A 16-YEAR-OLD chess whizz from Bayswater was the only player to beat grandmaster Nigel Short in an exhibition match last Sunday. Patrick Gong, who attends Chisholm College, was among 31 WA chess experts simultaneously playing Short at the Rhein-Donnau Club. It was the first time a grandmaster had played in Perth in 30 years and…

A TAXI driver was spotted doing a poo on a Leederville verge around 9.50am Tuesday. A resident was walking her dog when she spotted the driver squatting on the Burke Street verge near the Britannia Park tennis courts, and it looked like he’d come prepared, with his own roll of toilet paper. She says public…

AN online register of men convicted of hiring street prostitutes may be scrapped just three years after its introduction. For months the Vincent city council register — introduced during the reign of former mayor Alannah MacTiernan — has been empty: “There are no recorded convictions at this present time,”it reads. The controversial register was introduced…

PERTH’S hidden bike-riding history’s being uncovered at the museum of Perth, and the exhibition shows cycling isn’t some fad that came riding in, covered in lycra, in the past few years. “Cycling has been an important part of Perth’s transport mix for many years,” museum chair Reece Harley says. “The seven bikes in our exhibition…

VINCENT city council is under pressure to dump allergenic London plane trees, with claims they’re bad for health and make Perth look like every other city that plants them. At this year’s council AGM, planner Jake Schapper urged the council to stop planting the trees saying they’re bad for health, give no sense of place…

THE playground at Pat O’Hara Reserve may be moved several hundred metres — costing $80,000 — because it’s plagued by vandalism and anti-social behaviour. Bayswater council reckons the playground will be better near the Morley Sport and Recreation Centre and busy Wellington Road, where it’s better lit and busier. It comes as rangers record 29…

BAYSWATER and Vincent councils are leading a rebellion against premier Colin Barnett’s development assessment panels, saying they strip too much power from democratically-elected councils. Last week Bayswater councillor Dan Bull refused in writing to serve on one of the five-member panels, which have the authority to approve major projects: with three panellists appointed by the…

THIS trophy made of Emu Export beer cans. Claims of anti-social behaviour and drug use. Yelling. Swearing. And the bang of a roller-hockey puck hitting timber. The cocktail has led to WA’s newest sporting league being asked to reconsider its future at the Bayswater Bowling Club, its home of just five months. The Street Roller…

A YEAR to the day that Bella Bropho’s group of activists set up camp at Matagarup (aka Heirisson Island), the island has become a refuge for the homeless. Ms Bropho came to the island March 1, 2015. There had been other protest groups there, but her main goal setting up the First Nations Refugee Camp…

WITH a flood of Aboriginal activists and supporters fronting Council House to look for confiscated belongings, Perth city council has agreed to hold open days to let people reclaim impounded items. Five truckloads of camping goods and other items were taken from Matagarup/Heirisson Island during the PCC’s attempt to “decamp” people from the island last…