During the Orange festival Senator John Williams joined Mayor John Coulton, Area Manager of Community Mutual New England, Matt Hayes and Soundtrails producer Hamish Sewell for the official launch of the Bingara Soundtrails App.
The Soundtrails tells of Bingara’ s history, in particular the Orange Trees and the experiences of living through war both at the front and at home in Bingara. With these stories in mind it was only fitting that the official launch of the app occur at the Bingara Orange Festival.
Gwydir Shire Council Mayor John Coulton offered his congratulations to those involved with creating the app for locals and visitors to enjoy.
“I offer my congratulations to Carmen Southwell who has been driving this along with Hamish, and Hamish has been responsible, and sponsorship from Community Mutual New England, and it has been a wonderful result,” said Mayor Coulton.
“If you haven’t already heard some of the Soundtrails, listen to it, it is really really interesting.
“This week, Mrs. Pat Brown was buried, and she is actually on that Soundtrail. An incredible story, where she had five brothers who went off to WWII, two of them were lost in battle, the third one was imprisoned in Changi, when he returned, he weighed three stone, I can’t imagine that. But that sort of information is on this Soundtrail.
“As you walk around the township of Bingara, and you have this app on your phone, you can hear these interviews, and can hear the significance of where you are. It is a wonderful idea, and I give much credit to everybody involved.”
Senator John Williams also praised those behind the creation of the app.
“I remember years ago, at a Nationals function, one of the politicians said ‘it won’t be long, you can pull your phone out of your pocket, take a photograph, and send it around the world in a matter of seconds.’
I thought ‘yeah right’, Of course we now we are here with this technology,” said Senator Williams.
“Soundtrails is a wonderful app, Gwydir Shire has shown leadership to be part of it.”
“Hamish, well done with your program. I have the feeling this will be Australia wide or world wide in the years ahead of us.”
Locals and visitors to the town were given the opportunity to download the app on their phones and android devices at a stall which was run by Carmen Southwell with the help of Jade Butler and Payton McLachlan during the Orange Festival.
