THE fight for the future of Charles Street saw a score of residents front a development assessment panel meeting to see off a 93-unit block planned for their street. The DAP unanimously rejected Salomone Projects’ $28 million plan, saying it was too tall and bulky Vincent mayor John Carey said the big problem was “the…

IT could be rubber duckies at dawn as the Swan River Trust and Bayswater city council go prow-to-prow over dinghies. Boat owners at Clarkson Reserve use the dinghies to get to their vessels and unofficially store them on the foreshore, often chaining them to the fence of the Maylands boat yard. The SRT says dragging…

THE world of alternative games developers lives in the shadows of once-in-a-blue-moon success stories like Minecraft (creator Markus Persson sold it for a tidy $2.5 billion). Far more common are tales of developers labouring in garages on lines of code for hundreds of hours, only for the end result to make hardly a ripple in…

BAYSWATER city council is considering spending up to $93,000 to beautify artificial lakes in Maylands that have become an eyesore. Bungana and Brearley lakes were constructed from abandoned claypits, excavated during the operation of the Maylands brick kiln. The lakes were part of a 300-property residential development in the late 1990s, designed to improve the…

A 10-year-old Inglewood boy has drawn up plans for a hoverboard, inspired not by Back to the Future II re-runs but a quantum levitation exhibit at Scitech. After getting home and sketching out detailed schematics, Brandon Boylen wrote to Scitech asking where he could find the right materials (20 super-strong magnets, a metre-long ceramic board…

BAYSWATER croquet and tennis clubs are unleashing their mallets and racquets on a $25 million revamp of Frank Drago Reserve. The reserve is home to local soccer, tennis, bowling and croquet clubs and the council has released its draft masterplan for the site. Croquet club treasurer Trevor Ashby is “very disappointed” with plans to halve…

VOICE photographer Matthew Dwyer headed down to Leederville this week to check out the artists painting the town for the Form Public 2015 mural festival. Local, Australian and international artists will be here until April 19 hitting up Leederville, Freo, Claremont, Northbridge, the CBD and even the wheatbelt. If you want to see where they’ll…

STIRLING city council has launched an Aboriginal reconciliation action plan but mayor Giovanni Italiano remains non-committal about flying the Aboriginal flag all year round. In a glossy 17-page plan the council states one of its 2015 goals is “flying the Aboriginal flag”. When the Voice asked Cr Italiano if that was his preference we received…

TRADE at the humble pay-what-you-feel restaurant Annalakshmi has taken a huge battering courtesy of  the dusty, noisy Elizabeth Quay construction site surrounding it. Fans of the vegetarian Indian restaurant are starting a campaign to save the place. Annalakshmi has been open 25 years, letting people ‘pay what they feel’ their meal is worth and has…

A SEVENTY-FOUR-YEAR old granny has been charged after 25 cannabis plants were allegedly found in her back garden. After receiving a tip-off about the “marijuana granny”, police visited her house in Hotham Street, Bayswater and allegedly spotted several large cannabis plants in her vegie plot. “Police seized 25 mature cannabis plants along with approximately 1.8kg…