In September 2018, I was honoured to be invited to be a guest on John Caruso’s podcast series “Everyone Has A Story“. I was able to share a lot about myself during the podcast, most notably my connection to, and visions for, the whole Noosa area.
The podcast is below, and the transcript follows. My backstory comes first, and I talk about the time from my election to Noosa Council at the 09:55 point.
John Caruso (00:00):
Hello there, and welcome to our podcast Conversations in Noosa. My name is John Caruso. I’ve known Frank Wilkee for over a decade. He’s an individual of many strings to his bow, and I’ve always admired his passion and his commitment. He’s a counselor and deputy mayor of Noosa Council. He’s a performer and playwright, and he’s a devoted dad and fitness fanatic. In this podcast, we cover a lot of ground. Frank grew up in the same Brisbane suburb and the same street as Keith Urban, and he could see a superstar of the future in the making. We talk about that. We also discuss Frank’s local government career, his teaching and his work as a journalist. We start the pod by talking about what he did with himself when Noosa council amalgamated with the Sunshine Coast Council,
Frank Wilkie (00:52):
Well, six years during the amalgamation years, I went back to journalism and I went back to high school teaching. That’s right. You’re a teacher
John Caruso (00:58):
Still live in Peregian Beach?
Frank Wilkie (00:59):
Still live in Peregian Beach. Palmira. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Little girl, Zigi. She’s 16 now. She’s almost as tall as me. Gives me a hard time. Where did you grow up, Frank? Brisbane, Northern suburbs of Brisbane, Ashgrove Bardon, Red Hill, went to Ashgrove Primary School, Kelvin Grove High School. Great. Great childhood. We used to play down the creek, run through the parks, out in the streets until dark and then come home and there’s a bunch of kids our own age. We used to run around with. Keith Urban, used to live across the road, and he was my inspiration for learning guitar.
John Caruso (01:36):
Really? Yes. Now I thought, I know he was born in NZ, but I thought he moved to Caboolture, but he was a Caboolture
Frank Wilkie (01:41):
After he was living in Brisbane, he then moved to Caboolture. I knew Keith when he was in about grade four.
John Caruso (01:49):
What kind of kid was he?
Frank Wilkie (01:50):
He was a great kid. And I remember distinctly remember seeing him sitting cross-legged on the bitumen at Ashgrove Primary school in his denim jeans and his denim jacket that his mum had embroidered, and he was playing Bad Moon rising on this nylon string guitar with his long blonde hair with a big circle of girls around him. And I thought, I ought to learn myself the guitar
John Caruso (02:14):
Get me, some girls?
Frank Wilkie (02:15):
Get me, some girls! Get me a guitar, get me some girls.
John Caruso (02:20):
Just a little insight. Now, was there any, what’s the word I’m looking for? Did he talk about stardom?
Frank Wilkie (02:26):
Yes, he did talk about
John Caruso (02:28):
And what age? How old would he have been?
Frank Wilkie (02:30):
This was year four. So how old was it? Nine. Nine or 10. I distinctly remember him saying, then quite matter of factly, I’m going to be a pop star when I grow up, I’m going to be a pop star. And there was no doubt about it. He was going to be a pop star.
John Caruso (02:44):
So this kind of career, this path, it was something that was in him from…
Frank Wilkie (02:46):
Yes,
John Caruso (02:47):
the age of nine Or 10.
Frank Wilkie (02:48):
That’s right. Whether it was nature or nurture, I don’t know, but he was definite about it and he was confident about it, and he was playing Bad Moon Rising with a circle of girls around him. He went on Pot of Gold and I remember Bernard King saying, son, if you’re going to sing, sing Australian, don’t sing American. If you’re Australian, sing Australian. But that was the only criticism. But of course we thought he was a hero, a legend. And he was a very likable person, very unassuming. His older brother, Shane Urban now is the manager of the Coolum Surf Club. Shane played the drums. I think he did. His dad certainly played the drums. His mother, Marian, I think she still lives in Mooloolaba,
John Caruso (03:39):
And he tours quite often. Do you go and see him? Have you seen him?
Frank Wilkie (03:42):
I haven’t.
John Caruso (03:42):
No entertainment center?
Frank Wilkie (03:43):
I haven’t, but it’s phenomenal the way his skills have improved. He’s such a fantastic performer. Yeah.
John Caruso (03:51):
Oh, enough about Keith. Yeah. Everyone knows about Keith. I want to find out more about you though, Frank. Okay. What did your parents do, mum and dad do?
Frank Wilkie (03:57):
Well, both started off as high school as teachers, and then dad studied night school for seven years. He became a barrister and he went into family law, ended up as a registrar of the family court, but most of his career, he was a barrister. And was mom was a primary school teacher for all her working life, as well.
John Caruso (04:17):
Apart from spying the Urban kid and thinking he’s got a guitar and he’s got the girls, was there anything… what were your dreams as a kid? What did you want to do?
Frank Wilkie (04:28):
What were my dreams as a kid?
John Caruso (04:30):
Well, at that age, in that little suburban street there in Brisbane,
Frank Wilkie (04:34):
Oh, being a soccer star, being a rock star, just being able to run from dawn to dusk. I used to love my running. I still do my distance running. Yeah, just love playing guitar, love doing a bit of art, love being with friends. Just normal kid stuff, really normal kid stuff.
John Caruso (04:57):
When was it that you thought, I want to be a journalist or journalism or teaching, which came first?
Frank Wilkie (05:02):
Look, I was never one of these people who had my career mapped out. I went to school with people who knew they were going to be an accountant or they’re going to be on a lawyer, and to their credit, they went off and did that. I never did that. I’ve taken the road less travelled. I’ve always just said yes to opportunities that presented themselves and followed that road as far as it could take me. I spent many years working in the island resorts in the Whitsundays, which was all service industry. And it wasn’t until I moved to Noosa in 1996 where the opportunity to take on a cadetship, journalism cadetship came up, which, so I grabbed with both hands. Qualified, became a qualified journalist. That took me towards the editorship of the Noosa News, working the Sunshine Coast Daily. It was a discipline. It was hard, hard work. You’d be working on anywhere, completing six stories a day, dealing with 10,000 words of copy, whittling it down to six stories a day. It was just a hard school, but nothing’s ever wasted. It was just a very, very good discipline and it introduced me to the Sunshine Coast and the Noosa Shire. I got to see firsthand the people who were doing amazing things across the length and breadth of the Sunshine Coast, and more importantly, an opportunity to assist them in achieving their aims and objectives.
John Caruso (06:23):
You mentioned that it was hard work, but very satisfying. And this is back what, late nineties, early noughties?
Frank Wilkie (06:28):
Yeah.
John Caruso (06:29):
What do you think of, what’s your take on newsrooms these days? We’ve got the digital age, newsrooms are shrinking. It’s a lot of rip and read. And what’s your take on that? Would you still like to be in that arena doing print journalism?
Frank Wilkie (06:44):
I wouldn’t like to go back because that’s just my personal view, just keep moving forward. But I love journalists who are faithful to the facts and whatever they’re reporting, and there’s enormous pressure. I can appreciate enormous pressure for young journalists, especially to find a sensational angle and it can involve the warping of the facts. And you’ve heard the saying, a lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on. It’s very hard to recover for parties, aggrieved parties to recover from fake news, I guess it’s called now.
John Caruso (07:17):
I’ll be warping some facts with this podcast later, Frank, just to make attention grabbing,
Frank Wilkie (07:21):
Try!
(07:21):
Creative, get a creative tease out of it. When did the teaching come into it? I
(07:27):
I did a Bachelor of Arts degree in the early eighties, and then I did some postgraduate study in drama and journalism, and then I did a one year graduate diploma of secondary education. And when I first moved to the Sunshine Coast, I put my name down for supply teaching, which I did. Then did the journalism. Then I went back in the interim, during the amalgamation years, I did four years at the Noosa Pengari Steiner School as a teacher there for year seven.
John Caruso (07:53):
Located down the road where it is today?
Frank Wilkie (07:54):
That’s right in the Doonan campus. Beautiful campus. And I think I learned more than, it was very instructive for me as well.
John Caruso (08:01):
Yeah. Tell me more about that school. I’ve got a 9-year-old and I talked to other parents and it’s, what kind of school is it? What kind of education does it give kids?
Frank Wilkie (08:09):
It is based on the Steiner philosophy of education, which is that they match the curriculum to the developmental age, stage of the child, which I mean, a lot of education strives to do that, but they have an aim for an integrated approach to education. So the maths, the history, the science, the art, the music is all geared around a theme. So for example, at age 13, 14, that’s the age of one of the units is age of Exploration, which is when man set out from the European base to explore the unknown worlds. And it mirrors the journey of the adolescent into unknown, uncharted waters of adolescents. And the hormonal changes are coming through the change, physical, mental, emotional changes, spiritual changes that the child’s going through.
John Caruso (09:01):
Is it for all kids?
Frank Wilkie (09:02):
It’s for all kids. Look, it has a spiritual underpinning, but that’s not overt in the education at all. It’s secular. There’s no religious education or anything like that. But there is, there’s a spiritual understanding of the human being that underpins that education. And the age of exploration was an age, a stage of human development in human history. And they believe that today’s modern child is actually at age 13, mirrors that age of human development back in the 13, 14 hundreds. So it resonates very deeply when done correctly . And to teach, it’s a wonderful thing to teach as well.
(09:46):
How long were there for?
(09:47):
I was there for four years, and then I left when the Noosa Council was deamalgamating and I felt strongly compelled to run again.
John Caruso (09:55):
Let’s rewind to the first time that, when did the thought first enter your mind and those discussions that you have with your partner when you go, you know what? So you’re a journalist at this stage. I was working at the Noosa News. And you thought, I’m going to run for council. Yes. Why?
Frank Wilkie (10:12):
Well, one of the councilors who I respected very deeply, Vivian Griffin, decided to resign. She admitted that she was disheartened about the direction of the Noosa Council at the time. And I’ve been privileged enough to report on, sit in on Noosa Council meetings for the best part of a decade by that stage. And I’ve got a very strong sense. I listened to all the debates, read all the reports, very strong sense of the real difference that a local government can make to people’s lives and the reasons why Noosa Council was different to other councils.
John Caruso (10:51):
Tell me why.
Frank Wilkie (10:52):
It placed a great value on the wishes and aspirations of the residents, which were enshrined the town plan. They did a lot of consultation to put together 1997 strategic plan, which said the residents wanted Noosa maintained as a series of interconnected villages. And if you have a series of interconnected villages as opposed to a metropolis, the population that’s contained within that is much less than a metropolis. So the things that you lose when you’re living in a big city like peace and quiet, ease of transportation, getting around, lots of green space, clean air, access to clean water, not too much noise. Those that you lose, that if you choose to make a built up environment, a very heavily urbanized environment. And they chose to deliberately to not adopt, just to make sure that the symbols of urban and ugliness as Robin Boyd, who’s an architect in the late sixties, seventies, that is parking meters, traffic lights, high rise commercial signage, for example. Those symbols, urban symbols were kept out of the Noosa urban landscape and lots of green space. And they became iconic lines in the sand, which were enshrined in the town plan and policies. And it’s important that they’re protected and to maintain those points of difference because people come to Noosa and I’m sure you have you too John drive up from Caloundra or Maroochydore, which people enjoy those places well, but you come to Nosa, it’s a different feel. It’s, for me personally, it’s like
(12:30):
You breathe out. It hasn’t happened by accident, and there’s some deliberate choices behind that. And getting that understanding, I felt strongly compelled to get in there and make sure that that line is held.
John Caruso (12:42):
How many years were you before amalgamated?
Frank Wilkie (12:45):
Well, look, I put my foot on the sticky paper and I was only in there for one year. And is that all I’d committed to running. And I think it was during the by-election election campaign where the state government said, well, Noosa Council is going to be amalgamated. So I was committed to that course and the door to journalism had shut behind me, so I was committed to following through on that.
John Caruso (13:06):
When that news came out from Premier Beatie at the time about amalgamating all these smaller councils into one big council, what was your first thought, fear or reaction to that news?
Frank Wilkie (13:16):
Well, it was the same as a lot of people in the Noosa community that we’re going to lose our points of difference, that the Noosa planning scheme would be homogenized into a broader Sunshine Coast planning scheme. And the limits on the things that those points of different, such as the height limit, for example, could be wiped away with a stroke of a pen because it’s a numbers game. If Noosa counsellors were only three or two out of 10 or 12 or three out of 10 or 12, they could be easily be overruled. But fortunately, there was high level appreciation of Noosa’s, points of difference in the state government, and they agreed to bring this iconic legislation, which set up a panel of people who were prepared to assess planning applications and assess it against the Noosa planning scheme. And the Noosa planning scheme was enshrined as a separate document under the planning instruments that the Sunshine Coast Council had regard to. And they did honor that.
John Caruso (14:12):
Well, it must’ve been a relief to a lot of Noosaites. Did you say Noosaites? Well, then hearing then, that former Noosa Mayor, Bob Abbott. Yes. Who became the mayor of the Amalgamated Council. Yes. Did you have an opportunity to run for …
Frank Wilkie (14:25):
I did. I ran and Oh, you did? I did. In the former Noosa Council, there were, I think 10 councillors for four divisions, five divisions, but there was only two divisions in the Amalgamated Council. So I ran for Division 11, which is coastal Noosa and was unsuccessful.
(14:46):
Who beat you?
(14:47):
Russell Green, who proved to be a very effective advocate for Noosa under the Sunshine Coast Council. And everyone’s wise, in retrospect, it is devastating to lose any contest and especially one you’re so passionate about. But I can see that on my personal path that was meant to happen and I went into the work that I took on during that time was very instructive for me. It’s helped me in a great deal
John Caruso (15:14):
It’s a good way of looking at it though, Frank. I mean, not a lot of people would take that on board. I had Glenn Elmes in here, and I think he had the turn of phrase, which was, politics never ends pleasantly. So for that kind of chapter of that book to close, and then for you to get an opportunity to run again, I mean, what made you run again? You still felt that you had
Frank Wilkie (15:35):
A lot to offer and it was unfinished work. And also the sense that if I didn’t run, it would be something I know I would’ve regretted the rest of my life. The safe thing would’ve been to remain in the job I was doing because I loved the work that was at the Steiner School. It was personally very enriching, but I knew that if I didn’t run, it would always be a regret, and I didn’t want to have that. It was terrifying, but I felt I had to do it. I had to find out one way or the other, and I’m so glad I did. Yeah,
John Caruso (16:06):
You’re Deputy Mayor?
(16:08):
Yes. I am
(16:08):
Under Tony Wellington
(16:09):
At your service.
(16:11):
When people meet you for the first time, and I imagine, I mean apart from we’ll get to your theater and production work shortly, but when you walk away from meeting someone for the first time, what do you think? How do you think people would describe Frank Wilkie?
Frank Wilkie (16:25):
I have no idea. I hope they would think that I was helpful. I listened to them, that they felt heard, that if they asked me to do something that they knew I would follow up for them and follow through for them.
John Caruso (16:42):
I had a period of time where I entertained the idea of running for some many, many years ago, and my wife, Deb, who has worked in council in administrative roles before, she said, no, you don’t want to do that. You know what happens when you do that? You’ll never have any time to yourself. You’ll go out and you’ll be eating at a restaurant or a cafe and people will want to come over and talk to you about… Does that happen? Does it does happen? And how do you cope with that? How did you deal with that?
Frank Wilkie (17:10):
Well, you have to expect it. You have to expect it. And generally people are pretty good. And so often if they have a burning issue, they’re often, and you’re sitting down with your wife and your daughter and you’re out
John Caruso (17:24):
In a restaurant, you’re trying to enjoy meal. Yes.
Frank Wilkie (17:25):
Yeah. They’re usually apologetic. Look, sorry, I know you’re out with your family, but I’ve got this issue, so I normally get up and walk over and spend time with them and then go back to the table and that’s it done. But I think I’d rather…
John Caruso (17:39):
… you don’t find it an intrusion.
Frank Wilkie (17:41):
No, look, it’s par for the course, and I’d rather do that and have them happy rather than me say, oh, pardon me, can I, I’m… You never live that down because you’re there to serve, really.
John Caruso (17:57):
I had a great quote, and I dunno if it’s true, it was from former Ipswich mayor, Paul Pascale, who was out to dinner one night, and I think a disgruntled lady came over and said, I’ve got something to talk to you about and you better listen because I pay your wages. And his response was something along the lines of, well, if that’s the case, I’ve got a lot of outstanding overtime to talk to you about, which I thought at the time, just relating it to this was probably a good response. Let’s talk about your theater work. You’re a playwright, and how did that come about?
Frank Wilkie (18:34):
I’ve been involved with the theater for at that stage by about eight years, and I felt strongly compelled to write about changes in journalism. And my first play was Newsroom was about a regional newspaper, which had been taken over by a global News Corp-style monopoly, which has since come to pass. But it’s pressures that newsrooms are always under. So it’s when it’s a clash of cultures within a newsroom where you’ve got an editorial department that are very grassroots based, wanting to do their best by the community, focus on the facts, and you have perhaps a commercial arm or new commercial imperatives which are interested in maintaining faith with advertisers, the real estate industry, for example, advatorials, it’s about maintaining the integrity of the news portion and keeping…
John Caruso (19:31):
Without having the influence of that commercial side on editorial.
Frank Wilkie (19:36):
That’s right, or government interest. It was about the time it was written shortly after the September 11, I started writing shortly after September 11 where this hysteria just took over the news that we were consuming, and you had journalists calling for war, and where journalists started, especially in some of the national publications, started to, it wasn’t news anymore, it was opinion wrapped up as news. And they started to be an arm of a government and as a journalist who had access, had access to the newsfeeds from AAP and Reuters, and you got to see the facts about what weapons inspectors were discovering on their tours of Iraq: couldn’t find any weapons of destruction and mass destruction. You just had this rhetoric from the politician saying, there’s weapons of mass destruction. We’ve got to go and we’ve got to invade Iraq, and I just become a father for the first time, only time. And looking into holding your child in your arms for the first time, you just had a sense that life is precious and that there are parents in Iraq holding children for the first time, and yet here we are going to war, send our planes over to bomb and potentially kill new parents and children over there.
John Caruso (21:02):
As a journalist, I remember this too, and it really, I
Frank Wilkie (21:05):
Was just outraged.
John Caruso (21:06):
But the Chilcot Report came out a couple of years ago, absolutely beyond said and reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction. So you’ve got ex- President Bush, Blair, and Howard, and you’ve got troops. I often put myself again, just relating it back to, as a parent, whose kids would’ve gone off to that war on a lie, how do you feel as a journalist about that?
Frank Wilkie (21:32):
I just felt the world, I thought, this is not right, this is not true. And I felt the world went crazy. And there was a whole thing about the anthrax attacks. I remember hearing, seeing Noosa’s emergency services diverted to a cul-de-sac in Noosaville. It was totally shut down guys in hazmat suits because some terrified little old lady in a unit down the end of one of these streets had pulled out the last tissue out of the box and detected a white powder in the bottom of the tissue box, which are just paper fibers. And so she called the, because she was terrified about this white powder, which hysteria, but the emergency services had to shut down the street, send guys in hazmat, hose her down, hose the place down. And that was the sort of ridiculous hysteria that had gripped our little community because of what was happening overseas in the wake of the September 11, the world had gone mad. It’s also, and newspapers play a part in promoting that hysteria.
John Caruso (22:29):
Well, all media arms, whether you’re print, TV or radio as well, play their part. But even today, I get a sense, I mean, I’m away from it now, apart from this little podcast here in the house, which is not news related, but I get the sense that these media organizations like your play, the play that you were working on and wrote, they’re feeding us information that they want to feed us. True. And so where’s the truth out there? That must, because it frustrates me. I consume very little news these days because I’m too much of a cynic. Frank, are you the same way?
Frank Wilkie (23:03):
Hmm
John Caruso (23:03):
You feel that when you,
Frank Wilkie (23:05):
Well, I think you can be live a happy, fulfilled, enriched life without being plugged into any news at all. It is a filter placed over reality as the news bulletins by necessity are the most dire, tragic, disastrous things that are happening locally. If they can’t find it locally, they’ll go regionally. If they can’t find it regionally, they go nationally, they can’t find it nationally. They’ll pull something in from overseas. But it has to be negative. And I think it sours you and gives you not an accurate reflection of the world. And thinking about the trajectory of the world in the 20th century, there were major conflagrations where millions upon millions of people were killed in world wars, the World Wars. Then you had the Vietnam conflict and the Iraq War, but it got smaller and smaller. Now we’ve got these little skirmishes breaking out with these fractured terrorist groups, but yet we’re somehow led to believe that we’re somehow less safe than we were when tens of millions of people. So the population for some reason, needs to be kept terrified. And I think if you don’t watch the news, John, you’re making good for you.
John Caruso (24:23):
Can I bring this, because talking to a fellow journalist, I haven’t spoken about this before, but I’ve often thought about doing it as a TED talk. Working in a newsroom like the ABC, you are part of the editorial and a story comes through and it’s the story of the day, and there’s a lot of hot air pumped into that issue. And you do these stakeholder exercises about who can we talk to about this, that, and the other. Say it’s Mal Brough, for example, he seemed to be a popular one years ago. And so then we can talk to Mal, we can talk to the political lecturer at the uni, then we can go out in the streets and get some Vox pops, which are interview people on the streets. And so you’re all pumped up from being inside the editorial room, and I’m sure this happened to you too, inside the confines of your newsroom. And you’d hit the streets and eight out of 10 people that you would stop and you’d say, what do you think of issue X, Y, Z? And they’d shrug their shoulders and go, “aah?”
Frank Wilkie (25:12):
Not an issue.
John Caruso (25:13):
No, I dunno. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And you’d feel like shaking them because you thought, but it’s super important back in our office when everyone’s talking, it’s the story of the day,
Frank Wilkie (25:23):
But it’s really not.
John Caruso (25:25):
Well, when I walked away then from the ABC in 2015, and like you, I actually didn’t consume any news for a very long time, and I still really don’t, I actually realized that those 80%, those eight out of 10 people, they were kind of right. Those stories weren’t important. It was only because we, you, the media tried to make them important. So it comes back to this thing about, I feel a bit cynical about the stories that were kind of spoonfed, but I don’t want to really get to the truth. Maybe Trump’s got something in all this fake news stuff. Let’s not get started on Trump. But back to your playwright and your performing, I’ve seen you in a couple of productions there, and you’re amazing. You’re fantastic.
Frank Wilkie (26:08):
They made me say those terrible things.
John Caruso (26:10):
What do you mean?
Frank Wilkie (26:11):
Some of the roles have to play psychotic, serial adulterers
John Caruso (26:13):
Oh, I haven’t seen some of those
Frank Wilkie (26:16):
Adulterers.
John Caruso (26:17):
I’ve been with my son.
Frank Wilkie (26:18):
I loved it. I loved every minute of it.
John Caruso (26:21):
But you’re a great actor. You’re a great actor on stage.
(26:24):
Thank you.
(26:24):
And there is, when you come out on stage and you’re performing and there’s something about you on the stage, and the whole theater really comes alive.
(26:35):
Thank you, John.
(26:37):
Well, I dunno whether it’s because you have a profile and people here comes, Frank. Frank’s coming, and then boom, you’re there. But you’re excellent at it.
Frank Wilkie (26:47):
Thank you very much.
John Caruso (26:48):
Like I said, I haven’t seen you of the darkest stuff only with a couple of kids’ productions.
Frank Wilkie (26:52):
Oh, look, it’s often David Williamson writes some fantastic roles, very flawed human beings, which I just love the villains. I just love playing really, people who behave, very adults behaving very badly, which are just a delight to watch.
John Caruso (27:06):
When do you get the time to rehearse and learn your lines?
Frank Wilkie (27:08):
Well, John, like you, I figured that if I wasn’t learning a script at home and rehearsing and working with a team of people to put a production on for the delight of the community, I’d just be at home consuming news and screaming at the television. So it was a no brainer what I’d rather be doing.
John Caruso (27:26):
How many would you do a year?
Frank Wilkie (27:27):
Production? Look, this year I’ve only, this will be, I’m in rehearsal for the second one this year. Some years I did up to six in big year in 2006, I think it was. I’ve done over about 50 now, but this has been a bit of a quiet year. Some years only one. But I’m involved with the committee of the Noosa Arts Theater. So a lot of behind the scenes work now to keep it going. And it’s important we have renewal, so it’s great to be off the stage and see new, fresh, new faces come through like we have for the One Act plays and Cozy and Shorts on Stage. It’s great. We have people turn up that have never been to Noosa Arts Theater before, and it’s just healthy.
John Caruso (28:07):
Speaking of healthy, I know you’re super fit, and you talked about running before, but you’re also a bike rider, you still ride a lot?
Frank Wilkie (28:13):
I ride a bit mainly in days when I’m not running, but yeah,
John Caruso (28:18):
You run every day?
Frank Wilkie (28:20):
Not every day. Maybe four days a week. Yeah, cross country seasons just finished. I love to do that every year. It’s just a good discipline. I have a job where as a council, you do a lot of reading and a lot of mental work, and you can sit on your backside a lot, so you’ve got to balance it out. Yeah.
John Caruso (28:35):
When are the next council elections?
Frank Wilkie (28:37):
March, 2020.
John Caruso (28:39):
Oh,
Frank Wilkie (28:40):
Plenty of time. So about 18 months or so,
John Caruso (28:42):
You put your hand up again
Frank Wilkie (28:44):
At this stage? Yes. Keep rolling. Yes. At this stage, a lot of work we like to follow through on. We’ve made a commitment to introduce a transport strategy for Noosa, which is basically about attacking the problems of access in congested areas in peak time. So we’re talking about around schools and at peak hours, and specifically around Hastings Street in busy times, which now is pretty much every weekend, public holidays and school holidays. So we’re looking at a range of options there to improve access and just make it a better experience for everybody.
John Caruso (29:19):
Frank. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming in.
Frank Wilkie (29:21):
John, thanks for having me.
John Caruso (29:23):
Frank Wilke was my guest today In Conversations in Noosa. I hope you enjoyed that. He’s a good chat, great talent, and a top bloke. Alright, please rate and review the pod. If you are downloaded it, maybe via Spotify, apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Wooshker all of those platforms, have the ability for you to rate and review the pod. I’d really appreciate it if you could, and what a great time.
If you would like to discuss this, or any issues leading up to the March 16,2024 local government election, where I am running for Mayor of Noosa, I invite you to contact me.
Frank Wilkie
Deputy Mayor, Noosa Council
0413 530 587
frank@frankfornoosa.com
PO Box 117, Peregian Beach Qld 4573
