Courtesy of Ballarat Courier - January 2011

Dianne home, just

Courtesy of Riverine Herald - 31st December 2010

Echuca’s Dianne Holland arrived home from Africa safe and well to enjoy a laid back Christmas Day with her family _ just.

Dianne came close to missing one of the five flights which formed part of her return journey from remote and isolated southern Sudan.

She had been working for a week with Disaster Aid Australia (DAA), a non-government agency which provides material aid to people in crisis-affected regions of the world.

Reaching Nairobi airport in good time to catch a six-hour flight to Doha in the Middle East, Dianne was directed to the wrong queue and, after waiting in line for an unreasonable period, discovered the error minutes before her plane was about to start taxiing.

``I rolled up to the departure gate without a boarding pass and talked my way onto that flight,’’ she said.

``I burst into tears, I did everything I could to get on that flight.’’

Ground crew communicating with flight crew met with a negative response until the service desk attendant left her post and went to the plane in person.

Dianne signed a disclaimer because there was no food on board for her, and she was allowed on.

The incident was just one of many stressful situations which confronted Dianne during her 18 days away.

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Sudan beckons caring Dianne

Courtesy of Riverine Herald - 20th December 2010

While most mums are rushing around preparing for Christmas, Echuca mother of five Dianne Holland has been building villages in the Sudan.

This will not be a total surprise to anyone who knows Dianne or has read about her adventures in The Riverine Herald.

Dianne is a volunteer with the non-government agency Disaster Aid Australia (DAA) which provides material aid to people in crisis-affected regions of the world.

In September she told The Riv she was bitterly disappointed her first planned trip, to Pakistan, fell through for security reasons, but she was looking forward to being sent somewhere else soon _ though not the Sudan.

Anyone is entitled to change their mind once it has been set at rest and when the call came through to go to the Sudan which she was assured was "perfectly safe'', Dianne was keen to be off.

A few days before she was due to leave on December 6, Dianne became sick with an allergic reaction and was forced to cancel.

However, when her replacement's mother died, a recovered Dianne again found herself heading to South Sudan.

"It took a week to get there,'' Disaster Aid Australia's Melbourne general manager Jenni Heenan said.

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Uni student off to help out refugees in Sudan

Courtesy of ntnews.com.au - 25th October 2010

A TERRITORY university student will fly to Sudan next week to assist refugees in their bid for independence.  

Charles Darwin University student Peter Clouting, 27, will be in Sudan as a team leader with Disaster Aid Australia distributing survival boxes in the lead up to next year's independence referendum.

Teaching the refugees how to set up and maintain the survival boxes, which contain tents, cooking equipment, food boxes, water filtration equipment and a children's pack is his assignment.

For Peter, however, it's the plight of the Sudanese that fuels his motivation.

"The people of south Sudan want to become their own independent country," he said.

"For this to happen, the refugees must return to their region of birth to ensure their vote is counted."

Moving from Sydney, Peter is in his first year of a Bachelor of Humanitarian and Community Studies. "CDU is the only university in the world that offers a full undergraduate Humanitarian degree," he said.