Twitter & Facebook could save your life in an Emergency

Up until the last month I thought Twitter and Facebook were a great way to waste time.

What has changed my mind ? Well I have been monitoring the floods in Qld and how Police,Emergency Services and right through to Anna Bligh, Premier of Qld use social media.

Constant updates of the flood situations, which roads are closed,when people need to evacuate,
are made as they happen.

Plus add to the ability of people stuck in floodwaters to seek assistance using Twitter.

So why is Twitter such an important tool in emergency's ?

Word of mouth is the best way to get information out and whilst websites are great they tend to take time to be updated where as twitter can post messgages in seconds.

Check out some of the messages posted today to get an idea of what I mean. Knowing how to use these sites as a resource could just save your life or maybe someone else in a crisis.

We are seeing a crisis that Australia has not faced for maybe decades unfold and communication is difficult. Are you ready to use all resources that may assist you in an emergency ?
At least investigate how social media works - it could save you life as well as others in your community.

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Of Droughts and Flooding Rains

It might be while before cattle are worked in these yards.

Well 2011 has started for many people in North Qld with flooding rains. One thing we cannot change is the weather and that is one of the great joys and challenges of farming and living in Australia.

Whilst people in Qld are flooded,there are many in Western Australia managing their way through drought,

Bushfires have already made their mark in western NSW this week, a sign of what might be to come later in summer.

It all reminds me of a poem most Aussie kids learnt at school with the 2nd stanza most remembered. One thing we can guarantee Australia is a land of extreme weather.

According to Wikipedia : "My Country" is an iconic patriotic poem about Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) at the age of 19 while homesick in England.

After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her teenage years she started writing the poem in London in 1904[1] and re-wrote it several times before her return to Sydney. The poem was first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under the title "Core of My Heart". It was reprinted in many Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known and establishing Mackellar as a poet.

My Country


The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.


Dorothea Mackellar