The NSW Rural Fire Service has an excellent website http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/ that lists amount other things a list Major Fire Updates, Current Incidents in NSW, a Total Fire Ban and Current Fire Danger Map.

They have an excellent section under Community on “Are you prepared to Survive”? Being prepared this bush fire season is an important part of protecting your family and home from the impacts of bush fires.

There are four key considerations when dealing with bushfire: The safety of you and your family; the defendability of your property; the protection of irreplaceable valuables and important documents; the maintenance of adequate levels of insurance.

This year is predicted to be extremely bad and has already seen many areas in NSW declared under the new “Catastrophic” rating.

The CTC can help with ‘the protection of important documents’. Create a Data CD. Scan vital documents (Birth, Wedding Certificates, photos, receipts, insurance policies etc) and put them onto disks. These disks can then be kept in a bank deposit box or other safe place, or on an online data bank. The CTC has scanners and CD burners – so you can come in and create your own Data CD. On Wednesdays, we can scan and create the CD (or show you how to store it online) for you. Please ring (6329-8210) to make an appointment

I’m Interested in My Family History, Where Do I Start?

• Work backwards from what you know e.g. yourself, your parents, your grandparents etc.
• Ask other relatives about your family history.
• Handy Hint: Where possible gather full names, maiden names and dates of events in your initial research.
• The best way to progress from here is by sourcing birth, death and marriage certificates of your relatives.

 What Can the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages Do for You?

Indexes of the Registry’s Family History Records can be searched online at www.bdm.nsw.gov.au. The ease of searching and information available is so useful that genealogist’s (family history researchers) have made the Registry’s website one of the most popular in Australia. The Registry holds over 17 million records of events registered in NSW. These include:

• Early Church Records from 1788 to 1855
• Birth, death and marriage registrations from 1856 to the present day.
• Due to the sensitive and private information in these records there are two types of access levels. Records are either classed as ‘restricted’ (you must apply, and qualify, for access) or ‘unrestricted’ (available to anyone).

 Unrestricted records are referred to as Family History Records (Certificates) and anyone can search and apply for copies. Family History Certificates are available to anyone for:

• Births between 1788 and 1905
• Deaths between 1788 and 1973
• Marriages between 1788 and 1953

 Military Ancestors

If you had an ancestor who was a serviceman in WW11, an important site is www.ww2roll.gov.au which has a database of over one million Australians who served in the Australian army, navy, air force or merchant navy during World War II. Each serviceperson listed will have a full name, date of birth, place of enlistment, next of kin and lots more.

 Irish Census Records are now online – visit www.census.nationalarchives.ie  where you will find details of the  1911 Irish census.

 Advantages of using the Internet for family history research: You can browse library catalogues from the comfort of your home, You can search indexes of names which cover everything from shipping to obituaries, You can contact people anywhere in the world at any time using e-mail and post queries your family history

 The CTC has a family history group that meets Monday afternoons – 1pm to 3pm – come along and share your research and ideas with others!

SCAMwatch – a site to help you recognise, report and protect yourself from scams. Explore SCAMwatch to find out more about the scams that target you or your small business. Visit http://www.scamwatch.gov.au / if you get an offer that is ‘too good to be true’ and see if it listed there!

Some typical scams are:

1. An email or letter from an overseas lottery or sweepstakes company arrives from out of nowhere. It will advise you that you have won a lot of money or fantastic prizes—in a lottery or sweepstakes competition you did not enter. Lottery scams will often use the names of legitimate overseas lotteries (often Spanish lotteries), so that even if you do some superficial research, the scam will seem real.
2. Requests for your account information (‘phishing’ scams). ‘Phishing’ refers to emails that trick people into giving out their personal and banking information; they can also be sent by SMS. These messages seem to come from legitimate businesses, normally banks or other financial institutions or telecommunications providers. The scammers are generally trying to get information like your bank account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers, which they will then use to steal your money.

Protect yourself from phishing scams

• NEVER send money or give credit card or online account details to anyone you do not know and trust.
• Do not give out your personal, credit card or online account details over the phone unless you made the call and know that the phone number came from a trusted source.
• Do not open suspicious or unsolicited emails (spam)—ignore them. You can report spam to Australian Communications and Media Authority. If you do not wish to report the message, delete it.
• Do not click on any links in a spam email or open any files attached to them.
• Never call a telephone number that you see in a spam email or SMS.
• If you want to access an internet account website, use a bookmarked link or type the address in yourself—NEVER follow a link in an email.
• Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.
• Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website if you are not certain it is genuine.
• Never send your personal, credit card or online account details through an email.

If in doubt about an email or phone call – check out the Scamwatch website.

Some websites to look at when you receive an email you suspect as a hoax are http://www.snopes.com/  and our own Australian version is http://www.hoax-slayer.com/  - this website also has some stories that sound like hoaxes – but are real!

• It’s official. The Oberon Visitor Information Centre has been crowned the best in NSW at a prestigious gala dinner hosted by Mike Whitney at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre last week.
• Our Visitor Information Centre won the Rod Murdoch Memorial Award for Visitor Information and Services against centres from much larger and well known areas of the state, including Moree, Lismore and Nimbin, and the Clarence River and Coast.
• The Oberon, Blue Mountains and Jenolan Caves tables at the dinner were by far the noisiest, but the cheers were never as loud as when the girls from the Oberon Centre were awarded the very coveted award.
• It has been a long and hard road to reach this point. The awards were judged on a extremely detailed 30 page submission written by manager Jennifer Youman, which had to cover many aspects of the centre, including product, business plan, marketing, customer service and professional development, and sustainability and innovation.
• From this point the Centre had two sets of on site inspections by regional and state judges in June and September of this year, and some pretty intensive interviewing by the judges.
• And evidently, they were impressed, commenting that the passion and sense of fun they witnessed at the Oberon Centre was above and beyond anything they had seen anywhere else.
• Jennifer said the judges were also extremely impressed how the Centre managed to use its own innovation to achieve on a small budget, such as having wonderful photos of the district to promote Oberon through running the annual Photographic Competition.
• Manager Jennifer Youman that she first entered the Centre in the awards not for the Centre itself, but so that Oberon people could have pride in their little town.
• Jennifer said the team at the Centre, which includes Debra Marks, Joanne Barton, Lynne Causer, Sharon Gibbs, Sarah Cully, Vanessa O’Neil, Nicky Schrader, Megan Booth and Bethany Richards and herself have all earned the award, as well as Director of Corporate Services John Chapman, who Jennifer named in her acceptance speech as “the best boss in the world.”
• Jennifer said the difference at the Oberon Centre is that they do not content themselves with just handing out information, but showing a sense of pride in Oberon itself. “The Centre is a team effort, and our submission was about our casuals, our lack of money but innovations on how we managed to get things done, it was about our pride in this place, about how we believe in Oberon and its community, about working with other state government bodies due to limited funding getting more advertising done, and the information and knowledge that we all hold and share with visitors,” she said.
• “Visitors aren’t just a statistic for the future here. We want them to come back again and again to experience what we love about Oberon,” she said.
• The Oberon Centre will now go up against the state winners from across the country in the National Awards to be held early next year.