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It is with great sadness that the FCA reports the passing of FCA founding member and friend, Geoffrey Lee Martin.

Geoffrey was an author, Antarctic adventurer and outstanding journalist for the New Zealand Herald and the London Daily Telegraph. “Hellbent for the Pole”, Geoffrey’s remarkable account of the 1958 race to the South Pole between Britain’s Vivian Fuchs and New Zealand’s conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, was published in 2007.

Geoffrey’s funeral will be at 12.15 on Thursday (October 20^th) at the Palm Chapel, Macquarie Park Crematorium.

Jurgen Corleis, 1929-2011

Where better to hide a young German teenager with Jewish heritage from the Nazis during the war than inside a Nazi school?

This was the teenage life for Jurgen Corleis, who became a distinguished journalist and was also one of the first non-English speaking journalists to be based in Australia as a foreign correspondent.

BRISBANE, April 14 (APNA) - The Queensland economy took a huge battering through the combination of floods and cyclones in January and February. It was described as the worst natural disaster in its history. What followed was a huge recovery effort by Queensland authorities, Federal agencies and the people of Queensland. Now Queensland wants to get a clear message out to the rest of the world that the tropical state is open for business again.

The mining town of Newman in the Pilbara region of Western Australia is a place where people can make big money - and spend it quite as easily. A small serve of steamed rice in the local Chinese restaurant sets you back nine dollars and a main meal cost more than 20 dollars. The same restaurant stopped catering for lunch - not because of a lack of customers but because of staff shortages. The Thai restaurant opposite faces the same problem. It seems almost impossible to find people willing to work in a restaurant.

In a passionate address to FCA members at the Wharf Restaurant in Sydney, Hollywood star Cate Blanchett called for leadership to address climate change and green issues.

The co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company told FCA members she was "incredibly hopeful before Copenhagen" but now admits she's "much more realistic".

"I suppose in a nutshell there's an opportunity in climate change for re-assessment of our personal values but there's also an enormous - as there was after 9/11 - an enormous opportunity for leadership. Bit of a vacuum at the moment," she said.