• November 2006
  • Environment care a ringing success
  • Turkey becomes an NCSI partner
  • She’s apples, mate
  • Melbourne's Fire Brigade hot on quality
  • Minova helped with mine rescue
  • Print Bound wins Premier's award
  • Primary Industries' quality effort
  • Return to NCSI website

Community projects

John Moran and Mal Ronan with one of the radio dishes facing a fishy future.

The first project involved the delicate and environmentally sensitive relocation of a the nest of a pair of ospreys, from the top of the local network dish established there since 2000. Following consultation, Telstra's structural engineers designed and installed a more suitable nesting platform that would enclose the nest and incorporate the existing mobiles antennas.  The tricky task was to encourage the birds to return to the new nest, this involving the use of a cherry picker, a 30 ton crane, radio lines crew and a crowd of interested locals. Within an hour of returning the dish the ospreys returned to their relocated nest.
 
Telstra’s NCSI Auditor, Gerry Pisani, commended local Advanced Services staff for their approach to recycling the solid parabolic dishes, no longer needed for the local radio network. These are now used as breeding tanks at the Ballina High School's Marine Discovery Centre, the only marine education facility of its type in NSW. Generally these recovered dishes are scrapped, but project specialist, David Sutton, saw that the parabolic dishes could be used as breeding tanks in the Marine Aquaculture program visited by over 5000 children each year.

According to Michael,O'Connor, the head science teacher at Ballina High School, the parabolic dishes are ideal for the expanding aquaculture facility.

"We need 'small but large' (2-3 cubic metres) growing containers with sloping bottoms, and normally aquaculture tanks this shape and size cost in excess of $2000."

 Mark O'Toole, John Stokes and John Moran from Advanced Services recently delivered two dishes from local towers to the school, where they will be lined with fibreglass and used to breed barramundi and jew fish.