This is a fine idea. One which was canvassed years ago by a committee the head of which the great Geraldine Turner.

Apart from the problem of dates it was accommodation which was seen as the real stumbling block.

Day trippers are fine but the real "holy grail" is the long term participant who will stay and enjoy, not just the festival but also all that the Highlands has to offer. For this we need accommodation and lots of it.

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Firstly, I would like to thank you David and express our sincere gratitude for the efforts of yourself and your teams during the recent fire emergency in the Wingecarribee.

In response to the recent article 'RFS scanner encryption up for debate' (SHN Feb 3) I would like to pass on my experience/comments with regards the Scanner App during the fire's.

The reason the scanner app was highly subscribed in the Wingecarribee area was because the Morton fire was later and went longer in the fire emergency period therefore more people became aware of it and it's benefits.

In my experience the Fires Near Me page was too slow to change to the actual real time conditions at the fire front.

This became even more apparent whilst listening to the scanner.

This is not a criticism, as I fully understand the actual realities on the ground, but from my perspective I could make far better informed decisions based on what I was hearing via the scanner.

I found the Scanner App a very valuable resource during the fire emergency.

On the night of Jan 4 it enabled me to make the early decision to dispatch my family out of the area approx' 10-15 minutes prior to the official emergency alerts coming via phone/text messages.

This then gave me 'more time' to alert neighbours who are not tech savvy and were actually asleep (it was close to midnight) of the unexpected emergency taking place prior to having to defend our property from ember attack.

We live on the western side of a valley facing Bundanoon.

During the next few hours the scanner enabled me to monitor in real time how close the fire spotting actually was to our properties.

The actual fire got to within 400-500 metres of our properties, but we could not physically see the flames or the fire appliances attending this fire due to the smoke density in the valley.

In fact, whilst I sit here and type this from my lounge room I can clearly see the burnt ground out of the window.

On the night, listening to the Scanner App on my mobile phone in one hand and hosing down our property with the other, totally blind to flames close by, gave me real time information of what was actually happening and the potential threat to our property.

As you understand more than anyone time is the critical factor when dealing with fire emergencies.

In my experience this Scanner App gives the public critical real time information and therefore additional time to enact potential decisions that could potentially affect life or death.

Whilst I understand the danger of arm chair experts posting false information on the internet I know from talking to locals many benefited from the Scanner App use.

From my recent experience I would say its use should be more publicised and more effort needs to go into warning the public on posting incorrect information with heavy fines implemented should they do so.

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I want to express my deepest thanks to our Federal local member Stephen Jones, who has managed to secure me a hospital bed through the NDIS (because of my multiple sclerosis I am unable to sleep without one).

This ended a process which began halfway through 2018 when I tried to replace my 20-year-old hospital bed. Despite multiple attempts to get OT assessments done, redone and following all the channels and paperwork required, all I could get was a loan bed with an application for a new bed in my current plan.

Just last Tuesday I was called to be told that the NDIS had not paid the hiring fees since August and that my new bed still had not been approved. At literally the last moment, as the deliveryman called to repossess the hire bed, I received a phone call saying that it was no longer my problem and that the hiring fees had been paid and that a new bed order had been placed.

In one day Stephen Jones had achieved what I had not been able to do through the "normal" NDIS channels for over a year.

And this is not the first time that Stephen Jones has helped me with the NDIS traumas which regularly confront me. It is good to know that there is at least one politician out there who works for his constituents.

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