunction with local universities that are focussed on improving livelihoods for smallholder cattle farmers through innovative methods of forage production and soil management. He discussed the challenges in creating sustainable change in cultural traditions of farming. One initiative was to establish a school based learning program into forage production for the next generation of farmers.

Hamish explained that he is leading a professional team as well as numerous volunteers and local historians to digitise, clean, code and link historical record groups relating to convict transportation and the convict landscape in general.

In recent years the team has put together over 78,000 individual records as well as 1.6 million digitised Tasmanian records in order to explore the factors responsible for influencing life course and intergenerational outcomes.

Various correlations and patterns between punishments of solitary confinement and lashes given, outbreaks of disease, life expectancies and even labour market forces were put forward in a dazzling and slick interactive presentation. The ability to link and expand on digitised data was truly incredible and indicative of the massive work that has gone into making this mind blowing achievement.

Malcolm is Board Chair of the Royal Flying Doctor Service Tasmania & Director of RFDSAustralia.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is one of the largest and most comprehensive aeromedical organisations in the world. It is a not-for-profit organisation and provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia. Malcolm emphasised the work of the RFDS in Tasmania, particularly in the provision of dental health services, primary healthcare and vaccination services. Currently the RFDS has a fleet of 79 aircraft and employs over 2,000 people.

Christopher Walkden is the secretary of the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association. He brought with him a 1992 Subaru Brumby which he has converted from petrol power to electric.

A fascinating presentation on the history of electric vehicles and insights into why you next car is likely to be electric from an ecconomic persprective. Even today there are 17 charging sites in Tasmania with 12 more in planning. So now you can travel anywhere in Tasmania with an EV with a 200+ km range using fast chargers.

Peter King is the facility manager of the Autonomous Maritime Systems Laboratory, University of Tasmania. He is a computer engineer who has spend the past 12 years working with underwater robotics, specifically autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

Peter’s talk explored the challenges of working in Antarctica and showcased the work that has been done over the past three years and is planned for this upcoming season. Deploying a robotic submarine beneath the ice of Antarctica is a daunting challenge, but the information returned is critical to our understanding of how glacial ice melts and changes.

Brian, who was inspired by a teacher at Launceston Grammar, qualified as a lawyer and commenced a career of sports administration. This led to him being named  Athletics Australia Official of the Year for 2016.

Brian is a member of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Technical Committee and has drafted many policies for world sport.

We all saw Brian at the Tokyo olympics on the athletics track adjudicating false starts, where athletes careers ended without argument, respecting Brian’s supreme global Authority.

Anecdotes of Olympics and athletes, current concerns with shoe design, gender re- identification and testosterone levels of athletes were presented.

A fascinating first hand insight into the behind the scene workings of sports administration.