Have a happy Christmas!

From everyone at Live Well Tasmania, we hope you all have a peaceful and enjoyable Christmas and a wonderful New Year. We wish to thank all our fantastic volunteers and other supporters for everyone’s great contributons during 2025. We feel we really made great progress towards our mission of increasing health and wellbeing, community capacity, community resilience and sustainability. Reflecting on building momentum in 2026, the issue of the importance of collaboration comes to mind, see below for a perspective on the importance of working together across difference. Speaking of 2026, stand by for details of celebrations of our 10 year anniversary!

Highlights included our Care Farming project, part of which involved the growing of fresh produce for the local Community Food Hub at the ROC, part of the Baptist Church in Wynyard. The partnership with the ROC continued with a subsequent grant from the Department of Premier and Cabinet and has been an inspiring collaboration of wisdom and resources and the ability to increase the supply of local food within our local community. Our two Open Day’s at our Community Centre and at the Community Farm were both a great success. The new kitchen facility space allowed for easy preparation and serving of our international themed lunch, always a crowd pleaser and this year we saw USA, Mexico, India and others represented. The Nest was full to capacity and it was an absolute delight to see our volunteers and the local community sharing, mingling and making new connections in our space. For the Community Farm Open Day the bush tracks were open and many came to visit the Grandmother Tree. We had a mindful movement session in our bush school area, led by our fabulous volunteers, as well as enjoying a BBQ thanks to funding from the Mental Health Council of Tasmania.

The final dates for the activities at our Community Centre during December are:

Yoga 19th December

Diversity & Dragons 20th December

Spinners & Weavers 19th December

Crafty Connections 15th December

Musical Connections 14th December

Mindfulness 17th December (end of course)

Grow Update

Our Wynyard Grow group is increasing in strength, including that we now have a fortnightly social event. We rotate between cafe’s in Wynyard and Somerset for a chat and cuppa. During December we will be having our last formal meeting on the 17th of December, after which we will have a Xmas event, for which we are lucky to be having a visit from our Grow Program worker Linda. Then on the 24th and 31st of December instead of our normal meetings we will be having a social get together on both dates.

Waratah-Wynyard Council Community Activation grant

We thank the Council for awarding us a grant to install two heat pumps in the “Burrow”. Heat pumps are a very efficient form of heating, and will complement our wood heater over winter to keep us all toasty warm! Thanks also to the photo of Cr Kevin Hyland awarding the cheque to Deb and Kelly.

LWT Youth Social Activation Program Team

Over the past month our Social Activation Team have been employed to deliver a number of workshops, events and activities, with the help from the Tasmanian Government ‘Future Drought Fund’ and the FRRR grants.

Our aim is to help the Waratah-Wynyard community to strengthen resilience to drought and climate events and change, focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and provide a roadmap of actions individuals, communities and organisations can take. In particular we are collaborating with the local Emergency and Mental Health Services, Aboriginal Groups and Community Groups to deliver these workshops, Expo’s and develop relevant resources.

Earthfood’s Bronwyn Holm presentation

We have already held a presentation from Earthfood’s Bronwyn Holm which was well attended by 43 locals and very informative. Bronwyn spoke about the need for food security and encouraged people to look after your soil and your patch. She also encouraged us to grow food in nutrient rich soils so the nutrients are picked up by the produce and you then consume this nutrient dense food. Bronwyn said Earthfood’s nitrifying living microbes colonise, structure, stabilise and rebuild the soil permanently. Also helping retain more moisture and life in the soil. Our LWT Community Farm is trialling this produce alongside Steve Solomon’s Complete fertiliser. This will be a great trial and we are looking forward to the results.

Our next event is a Movie called FUTURE COUNCIL

When: Saturday 13^th December, 5pm Pot Luck Dinner to share

6pm Film (1hr 22min)

Where: Live Well Tasmania, 28 Saunders St, Wynyard

RSVP Kelly 0498315298 or [email protected]

Please check out this trailer  https://theregenerators.org/future-council/

Future Council has grown from the big screen to a real-life organisation! The Future Council is a child-led movement that inspires and empowers young people to take positive action for our future.

Director Damon Gameau (2040, That Sugar Film) takes eight children on an epic adventure across Europe in a school bus powered by biofuel. Their mission is to better understand the planet’s predicament, explore solutions and, most importantly, take the conversation from the streets, into the boardrooms of some of the world’s largest polluters and most influential companies.

Their bold, hopeful journey leads to the creation of a Future Council: young changemakers working with big business to shape a better world.

75% of the Producer’s profit share in the film will be donated to Future Council Ltd, a new not-for-profit organisation we’ve set up to support the children in their mission to collaborate with businesses, institutions and schools to create a better future.

Emergency Preparedness Info Expo

Our SAP team have engaged and met with our local Services, Tas Police, SES and TFS to work on an Emergency Prepared Expo to inform community about the risk and how to prepare for emergencies and to strengthen resilience to drought and climate events. Such as wild fires and floods. Keep an eye out for this event, we are in talks with RAW (Rural Alive and Well), other community groups to provide information and assist with connecting local groups and support networks on the day. The proposed times and place are as follows. More information to come.

Event Day: Saturday 17^th January 2026

Event Time: 10am till 2pm

Event location: Sisters Beach Park

Other events and workshop we are proposing are:

• Repair Café – Bikes, tool and knife sharpening, clothes shop
• Film- Plastic Oceans
• Walk to School
• Reduce plastic/greenhouse workshops – bees wax wrap and beauty product workshops
• Aboriginal Cultural walk, Smoking ceremony disaster prep and fire management. Information on Seasonal Changes
• Mental Health/Wellbeing Workshop
• BIOCHAR, Regen, Wicking Bed and growing vegetables in pots Workshops

New newsletters

It’s great that new newsletters are being proposed for North-West Tasmania, communication is so important! Firstly there is a Sustainability newsletter being proposed encompassing groups including ourselves, such as the North-West Environment Centre and RESEED, both in Penguin. The other new newsletter is a project of Big hArt, called ‘Artizine’, which is calling for submissions from writers, artists and community voices of all ages and experience. Art, poetry, essays and photography are welcome. Issue #1 has the theme of “What if?”.

Contact [email protected]

Collaboration across difference

In a world facing complex challenges, one truth stands out: we are stronger together. The saying “two heads are better than one” reminds us that collaboration unlocks possibilities that individual effort alone cannot achieve. When we combine our skills, ideas, and perspectives, we create solutions that are richer, more innovative, and more resilient.

But collaboration is not just about working side by side—it’s about embracing difference. Diversity is not a hurdle; it is a gift. Each person brings unique experiences, cultural insights, and ways of thinking. These differences spark creativity and help us see problems from angles we might never have considered.

Yet, one of humanity’s greatest challenges is our unconscious bias toward those who are different. This bias can whisper doubts, sow division, and close doors to opportunity. Overcoming it requires courage and awareness. It means choosing curiosity over fear, empathy over judgment, and inclusion over exclusion.