A MAYLANDS resident stopped her seven-year-old daughter playing in the back garden after a worker urinated against her wall. Michelle Smith says Bayswater city council’s approval of a three-storey development that looks directly into her garden and living room has ruined her family’s privacy. Ms Smith says developers were told to erect privacy screens but…

MT LAWLEY Middle School pupils have helped repair bikes that are to be shipped to Timor. Currently Timor kids face a 12km hike to get to school, but thanks to Year 9 students in the school bike repair club they will be able to pedal there quicker. A local rotary club will organise transportation. Mt…

IT’S often feast or famine for full-time artists like Robert Davis. When you’ve got a gallery showing you can be making some good sales, but between exhibitions it’s lean times. The North Perth painter has been heading down to the Beaufort Street art market the past couple of months to sell a few extra pieces…

MICHELLE SUTHERLAND wants Bayswater council to set aside $80,000 for urban art in the city. Impressed by Vincent city council’s commitment to installing public art within its boundaries the councillor wants her own city to follow suit. Bayswater already has a public art scheme where developers of any commercial, non-residential or mixed use project costing…

HERITAGE houses in Stirling now have legal protection against “demolition by neglect”. The city is one of the first councils in WA to introduce a bylaw that prevents landlords deliberately allowing heritage buildings to become so dilapidated they require demolition (usually paving the way for a lucrative new development). The council can now demand that…

BURLY, testosterone-sweating muscleheads are making the sauna at Beatty Park leisure centre an uncomfortable place for some women. Voice reader Zoe says “some men will try and chat up women in there who are just trying to relax”. “On the last two weekends I have wanted to use the … sauna but just don’t feel…

THE old Fesa House is slowly coming down, with heavy machinery picking away at the brutalist building’s concrete innards. The Hay Street building’s construction was unusual and makes for a challenging demolition: high-tensile steel veins run through the concrete and the entire structure’s under tension. It would’ve made it difficult to convert for other uses…

IT’S already a decade late, what’s a few more months to bring in Vincent council’s new city planning scheme that’ll change the future of the city. Councillors have had to defer their decision on sending the CPS 2 off to the state government for approval. Because changes are so widespread some councillors’ homes are caught…

A COOLBINIA scribe has been named writer-in-residence at the Fellowship of Australian Writers this month. Nathan Hondros is a contemporary poet and literary editor, and his work has been adapted into radio plays by the ABC and appeared in umpteen literary journals and magazines, including The Australian, Westerly and Masthead. The writers’ fellowship was formed…