It's often times like these that we might meet a neighbour for the first time, having lived near each other for months/years. Forge friendship with those who were acquaintances or strike up conversation with someone we are meeting for the first time. 

A village is geography, a community is the people. We are beyond privileged to live in such beautiful surroundings.

A huge thank you to those who have worked tirelessly, put themselves in harms way, to ensure our safety. These volunteers give up their time for our benefit. For our community. 

While we relax on a Sunday morning, they are at the shed training, rolling out hoses, refuelling vehicles and ensuring everything is primed and ready should they be needed.

They are often first responders to accidents, seeing things that can't be unseen.

Living with two RFS members, I know it's not unheard of to serve up dinner, light birthday candles or even dish up Christmas lunch, only to have a pager go off and see members fully uniformed and out the door before we've even figured out what's happening.

They do it unpaid, and often times unthanked. 

I think Mark Williams did a wonderful job at the meeting held at the school, of explaining the difficulties faced with reducing fuel in order to protect communities. It's a tough call, but one that has to be made.

To all the volunteers who came from all over our region to help, to the head office coordinators who cut short holidays and/or have given up their weekend to manage the situation and to those in the community who have helped, even if it's a simple measure of helping share information or checking on your neighbours, I'd like to say thank you. You are what makes a community.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 the Armistice ending the First World War came into effect and the fighting on the Western Front stopped.

Almost 300,000 Australians served on the Western Front, where more than 45,000 lost their lives and more than one-third of those have no known grave.

During the First World War the Anzac legend was born, which helped define the character of our young nation.

Sadly, this was not the last time that Australians have been called upon to fight, and die, for the values and freedoms that also define our national character.

More than 102,000 Australians have died serving our country in all wars and conflicts.

On Remembrance Day, we honour each and every one of those Australians.

At 11am we fall silent, not to glorify war but to honour the bravery and sacrifice of the men and women who serve in defence of our country.

Lest we forget.

What kind of a country have we become with a gutless Prime Minister, who hasn’t the backbone to stand up to the extreme right in his party? We have the likes of Abetz, Anderson, Abbott and Dutton, together with the Nationals, One Nation and Family First calling the shots. 

While some of the poorest countries in the world are taking in hundreds of thousands refugees this government is proposing life bans on those who arrive on boats. This is after placing these people assessed as refugees in offshore prisons indefinitely. Neither Party can stand proud on its treatment of refugees. However, this latest proposal is really twisting the knife.

If the same approach was taken with Vietnamese refugees the country would have lost the skills, talents and good humour of these Australians.