At its beginning NHW#4 covered 450 houses, 2 schools and a handful of small businesses. With approval to extend its coverage area on several occasions, it now covers about 1,700 houses and 40 businesses, plus two retirement villages, 3 schools, 2 churches and 4 Day Care Centres.

NHW#4 maintains constant contact with the Queensland Police Service (QPS) to keep up to date with any NHW issues, so that the community can be made aware of the importance of taking appropriate crime prevention precautions and the need to report all incidents no matter how minor they might seem.

The NHW committee and interested members of the community meet with the Officer in Charge of North Rockhampton Police Station at Bella Via café every two months for a ‘Cuppa with a Cop’ event, where honest two-way feedback is exchanged.

NHW#4 chose to celebrate this 30 year milestone by holding a display in Kershaw Gardens on Saturday 27 July to share useful crime prevention and personal safety information to passers-by, along with colouring-in sheets for the kids who also had a chance to be photographed with Seymour the Owl – the NHW Queensland ‘Watch and Report’ mascot.

Nowadays, 1,900 NHW#4 newsletters containing a Police Report and articles on home and personal safety and security get delivered to every house and business in the area every two months.

Some Projects Organised by NHW#4 in Recent Years Worth Mentioning Include:

• Safety Audits undertaken every few years to identify problems of broken Telstra pits, uneven footpath surfaces, or damaged road signs, poor street lighting and the like that get reported to the responsible authority.
• Drink Rite Nights run regularly with the assistance of QPS officers with the generous support of Frenchville Sports Club to educate attendees about alcohol-related risks and harms and how to drink responsibly.
• Volunteers in Policing carrying out radar surveys of vehicle speeds after complaints from residents, which resulted in the installation of ’50 IN MY STREET’ signs on rubbish bins in the worst affected streets.
• Purchase and distribution of one-way security screws to prevent vehicle number plates being stolen.