WORKS have kicked off at Braithwaite Park to bring a nature playground to Mount Hawthorn. Nature playgrounds are intended to let kids play creatively and expose them to a wee bit of risk and scraped knees so they can learn some resilience. This one’ll have a flying fox, log-steppers, climbing net, water trough, a tunnel, a…

Advertising Feature: Absolute Smiles Absolute Smiles has been looking after patients in Mt Hawthorn and surrounding regions for the last 15 years. The team is led by experienced dentists Dr Sarrah Omran and Dr Joe Muscara. In December 2014, Absolute Smiles moved to new custom built premises. The new practice features state-of-the-art equipment and the…

COOL BREEZE CAFE owner Georgia Johnson is “devastated” Bayswater city council has effectively forced her to close and sack eight staff. She sat through a three-hour council meeting only to hear councillors reject her request to continue using a council power supply at Riverside Gardens. Her coffee van has been at the Riverside car park…

THE WA state library board is considering closing the state library two days a week to rein in a blown out budget. WA culture and arts minister John Day says the government “currently has no intention of reducing the number of opening hours” but a library director told the Voice it was on the agenda…

THIS year’s premier’s book awards has been cancelled—to save $65,000. The formerly annual awards will now be held biennially, a move the LNP government says it’s making as part of its efficiency drive. It says that a week or so after shelling out $2 million to bring the Giants to Perth, Author David Whish-Wilson, whose…

STIRLING city council will spend nearly $20,000 to send two councillors to separate overseas conferences. Cr Keith Sergant will don castanets and montera for an undoubtedly vital three-day urban transport conference in Valencia, Span. Cr David Boothman will put on his union jack briefs to attend a similarly important three-day conference in England on coastal…

A LOCAL Liberal MP has gone into bat for a Coolbinia resident battling Stirling city council’s demands that he cough up $200,000 to buy a supposed laneway next to his property, or demolish eaves and a pool that were illegally built on it. Council bureaucrats concede the Wiluna Street property’s pool and house eaves encroached…

COMMUNITY and heritage groups are crying foul after the WA government moved further ahead with a planned sale of the East Perth power station without their input. Last week developers were invited to submit expressions of interest for the 8.5-hectare heritage-listed site with neither the National Trust nor the Banks precinct action group consulted. “This…

INGLEWOOD’S Valerie Dixon has been stalked by cancer her entire life. Her mother and sister-in-law died of breast cancer, her father and brother of bowel cancer, and her sister survived the disease. In 2013, Ms Dixon was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy and six weeks of radiation treatment. The sanguine 69-year-old beat…