Closing the Gap

Closing the Gap

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When in doubt, go to the library

When in doubt, go to the library

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Did you know that NSW Health Pathol­o­gy’s Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) has a library and a librar­i­an avail­able to assist with research, access­ing pub­li­ca­tions and track­ing down hard-to-find journals?

Mar­garet Gillies has worked as a librar­i­an in the NSW Health sys­tem for 21 years, work­ing in Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Health, Auburn Hos­pi­tal, the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal and West­mead Hos­pi­tal. She now divides her work­ing week between the West­mead library and FASS.

“I start­ed at FASS in 2007 when there was an actu­al phys­i­cal library with books and paper copies of jour­nals,” Mar­garet said.

“There had been a long gap between librar­i­ans, and I could­n’t find any cat­a­logu­ing records. So, I re-cat­a­logued every­thing to the Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine cat­a­logue standards.

“Now I work most­ly online, with just a small selec­tion of books and paper jour­nals along with his­tor­i­cal reports that I’ve man­aged to keep and store here at the Lid­combe office. Peo­ple can get in touch with me via the FASS Library link on the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy intranet.

“When I first start­ed at FASS, I had a gen­tle­man come in and say ‘You won’t be able to help me, no one has ever been able to help me’. But I man­aged to con­vince him to give me a try.

“It turned out he want­ed to sub­mit an arti­cle for a jour­nal, and dif­fer­ent jour­nals have dif­fer­ent rules around sub­mis­sions, so I helped him with that. I proof-read his work because Eng­lish was not his first lan­guage and sub­mit­ted the arti­cle. We became good friends, over the years and he end­ed up using the library quite a lot.”

A magazine stand filled with science journals.
The library still pro­vides hard copies of some jour­nals for FASS staff.

The library assists with research and infor­ma­tion require­ments to FASS staff at all 5 FASS loca­tions. These include access to:

  • A vari­ety of databases
  • Library Cat­a­logue CIAP
  • Inter-library loans / Doc­u­ment delivery
  • Research assistance/enquiries
  • Stan­dards
  • Train­ing
  • Copy­right advice
  • Pur­chas­ing

The library cat­a­logue is a list­ing of all items held by FASS as well as the libraries in West­ern Syd­ney Local Health Dis­trict, Nepean Blue Moun­tains Local Health Dis­trict and the Children’s Hos­pi­tal Westmead.

Mar­garet says the library has both a sci­ence and med­ical focus, so is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for FASS staff.

Mar­garet uses many search plat­forms such as MyA­thens (that is avail­able to all FASS staff) to locate pub­li­ca­tions and she has a lot of con­tacts with­in dif­fer­ent libraries to track items down.

“I once tracked down a jour­nal in an African vil­lage. The man who wrote it was so hap­py I had found his work,” she said.

Mar­garet pro­duces a reg­u­lar library update, giv­ing an overview of the ser­vices available.

“A lot of peo­ple do not under­stand how much more the library can assist them in fur­ther­ing their exper­tise and pro­vid­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion for their research. If any­one in FASS wants to fol­low up on a par­tic­u­lar top­ic or ser­vice, they can get in touch with me.”

A woman reaches into a cupboard for a book
A small col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal reports and jour­nals remain in Margaret’s office at Lidcombe.

 

See how far we’ve come at Coffs Harbour!

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We’ve been transforming Anatomical Pathology services at our Coffs Harbour laboratory, attracting more pathologists and support staff, and achieving better outcomes for patients.

A pas­sion for work­ing in region­al areas has been the dri­ving force behind the career of Dr Richard Tustin, Senior Pathol­o­gist and Clin­i­cal Direc­tor for Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy at our Coffs Har­bour laboratory.

Richard has worked hard to cre­ate an AP lab that now serves the entire Mid North coast region, even tak­ing on work from oth­er parts of the state when needed.

“I’m from South Africa orig­i­nal­ly and have worked in region­al areas all over the world,” he explains.

“I have found that patients in region­al areas don’t always have access to the same anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy ser­vices as those in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. My phi­los­o­phy and pas­sion is for bridg­ing this gap.

“We have large­ly suc­ceed­ed in doing so in Coffs Har­bour and sur­rounds, in an area extend­ing from Port Mac­quar­ie to Grafton,” Richard said.

“Coffs Har­bour Base Hos­pi­tal pro­vides full sur­gi­cal and onco­log­i­cal ser­vices to the com­mu­ni­ty. In order to sup­port these ser­vices, it was essen­tial we devel­op our AP ser­vice to ful­fill the demands for rapid diag­no­sis as well as prog­nos­tic indi­ca­tors for var­i­ous cancers.”

When he arrived in Coffs Har­bour 7 years ago, Richard realised the lab­o­ra­to­ry need­ed upgrad­ing if it was to attract more pathol­o­gists and lab­o­ra­to­ry staff.

Since then, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has invest­ed in build­ing a ded­i­cat­ed Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, histopathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, a suite of pathol­o­gists’ offices for report­ing as well as installing state-of-the-art equipment.

A group of people wearing lab coats working in a laboratory.
Staff of Coffs Har­bour AP at micro­to­my stations
A man sits at a desk with a microscope.
Dr Renukadas P Sakalka­le, Senior Staff Spe­cial­ist Pathologist

“We now have 6 full-time pathol­o­gists work­ing in the area, up from only 1 full-time pathol­o­gist in 2017,” Richard said.

“We have an auto­mat­ed immuno­his­to­chem­istry stain­er on site, with the aim to pur­chase a sec­ond one short­ly. This enables us to pro­vide rapid turn­around times for biop­sies and oth­er urgent specimens.

“As a result of this trans­for­ma­tion in ser­vices the work­load has expand­ed con­sid­er­ably from 6000 patient episodes back in 2017 when I com­menced work­ing here to over 18,000 cas­es in 2023.”

Richard says his lab­o­ra­to­ry team has devel­oped excel­lent work­ing rela­tion­ships with col­leagues in the clin­i­cal disciplines.

“We rou­tine­ly pro­vide diag­noses with­in 24 hours for breast can­cer patients as well as patients with metasta­t­ic dis­ease. We report all the breast screen biop­sies for the mid and far north coast too.

“We also pro­vide a pathol­o­gy ser­vice to the pri­vate sec­tor – the work­load of which has grown con­sid­er­ably over the past 7 years.

“The psy­cho­log­i­cal impact on patients wait­ing for a diag­no­sis is extreme­ly stress­ful and the soon­er they get a defin­i­tive man­age­ment plan, the bet­ter. The ben­e­fits of ear­ly treat­ment speak for them­selves too.

“In line with my think­ing of attract­ing pathol­o­gists to work in region­al areas we have estab­lished 2 reg­is­trar posi­tions in our lab­o­ra­to­ry, both of which are filled. I find it extreme­ly reward­ing work­ing in region­al areas.”

A woman in a white lab coat sits at a workstation in a laboratory.

Senior Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist, Zoe Schmidt at embed­ding sta­tion.

“I knew I wanted to do something related to cancer.”

Man­ag­ing the lab­o­ra­to­ry along­side Richard is Coffs Har­bour local, Zoe Schmidt, a 27-year-old Senior Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist who went off to uni­ver­si­ty with dreams of help­ing peo­ple with cancer.

“I did­n’t know what I want­ed to do (when I began study­ing), but I knew that I want­ed to do some­thing relat­ed to can­cer,” Zoe said.

“Can­cer affects a lot of fam­i­lies, but it affect­ed my fam­i­ly quite a bit, so it was an area I want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence in.”

After work­ing in lab­o­ra­to­ries in Wol­lon­gong and Syd­ney, Zoe says she’s very hap­py to be back in her hometown.

“I find the work way more reward­ing in a small lab because you get expo­sure to things that you don’t get in a big lab. There’s so much more vari­ety to our work in Coffs Har­bour,” she said.

“Now we are get­ting big­ger, a lot of our staff are skilled in a lot of areas so they can move around, and that’s what makes it rewarding.

“It was daunt­ing ini­tial­ly tak­ing on the lab manager’s role, but I have great men­tors with Richard and Trevor Bail­lie (the for­mer AP lab man­ag­er) – it’s great to always be learn­ing and watch­ing what they do.

“We work very close­ly with the pathol­o­gists here in region­al, so the rela­tion­ship the staff get to have with the pathol­o­gist is real­ly enrich­ing, includ­ing get­ting to learn how and why we do things the way we do.”

Zoe says patients get access to fast, accu­rate results.

“Recent­ly we were con­tact­ed by a woman who want­ed to say thank you,” Zoe said.

“She’d had surgery on a Mon­day and by Tues­day after­noon got a phone call from her sur­geon giv­ing her the results of can­cer tests, which were all-clear.

“It was great that she want­ed to thank us for the fast turn­around of results, but I told her we just did what we always do!”

Richard says he’s proud of what’s been achieved at the Coffs Har­bour lab­o­ra­to­ry and his team remains focused on get­ting the best pos­si­ble out­comes for region­al patients.

A group of people standing in a laboratory smiling.
Some of the AP lab staff at Coffs Har­bour (Back: Jack Tibbey, Nao­mi Dal­ton, Zoe Schmidt, Kate Osborne, Saroj Raut. Front: Jen­ny Pow­er, Kristy Scott, Eliz­a­beth Tan)

Celebrating Clinical Trials Day!

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As Australia’s largest pub­lic pathol­o­gy provider, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is also a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to research, pro­vid­ing sup­port and ser­vices for hun­dreds of clin­i­cal trials.

Today is Clin­i­cal Tri­als Day, cel­e­brat­ed around the world on 20 May to mark the day in 1747 that James Lind, a ship’s sur­geon in the British Roy­al Navy, start­ed what is con­sid­ered to be the first ran­domised clin­i­cal tri­al.

Lind stud­ied the effects of dif­fer­ent treat­ments on scurvy, a dis­ease we now know is caused by a defi­cien­cy of vit­a­min C and was a major scourge for sailors on long voyages.

He con­duct­ed a clin­i­cal tri­al involv­ing just 12 peo­ple, of whom only 2 received the treat­ment of cit­rus fruits.

Many his­to­ri­ans believe that treat­ing and pre­vent­ing scurvy was the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in enhanc­ing the phys­i­cal health of the British fleet.

Here at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, we also recog­nise the vital role played by clin­i­cal tri­als in improv­ing treat­ments for patients.

We pro­vide cru­cial sup­port for hun­dreds of clin­i­cal tri­als across Aus­tralia, with access to tis­sue sam­ples, ongo­ing col­lec­tion ser­vices, and per­form­ing high qual­i­ty pathol­o­gy test­ing includ­ing spe­cial­ist genom­ic testing.

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy launched a new eRe­search­With­Us por­tal aimed at mak­ing it easy for researchers to sub­mit an access request to our services.

Since then, we have received appli­ca­tions to sup­port more than 500 research projects, with over 70 per cent of them com­mer­cial clin­i­cal trials.

Many of these tri­als involve test­ing new med­ica­tions, pro­vid­ing treat­ment and hope for thou­sands of patients.

“This inno­v­a­tive, user-friend­ly dig­i­tal plat­form is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in how we sup­port researchers,” says Dr Shaun Roman, Asso­ciate Direc­tor Research of NSW Health Pathology.

Shaun Roman 001
Dr Shaun Roman says NSWHP is play­ing a vital role in sup­port­ing clin­i­cal tri­als across the country.

“This dig­i­tal por­tal not only stream­lines the appli­ca­tion process but also rein­forces our com­mit­ment to advanc­ing sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and ulti­mate­ly improv­ing the health and well-being of the com­mu­ni­ty in part­ner­ship with the broad­er research indus­try,” Dr Roman said.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has 8 Clin­i­cal Tri­als Coor­di­na­tors at sites across NSW to help man­age access to our sup­port research ser­vices and liaise with researchers.

Saba A Al Iedani (main pho­to) is the Clin­i­cal Tri­als and Research Unit Coor­di­na­tor for Syd­ney and South East Syd­ney and says she loves being part of a team com­bin­ing the exper­tise of pathol­o­gists, tech­ni­cians, clin­i­cians and researchers.

“New research and clin­i­cal tri­als can pos­i­tive­ly impact a patient’s treat­ment and recov­ery by iden­ti­fy­ing the fac­tors that make treat­ments work bet­ter,” she explains.

“Fur­ther­more, clin­i­cal tri­als exam­ine new ways to pre­vent or detect dis­eases at ear­ly stages and pro­vide valu­able insights to guide treat­ment deci­sions and enhance qual­i­ty of care. New clin­i­cal tri­als are con­sid­ered the key to med­ical improvements.

“NSW Health Pathol­o­gy plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in enabling this research offer­ing basic bio­med­ical ser­vices, to more com­plex stud­ies rely­ing on foren­sic, clin­i­cal and statewide biobank­ing services.”

Read more here.

Caring for athletes at Port Macquarie’s Ironman

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Our Port Macquarie pathology staff are regulars at the region’s annual Ironman event, providing instant test results for the medical team and helping competitors make it safely through the grueling race.

Iron­man Aus­tralia is the longest-run­ning Iron­man event in Aus­tralia and the 4th old­est in the world, held in the beau­ti­ful coastal town of Port Mac­quar­ie in May each year.

This year’s event on 5 May attract­ed more than 2700 ath­letes who swam, biked and ran the course that took them through the cen­tre of Port Mac­quar­ie, the sur­round­ing coun­try­side and along the region’s stun­ning coastline.

Karen Mewett is the Coor­di­na­tor of NSW Health Pathology’s Mid North Coast Point of Care Test­ing Ser­vice, which pro­vides vital care at the Iron­man med­ical tent each year.

“I cov­ered both the half Iron­man and the full Iron­man events, so it was a very long day, 9.30am to mid­night!” she said.

“My col­league, Tonia Wood­ber­ry vol­un­teered from 4pm to mid­night as we are nor­mal­ly much busier in the evening, espe­cial­ly if it’s wet and very cold.

“We nor­mal­ly get more requests after sun­down as the ath­letes can present with hypother­mia but although there was some rain, the tem­per­a­ture this year was quite pleas­ant and a much bet­ter out­come that orig­i­nal­ly expected.

“The main prob­lem this year was not the heat of the day or the cold of the night, but the treach­er­ous con­di­tions on the slip­pery roads.”

An aerial photo of the race at Port Macquarie near the coast.
The annu­al Iron­man event attracts thou­sands of com­peti­tors to Port Mac­quar­ie each year. (Sup­plied: Iron­man Oceania)

Med­ical direc­tor for Iron­man Aus­tralia, Simon Ross, said a total of 132 ath­letes attend­ed the med­ical tent on race day, with 9 of those trans­ferred to hos­pi­tal for var­i­ous reasons.

“Our med­ical response cov­ered mobile medics on motor­bikes, con­tract­ed ambu­lances, two med­ical tents, sta­t­ic first aid sta­tions, fin­ish line catch­es and Point of Care Testing.

“The wet weath­er increased the num­ber of bike acci­dents but over­all, the cool­er weath­er kept num­bers low­er than in 2023.

“Point of Care Test­ing plays a sig­nif­i­cant part of our med­ical response as it allows real time results that would only be avail­able if we trans­ferred the ath­lete to hospital.

“This could impact our health sys­tem and cause yet anoth­er strain on the local hospital.

“Our med­ical team is well known around the world amongst triath­letes. Con­ver­sa­tions between ath­letes praise the med­ical response we pro­vide and how they all feel safe rac­ing here as they know they are well cared for in the event they need med­ical assistance.

“We have been nom­i­nat­ed as a final­ist in the local health district’s upcom­ing awards under the vol­un­teer of the year category.”

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy would like to con­grat­u­late the entire med­ical team at Iron­man Aus­tralia for the care they pro­vide, as well as our awe­some Point of Care Test­ing volunteers!

A blue Ironman medal
Ath­letes are recog­nised for com­plet­ing the Ironman.(Supplied: Iron­man Oceania)

We’re now open at the new Tweed Valley Hospital!

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Our Tweed Heads team are settling into their new high-tech pathology laboratory and collection centre at the brand-new Tweed Valley Hospital in Cudgen, which opened to patients on Tuesday 14 May.

A key fea­ture of Tweed Val­ley Hospital’s $723.3 mil­lion rede­vel­op­ment, the lab is four times the size of the old lab and fea­tures the lat­est cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, mak­ing it future-proofed to meet the grow­ing demands of grow­ing Tweed-Byron region.

Lab­o­ra­to­ry Man­ag­er Owen Van Eck said the new lab­o­ra­to­ry has been designed and built to meet the cur­rent and future needs of the grow­ing Tweed-Byron com­mu­ni­ty, and will bring enor­mous ben­e­fits to the region.

“The sci­en­tists, pathol­o­gists and tech­ni­cal staff work­ing in our lab­o­ra­to­ries are crit­i­cal to most aspects of clin­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing in a hos­pi­tal. Ensur­ing they have state-of-art equip­ment and infra­struc­ture is cen­tral to the effi­cient pro­vi­sion of clin­i­cal ser­vices,” Owen said.

“The expand­ed foot­print and new equip­ment will improve the way staff work in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and car­ry out pathol­o­gy test­ing, with oppor­tu­ni­ties for automa­tion, stream­lin­ing of test­ing, and for inter­ac­tion between spe­cial­ties that are increas­ing­ly rely­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar technologies.”

The Tweed lab per­forms around 16,000 clin­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions each month.

“Our team is to be con­grat­u­lat­ed for ensur­ing essen­tial lab oper­a­tions con­tin­ued dur­ing the tran­si­tion from the old lab to the new lab.”

The con­tem­po­rary con­fig­u­ra­tion cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for automa­tion, stream­lin­ing of test­ing, and for inter­ac­tion between spe­cial­ties that are increas­ing­ly rely­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar technologies.

An aerial view of the new Tweed Valley Hospital.
The new Tweed Val­ley Hos­pi­tal at Cudgen.

“The lab­o­ra­to­ry is ide­al­ly posi­tioned on the low­er ground floor next to the Emer­gency Depart­ment (ED) – enhanc­ing clin­i­cal inter­ac­tions for staff and our patients – and will allow us to pro­vide rapid turn­around times for ser­vices to crit­i­cal parts of the hos­pi­tal cam­pus, such as ED, mater­ni­ty, ICU and the can­cer ser­vices,” Owen said.

This means patients and clin­i­cians will be able to access crit­i­cal patient results and blood prod­ucts when they need them urgently.

There is also a larg­er net­worked pneu­mat­ic tube sys­tem (like a chute) with ded­i­cat­ed ED “fast lane” to expe­dite urgent ED spec­i­mens direct­ly into the laboratory.

A new pathol­o­gy out­pa­tient col­lec­tion ser­vice is locat­ed with­in out­pa­tients to improve the patient experience.

The new lab pro­vides a range of ser­vices for Tweed Val­ley Hos­pi­tal including:

  • Expert clin­i­cal con­sul­ta­tion and advice
  • Diag­nos­tic test­ing – includ­ing haema­tol­ogy, chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy, trans­fu­sion, micro­bi­ol­o­gy, mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy and enhanced anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy, includ­ing histopathology.
  • Open plan core lab­o­ra­to­ry with direct access to spec­i­men recep­tion improv­ing work­flow and access to patient results.
  • Point of Care testing
  • An inpa­tient and out­pa­tient col­lec­tion service
  • Teach­ing and train­ing for med­ical staff, med­ical stu­dents, pathol­o­gy trainees and hos­pi­tal scientists
  • Facil­i­tat­ing research across the Local Health District

Thank you to Lab Man­ag­er Owen Van Eck, Pre and Post Ana­lyt­i­cal Man­ag­er Sarah Noakes, Bio-Chem­istry Depart­ment lead Ter­ry Wil­son, Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor Ali­son Win­ning, Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er Michael Crowther and Ser­vice Plan­ner Dinah Con­stan­tine for lead­ing this redevelopment.

Our new contact details

From Wednes­day 15 May, you will find our col­lec­tion ser­vice locat­ed on the ground floor at Out­pa­tients (Ambu­la­to­ry Care).

Phone: 02 6677 2468 and Fax: 02 6677 3690. Open­ing hours: 7:00am – 3.30pm, Mon­day to Fri­day. Closed Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and Pub­lic Holidays.

Our lab­o­ra­to­ry is locat­ed on the low­er ground floor and oper­ates 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Phone: 02 6677 3660 and Fax: 02 6677 3692.

“Overwhelming” support for plastic lid recycling project at Taree

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A hospital scientist says she was blown away by the support shown for her project aimed at keeping plastic bottle lids out of landfill.

In mid-2023, Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer at NSW Health Pathology’s Taree lab­o­ra­to­ry San­dra Hay­don decid­ed she want­ed to do some­thing for the environment.

“It’s dis­heart­en­ing to see how much plas­tic waste goes to land­fill,” she said.

“I’d heard of schools par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Lids4Kids recy­cling project and I want­ed to give it a go at my workplace.”

Boxes of different coloured plastic bottle lids.
Some of the sort­ed lids col­lect­ed for the Lids4Kids charity.

Lids4Kids Aus­tralia is a nation­al char­i­ty based in Can­ber­ra that began in 2019, aimed at cre­at­ing an option for recy­cling plas­tic bot­tle lids that would oth­er­wise end up in landfill.

Its founder, Tim Miller, dis­cov­ered a Vic­to­ri­an not-for-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion that was turn­ing plas­tic bot­tle lids into mobil­i­ty aids for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties. His call out for sup­port was so suc­cess­ful, he had to find oth­er uses for the lids, such as cre­at­ing recy­cled plas­tic benches.

Since Lids4Kids began, it has saved more than 98 mil­lion lids from end­ing up in landfill.

San­dra Hay­don said get­ting the sup­port from her lab man­ag­er to start the lid col­lec­tion project was key.

“It enabled me to gain approval from hos­pi­tal exec­u­tives to insti­gate this project, and I have to say I was flab­ber­gast­ed by the response I received.

“It was won­der­ful to see so many peo­ple work­ing at Man­ning Hos­pi­tal keen to par­tic­i­pate in this small project to reduce the amount of plas­tic waste going to landfill.”

After 8 months of col­lect­ing thou­sands of lids, San­dra has cleaned, sort­ed and pack­aged up the last batch of lids for the char­i­ty in Canberra.

She said she was unable to keep the col­lec­tion going due to a change in circumstances.

But she’s encour­ag­ing any­one with an idea for a sus­tain­abil­i­ty project in their work­place not to be afraid to get started.

“If you believe in a project, just give it a go,” she said.

“Reach out to oth­ers for advice and sup­port. Some­times, get­ting a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive can help you find a new solu­tion to each hur­dle you face.

“I’d espe­cial­ly like to thank all the staff at Man­ning Hos­pi­tal for drop­ping off your lids to pathol­o­gy over the past 8 months. The response was incredible.”

A woman putting plastic bottle lids into a large recycling container.
San­dra spent eight months col­lect­ing, wash­ing, sort­ing and pack­ag­ing the bot­tle lids.

 

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NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.

Aboriginal Workforce Development Closing the Gap

NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.

Aboriginal Workforce Development Closing the Gap
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