I WAS delighted to see a photo of my home for the first 2½ years of my life in Nichole Overall’s “Yesterdays” column (CN, March 23).

After having been born at Lonan Private Hospital in Queanbeyan (wherever that was) over 80 years ago, the Queanbeyan Presbyterian Manse became my home.

In 1934, my father had been invited to fill in at St Andrew’s Church Canberra for six weeks. While there, he was asked to visit the Queanbeyan church to see if he thought it could be made a viable parish. Many church members had moved to Canberra and Queanbeyan membership had dwindled.

My dad reported that he believed it could be made viable and was told: “Well, you go and do it”.

He did.

Rewa Bate, Coombs

Where does she think the money comes from?

I AM surprised that Elisha McMurray (letters, CN, March 16) admits to being not only an easy target but silly enough to not take precautions and then openly admitting to it, even though she is acutely aware of the prevalence of STDs.

She talks of the free public health system in Australia for all to access. Where on earth does she think the money comes from? Is she so silly that she thinks it free? We are all paying for her and her cohorts to have an STD check because they cannot control themselves or take measures to prevent the likelihood of disease.

She says: “The majority of STDs are preventable through public health measures such as vaccines, antibiotics or condom usage”. Antibiotics do not prevent STDs they cure them; if she knows about vaccines and condoms why did she not use them?

Elisha goes on to say the Turnbull government should recheck its priorities because cutting $220 million from the AusAid budget is immoral and it is not a cost but an investment in people’s health. Just like her income, there is a limit to how far it will stretch.

Elisha is one of the reasons he has to do this because of the Budget blow-out. Is she not being immoral letting the rest of the country pay for her indiscretions and silliness? It would be nice if we could all live free from disease, but this is impossible as we do not have a bottomless bucket of money.

Elisha, I hope you have learned a lesson from your close shave and in future take precautions, the next time you may not be so lucky.

Vi Evans via email

Concerned about safety

DIFFICULT to believe what I was reading about Canberra Airport complaining about “scaremongering” around aviation safety at the airport (Seven Days, CN, March 16).

My concerns about the airport are certainly real.

On November 5, 2002, a Boeing 737 travelling from Melbourne encountered turbulence during the landing flare on runway 35. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) incident report indicated turbulence resulted from a hangar completed in April of that year, located contrary to the abundance of airport advisory material relevant to the siting of building structures to avoid this risk.

On July 2, 2006, an open day was held to mark the opening of the new runway extension, partly funded by the Australian taxpayer. What caught my attention was newspaper coverage showing upwards of one thousand people allowed under the approach of an operational runway… far from safety first.

In the latest ATSB safety report on Australian aviation wildlife strike statistics, 2006-2015, the bureau found that both the number and rate of bird strikes per 10,000 movements in high-capacity operations have increased markedly in the past two years 2014-15. The largest increase in the rate of strikes was observed at Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Gold Coast and Sydney.

Safety issues such as those outlined briefly above are taking place with the safety regulator, CASA, now virtually deskilled in airport engineering.

Graham Bailey, Queanbeyan

Why mince must be cooked

FURTHER to Wendy Johnson’s restaurant review titled “Cooked all the way through… it’s the law!” (CN, March 23), I originally trained at UNSW as a food technologist (BSc 1981) and remember either hearing or being told on numerous occasions, in lectures and elsewhere, that minced meat MUST be cooked completely, until there is no pink meat left.

The microbiological reason for this is that when you mince any meat (beef, lamb, pork, even chicken) you are increasing the surface area of the meat open to the air and also distributing any micro-organisms that may already be lying on the surface through the mince.  

Proper cooking kills the most of these micro-organisms as possible.

Likewise, every time you slice or dice meat into chunks of raw meat you are increasing its surface area. As an analogy consider the surface area of the lungs. In an adult this is roughly equal to the surface area of a tennis court.

I might add here that this also goes for the preparation of liver pâté and other meat-based pâté. Chicken liver pâté, for example, that is served pink (that could even be “bright” pink) is definitely undercooked and a potential health risk.

So there is nothing new about this “requirement” for the safe cooking of minced meat and more generally for any meat product that is cut up raw before being cooked.  Remember, many of the relevant species of bacteria concerned with food poisoning, etcetera, can double their numbers roughly every 20 minutes.

Paul Myers, Karabar

Stanhope hits the spot

JON Stanhope’s column (CN, March 23) in support of SHOUT hits the spot.

I am not and have never been connected with SHOUT, but I have been involved in community volunteering for over 60 years and appreciate the incalculable value and benefits that accrue to our society per se. When properly computed beyond direct black and white figures, these mostly preventative-oriented services considerably offset rapidly accruing remedial government and personal expenditures.

Your quoted list of voluntary health and community agencies benefitting from SHOUT easily proves this reality – and the cost/benefit ratio, including the often immeasurable, far outweighs short sighted government maths.

Here we have a proven method of providing co-ordinated support services for people grouped together to mutually encourage each other through self-help for better health care and preventative lifestyles. It is an imaginative and cost-effective idea without which some of these enterprising agencies could not hope to be as efficient.

I agree with Jon that the withdrawal of the $110,000 annual ACT Government grant seems to be short sighted and lacking in any real understanding of the SHOUT concept – or is it likened to so many bottom-line government decisions as just being an accounting exercise? Even if so – the end outcome would not stack up if considered for the broader conceptual values. Yes, I can sympathise with public servants trying to meet political priorities, but I am bemused when genuine community priorities may be victim to ideological preference over longer-term community benefit.

Like Jon, I can but hope that those holding the purse strings may yet take time to see the multiplier self-help benefits of the SHOUT model.    

Len Goodman, Belconnen

The postie’s special delivery

I ENJOYED “Love Blooms in a Changing World” (CN, February 27) about Elisabeth Rose, the prolific, successful and talented writer of romance novels.

My friends and I remember her also as an excellent teacher of tai chi. We attended many of the sessions she took at Aranda for the Tai Chi Academy.

Since coming to Canberra from Melbourne, to be with our son and family, I have met many wonderful people, through tai chi and other activities.

Just recently, walking back from Cooleman Court shopping centre with a heavy backpack and two laden bags, I stopped to rest. Our local postie went past, stopped and asked me where I lived, and then invited me to put the bags in his panniers. When I arrived home, I found my shopping at my front door. Canberrans are friendly and generous.

Bernadette Gately, Stirling