By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 30 Aug: The Australian High Commissioner to India, Barry O’Farrell called on Governor Lt-General (Retd) Gurmit Singh at the Raj Bhavan here today. During the meeting, several issues were discussed between the Governor and the High Commissioner of Australia. The Governor, while speaking on various topics related to mutual cooperation, stressed on preparing a common strategy on educational tours of the universities of Uttarakhand, and joint research and study in the field of technical and artificial intelligence. 
The Governor informed that the women of Uttarakhand were doing excellent work through various self-help groups. He sought the assistance of the Australian High Commissioner in arranging tour programmes to Australia for the self-help groups of Uttarakhand so that they could gain experience about the good work being done in such fields in Australia.
Lt-General Singh further observed that there was scope for promotion of organic and natural farming, medicinal plants, aromatic plants, mushroom cultivation in Uttarakhand and coordination and cooperation in Yoga and Ayurveda on which joint work could be done. He also reminded that Uttarakhand also had immense potential in the field of tourism and it would look forward to promote tourism activities in regard to homestay, adventure tourism, mountain tourism, religious tourism through mutual partnership between Uttarakhand and Australia. The Governor said that forest fires posed a big challenge in Uttarakhand and it could learn a lot from Australia which had found effective measures to prevent forest fires. The Governor sought cooperation from Australia in this regard.
The Australian High Commissioner also expressed his desire to enhance Australia’s cooperation with Uttarakhand. He said that various possibilities of mutual cooperation would be worked out.
On this occasion Secretary to Governor Dr Ranjit Kumar Sinha, Second Secretary of High Commissioner of Australia Mish Khan were also present.
