WHILE Aboriginal actors occasionally make it onto our TVs and movie screens, Aboriginal producers and directors on the other side of the camera are even more rare. Murray Street-based Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s looking to change that, launching a crowdfunding campaign to get young trainees Shakara Walley and Ian Wilkes into a 12-month program so…

SCOUTING is booming in Perth, with so many kids desperate to sign up that Scouts WA is scrambling to find enough scout halls and volunteers. Subiaco has a four-year waiting list for the woggle while the West Perth troop is looking for a new hall after the building it used was sold (it can stay…

RESIDENTS face being slugged a 3.5 per cent rates rise if Bayswater council can’t recoup the $1.2 million it spent on the Barnett government’s aborted mergers process, a local councillor warns. “There is a big hole in the budget now,” Cr Mike Anderton says. “Pensioners will not be able to afford another three per cent…

A THIEF who hates the sound of children’s laughter has stolen one of the bronze Gumnut Baby sculptures from the CBD’s Stirling Gardens. The two sculptures were installed a decade ago, inspired by May Gibbs’ characters Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and symbolic of the animals and trees that had lived in the gardens. “Someone has cut…

FEDERAL and state MPs are backing a residents’-led campaign calling on Bayswater council to fly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags all year round. Currently the flags fly only during national reconciliation week and NAIDOC. The Maylands ratepayers and residents association says it’s not good enough. “The flags are flown all year round at other…

ARTISTS across Perth have garages full of paintings, sculptures and other strange creations, all because they never get around to selling them. Mt Lawley painter Sioux Tempestt says many artists are so immersed in the creative process they can neglect the more worldly side of the business and hardly ever make a buck from their…

LABOR’S Alannah MacTiernan (right) will hold a meeting on the NBN at Bassendean community centre on April 1—no, it’s not a joke. The federal MP is pushing for local suburbs including Bedford, East Perth, Inglewood, Maylands, Morley, Mt Lawley, Highgate and North Perth to receive fibre-to-the-home broadband, as Labor had proposed when it first started…

MOUNT HAWTHORN will have its own streets and laneways festival, following the runaway success of similar events in Beaufort and Angove Streets. Community organisation Mt Hawthorn Hub and Vincent city council are planning for about 20,000 to come down for the inaugural event on May 3. They’ve mapped out terrain from the Cabin to Axford…

SPORTING clubs in Bayswater who lease buildings on council land will now get free rubbish removal. Cr Alan Radford, who pushed for the move, says clubs will save more than $300 a year. “It will help struggling clubs who already pay a lot of money for electricity and other utility bills,” he says. “Plus it will…

THE dysfunctional Newcastle Street/Carr Place intersection has an upgrade on the cards to turn it into a mini piazza. Just near the busy Leedy hotel, the area’s a mess of intersecting streets clogged with a quagmire of taxis, buses, cars, delivery trucks, bikes and pedestrians. Vincent council’s plan aims to make the area a little…