​SON OF A NUTCRACKER! IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME!
 
Time to celebrate with friends and family, indulge in a few treats, delight each other with some thoughtful gift-giving and prepare to bid farewell to what has been an EPIC year.
 
I must admit, I feel like I could do with a week of holidays before Christmas Day (in addition to the week after, thanks) just to unwind from the long year and perhaps get some washing done? Usually we can see signs of the community slowing down by this time, but no dice this year! The very recent opening of the brand spanking new Quairading Pool has held us all captive and capped off the year beautifully. I had the pleasure of popping down on Wednesday to have a chin wag on the radio during the Triple M (fka Radio West) poolside broadcast, organised by the Shire of Quairading. Once all the grass has been rolled out it’s going to be a wonderful spot to spend some time over the next few months!
 
In other local news, we hosted a successful Business After Hours event with WBN and Roger Gough from GWN7 on Wednesday 14th December. Roger had a few examples of TV ad campaigns from different towns and businesses around the state. Keep your eyes on gee dub, Quairading’s next 15 minutes might be just around the corner!
 
You may have seen a Public Art Survey around the traps. Thank you so much to everyone who has shared their many and varied ideas so far, and I encourage the rest of you to throw us your thoughts! We think the already beautiful townscape could do with a touch more local character, but we need y’all to tell us so (or not so) too! A copy of the survey is on Page 10, or you can find the online link on our Facebook page.
 
We will be closing at 12pm on Friday 23rd December and reopening at 10am on Tuesday 3rd January 2017, throughout January we’ll be open from 10am to 3pm, or other times by prior arrangement.
 
On behalf on all CRC staff and Management Committee, I wish a very Merry Christmas and a gleeful New Year to every single one of you. Thank you for your endless support and lovely, encouraging comments. It overwhelms me every month that there are people enjoying reading my ramblings as much as I enjoy rambling them.
 
Bartender, another one!
 
Jill Hayes
Coordinator, Quairading CRC
Editor, Banksia Bulletin

If you know me (or work for a local courier company), you know I love online shopping. And it is thanks to that love (see: addiction) that I have completed ALL of my Christmas shopping and thus am SO EXCITED IT'S PRETTY MUCH DECEMBER!
 
What's going on at the CRC this month? Glad you asked! We've got a Family First Aid course on the 6th and 13th of December. This two part course teaches you the skills you need to deal with choking, CPR, allergic reactions, burns, poisoning and more for babies and toddlers (we need names and payment ASAP for this course to go ahead!). The annual WASO Symphony in the City will be broadcast live to the CRC via Westlink on Saturday 10th December, it's totally free to attend (BYO drinks and nibbles) - give us a call if you'd like to come along! We're also hosting the last Business After Hours event for the year on Wednesday 14th December with Roger Gough from GWN7 to talk about a joint TV campaign for our local businesses (15 minutes of fame come at me, I mean us).
 
I’m going to get super local-business-focussed right now and remark on how many new enterprises and employees have joined a number of local industries over the past month, congrats and welcome! For fear of missing someone out, I’m not going to make a list, but simply remind the whole community to keep an eye out for the new faces and offerings down our main street and all over town.
 
To hopefully assist you with this, we’re proud to unveil another Shop Local campaign in the lead up to the silly season. This year we’ve thrown together a “Handy Guide to Christmas Time in Quairading”, you’ll find it on page 6. It is by no means comprehensive, but it’s a start. With many families and individuals doing it tough right now, thanks to disappointing crops or anything else, spending the dollars you do earn, locally, gives that dollar so much more value to our community. WBN have made a FANTASTIC video illustrating how much more we as a town get from each dollar earned locally, spent locally. Check it out on our Facebook page, or pop in and ask us to show you!
 
Here is where you think “doesn’t that completely contradict your opening sentence?”. It does. I have to admit, you can’t get everything in Quairading. So instead I’ve made a pact that for every dollar I need to spend online, I spend a dollar locally. Simples.
 
The QTTTC (Quairading Tourist & Tidy Town Committee) have once again been super busy organising the FREE Community Christmas Party on Friday 16th December at the oval. The group of volunteers applied for a Lotterywest grant (with the help of our ever dynamic CDO Cheryl White) to fund this event
 
Would you like to wish the community a Merry Christmas from your business or local group? Get them in by Tuesday 22nd December and they'll go into the 'Christmas Edition' of the Banksia Bulletin.
 
Until next time!
 
Jill Hayes
Coordinator, Quairading CRC
Editor, Banksia Bulletin