We Liked
• NUMEROUS residents and motorists were amazed to see a fireball light up the night sky on Friday. It was eventually discovered to be a meteor which flashed across the skies of south-east Australia about 8.50pm.
• PADSTOW Red Cross’ Lorraine Newnham says she received a fantastic response after an article appeared in the Torch calling for more ‘sewers’ of Trauma Teddies. “It was wonderful to hear from so many kind residents and I’ve now got about 14 sewers turning up to a workshop this week but, of course, we always need more knitters and all help is hugely appreciated,” she said. If you can help, call Lorraine on 9774 4728.
• RESIDENTS now have access to a defibrillator in many Woolworths stores to assist in the event of sudden cardiac arrest. The Automated External Defibrillators (AED) were recently installed in stores at Bankstown Central, Campsie, Menai and Revesby.
• THRILLED with his discovery, a caller was in a spot when his phone ran out at Bankstown Central last week and needed to make an urgent call home. “It was great to find that the shopping centre actually has a payphone upstairs near the amenities and opposite the information desk,” he said. “It must be the last payphone in Bankstown but a very welcome sight when I needed one so desperately last week so many thanks to centre management.”
• PRAISING the council for the new interactive map facility, Greenacre’s Lance Tyrrell says it should be wonderful drawcard for tourism, however, could be more senior friendly: “It would be great if there was also a booklet that we could access from the libraries, with the same info, since a lot of elderly people do not have smartphones.”
• CAROL wants to say a “big thank you” to the good Samaritan who found her mobile phone and dropped it into the corner shop in Meredith Street, Bankstown. “We rang it over and over again and when the girl answered and said she had it there, I was so relieved,” she said.
We Did Not Like
• KIDS Helpline, Australia’s only free confidential 24/7 national children’s counselling and support service, has released alarming statistics showing 51 per cent of requests for help to the service went unanswered in the first six months of 2019, due to a funding shortfall. The number of attempts to contact Kids Helpline increased from 146,292 to 148,776 over the past six months, with visits to the website increasing from 552,103 to 875,280 – up 59 per cent over the same six-month period to June 30, 2019.
• JOSEPH couldn’t believe the response of a commuter who was smoking on Yagoona Station on July 3. He was catching a train with his six-year-old daughter to the city when he began smoking on the platform. “I said to him this is not a good image for your security company … He told me to be quiet,” Joseph said.
• CONCERNED for elderly locals who live in Revesby, a caller said that on Tuesday, July 2, residents received a cardboard notice in their letter boxes explaining that because of the NBN coming to Revesby, although no date mentioned, landlines would not operate after 7am on July 3. “We are still without landlines,” he said. “Surely in this type of instance, seniors should be able to borrow a mobile phone from their local MP’s office for the duration of the outage. It is incredibly dangerous to leave so many isolated this way and with just a day’s notice. Shocking.”
• SITTING at traffic lights next to a tanker covered in warnings like ‘corrosive’, ‘explosive’ and ‘flammable’, a Torch reader watched in disbelief as the driver flicked his still lit cigarette butt out the window as he drove off. “The wind blew the butt back and it ended up in the truck’s wheel well,” she said. “I’m sure the chances of a problem are really tiny, but I was in no hurry to catch up to him at the next lights.”
• IT is hard to believe but during the recent heavy rain some drivers were spotted driving at speed through puddles causing a large spray of water, which in one case, nearly left a group of pedestrians waiting at a bus stop soaked to the skin. “We spotted him coming and ducked behind the shelter,” a caller told us. “We still got our legs wet. If there is any justice in the world, I hope his car breaks down in the next rain storm.”
