Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER surprising St Georges Terrace with a group nude photoshoot at peak hour in March this year, East Perth photographer Lauren Crooke is launching an exhibition covering two years of her work with another nude shoot on opening night.

Crooke’s work photographing nude women aims to encourage body positivity, and the voluntarily-nude shoots call into contrast how often women are non-consensually harassed, catcalled or groped. 

For the opening of her new collection ‘Permission’ at Gallery Central on January 5, she’ll be inviting some of those past women and non-binary participants back for a live photoshoot to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how the shots are composed.

Discomfort

While planning the opening night, Crooke says she faced a bit of opposition and concern that a live nude shoot might be too confronting for some gallery-goers.

She was undeterred. 

“Let them sit with their discomfort and wonder why they feel that way,” Crooke says, hoping it will make people think about the relationship between women’s bodies and the concept of permission. 

“I truly believe that allowing them to be a part of the art will begin to shift and change their pre-conceived ideas about the female nude.”

After the January 5 opening night Crooke’s tenancy is open to the public at Aberdeen Street’s Gallery Central until January 20, with an artist talk and Q&A at noon on January 14.

Her photography studio Crooked Images is based in Wittenoom Street, East Perth, where her Boudoir Photoshoots give “average bodies” a touch of sexy glam.

MOUNT LAWLEY Golf Club has paused a draft masterplan to remove 550 trees and widen its fairways, but is itching to get started on a scaled back project involving 63 tree removals.

MLGC is a members-only golf course on public land that Stirling council leases to the club for $13,640 a year, lower than the market rate which was last year valued at $25,000.

Over the past couple years the club has been replanting a large number of native shrubs and smaller-scale trees set well back from the fairways, but in that time they’ve also removed 69 non-endemic trees that were planted along the fairways about 60 years ago.

While the original draft masterplan for a complete course overhaul is shelved for now, the club wants to undertake more modest piecemeal upgrades in the short term and remove another 63 trees. 

The club says 30 of those trees have been deemed a safety risk, but 32 are healthy trees slated to be removed for a “Greens Replacement Program”. That means they’re either in the way of course upgrades, have nuisance roots or drop leaves on the course, are sucking up a lot of water intended for the grass, or causing “excessive shading of greens”. 

Five of the trees they want to fell are native to WA and the bulk are from other states, including gum trees stretching more than 20 metres tall. 

Under Stirling council’s policy, trees on public land can’t be removed just because they’re a shady inconvenience or a leaf-dropping nuisance.

Despite that Stirling council staff have recommended the council approve 41 out of the latest 63 tree removal requests, including “22 trees [that] are considered necessary and reasonable for the redevelopment of the course greens”.

Healthy

Leisha Jack is convener of the pro-greenery group Stirling Urban Tree Network, and pointed out to us via email: “You can’t remove a healthy tree on your verge because it is ‘exotic’ or for any other reason because it is city land and they won’t let you. 

“It seems the rules don’t apply to private golf clubs.”

Ms Jack spoke at the December 6 Stirling council meeting imploring them not to approve any more tree removals. She said it’s great that the club’s worked to regenerate some of the older bushland areas set back away from the courses, but it’s “regenerating bushland that they allowed to become degraded” in the first place. 

Cr David Lagan moved a motion to defer any tree removals until the club finishes its draft masterplan and shows council what they’re intending in the long term.

His motion said no further tree felling should go ahead without council approval for now, with the exception of “unsafe trees likely to result in imminent danger and catastrophic loss”, as approved by council tree staff.

All councillors save for mayor Mark Irwin agreed to deferring any more tree felling.

“We need a bit more oversight,” Cr Lagan said, and if the club gets started 

on works without council seeing that masterplan “it is my belief there could be increased loss of mature trees.”

by DAVID BELL

A PLAN to protect city music venues from being shut down by noise complaints has left just about everyone unhappy.

Some have complained the proposed noise ceiling is too loud for human health and others that it’ll kill Perth’s music scene by locking in a too-quiet limit.

For more than three years the state government has been working on legislation to allow established music venues some immunity to the usual environmental laws that outlaw overly loud noises. 

As the inner city’s residential population grows, the laws are intended to prevent new residents from moving in and then getting pubs and clubs shut down by lodging noise complaints, which has happened to some iconic Sydney and Melbourne venues in the past few years as apartments popped up around them.

Writing the new laws has turned out to be hideously complex, and stretches across several state government departments and local council planning schemes.

Sound proofing

The proposal would require new developments to include enough sound proofing to keep out the tunes, and would allow established music venues in the ‘core’ of Northbridge to emit sounds up to 90dB, about as loud as a power tool. 

About 60 per cent of city venues are already leaking noise well above that limit. 

But even turning them down to 90dB “is still above what would be an acceptable level of noise … from a health perspective” of a resident trying to live nearby, according to Prue Reddingius from Environmental Health WA.

Ms Reddingius was speaking at this week’s Perth council briefing amid a marathon public question time that stretched almost two hours. 

The council has to decide whether it will support the state government’s laws and do its part by implementing rules requiring buildings to have noise proofing, but they’re caught between 50 public submissions with a dozen different viewpoints.

The Australian Hotels Association wants a higher 95dB limit for established venues. Various submissions from residents have called for limits anywhere from 70dB to 50dB, the level of an average conversation. Property developers reckon requiring noise proofing will make new builds impossibly expensive. 

After two hours of hearing from the public and another hour’s discussion untangling the ramifications of the policy, councillors retired and will have to vote on whether to approve their part of the laws at their December 13 meeting.

by DAVID BELL

PERTH can’t do snow for Christmas, but it does have 100 tons of sand painstakingly carved into intricate Christmas scenes at Elizabeth Quay this month.

Perth-based sand artist Jenny Rossen is internationally renowned for her sculptures, having won multiple world championship sandcastle events over the past 23 years.

For the past month she’s led a team of five of the world’s best sand artists to create a five-metre tall Christmas sand sculpture, including a nativity scene carved in the style of the old masters on one side, and on the other side a whimsical sandy village with Father Christmas, reindeer, snowpeople, and the Gingerbread Man.

It’s free to see and lights up at night,  and will be at Elizabeth Quay until January 2 when all the sand gets trucked back out again.

MALE dolphins in the Swan River are forming “alliances”, teaming up with fellow fellas to woo potential mates.

Murdoch University marine biologist Delphine Chabanne led the recently published study based on hundreds of sightings in the Swan Canning Riverpark since 2011. 

By closely examining photos to match up dolphins’ unique spots, scars or other markings, the researchers have identified individual Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and tracked their socialising.

Early on it became clear from how often some dolphins were sighted together that some males were pairing up.

That kind of social bond has been seen before in larger dolphin populations in Shark Bay, but this latest study in the journal Mammalian Biology is the first to analyse male alliances here in the river where there’s a small, isolated, urbanised population.

Among the eight males studied, the closest alliance was a triad of three dolphins named Arrow, Hii, and Bottomslice. The bonds didn’t seem to be because they were related or happened to hang out in the same areas, “but by differences in gregariousness”, the study says.

The pairs and the trio all seemed to be teaming up to increase their chances with females. When the lads were together they would often then interact with female potential mates, herding females to their favoured waters or performing a “rooster strut” display to try to impress female dolphins.

“Our work revealed strong social bonds and long-term, non-random associations among individual males,” Dr Chabanne said in a media release about the study. 

“Behavioural observations of alliances interacting with potentially receptive adult females, and exhibiting sexual display behaviours near females, suggest that these alliances occur in a reproductive context.”

It also seems dolphins in our river are closer than their seagoing counterparts.

“Dolphins in the [riverpark] appear to have stronger and more enduring associations with their peers than do dolphins in coastal habitats,” the study says, as the sheltered estuary and year-round food sources mean they don’t have to migrate huge distances so can get to know each other better. 

by DAVID BELL

AFTER a three-year freeze, fees in Perth council’s car bays will rise to claw back lost profit. 

Meanwhile a council marketing campaign aimed at convincing the public its carparks are affordably priced has seemingly backfired.

Across 2021/22 Perth council ran a carpark marketing campaign in the hope of getting more people to come to the city. 

The council hoped to reduce the number of people thinking city parking was too expensive by 5 per cent in the first six months, and another 5 per cent after. 

A survey run before and after showed it didn’t work. 

Cr Brent Fleeton queried the campaign at the November council meeting, pointing out: “At the start we took a snapshot, and it was 43.7 per cent of respondents who said that parking was expensive.

“At the end of the campaign, 46.3 per cent agreed that parking was expensive, so we went backwards.” 

Councillors asked how much had been spent on the marketing campaign but didn’t get told a dollar figure: The parking spruik was rolled into events ads on TV, radio, press and social media ads, and comes out of an overall $1.7 million annual marketing department budget.

The fizzled campaign was brought up as councillors mulled over whether to increase parking prices at the November meeting.

The current council line-up, first elected in 2019, have put off raising the price the past two years, and have even made night parking free in council-owned carparks. That free parking cost $2.1m in lost revenue. 

Council staff have now advised them to end the freeze, given the carparks are often full and they’re a good deal cheaper than the privately-owned competition. The higher fees would bring in about $2.5m extra, offsetting the increasing cost of running the parking business and helping cover the lost night parking fees.

Cr Fleeton argued against any rises, saying it was “not worth the continued damage to our reputation as a destination”.

Cr Di Bain agreed: “Being more expensive only impacts negatively on our reputation”.

But they were outvoted by the majority who thought the price increase was timely given how full the carparks are after two years of no rises. 

The new charges kick in January 16 and will see hourly fees go up by 50 cents to $1 an hour (depending on how popular the spot is) and the daily rate increases by $1 to $2 an hour. 

The council currently brings in $73m a year in parking revenue but as operating costs and wages keep going up the cost to run the whole thing has crept to around $62m. 

HARRY HOFFMAN, a Holocaust survivor and philanthropist who developed much of the housing stock in Perth’s suburbs, died December 5, aged 92. 

Dr Hoffman was born in 1929 in Dobove, Czechoslovakia. His family were taken to Auschwitz in May 1944. 

He survived, but his mother and two sisters perished. 

Dr Hoffman came to Australia in 1949 and worked as a lumberjack in Manjimup, then later moved to Perth to learn English. He got into development and founded Ardross Estates in 1966, rolling out large housing projects and subdivisions across the state.

Robbed of his own education, he gave away huge sums to educational causes, including many large donations to Carmel School and finding university scholarships. 

Philanthropy

He was awarded an OAM in 2000 for his philanthropy to community groups and education, and a centenary medal in 2003, and was made a member of the Order of Australia for his community service and charity in 2019.

Stirling mayor Mark Irwin paid tribute to Dr Hoffman at the December 6 council meeting, offering condolences to Dr Hoffman’s niece, councillor Suzanne Migdale.

“Through his generosity and his vision to both the Jewish and the wider communities, numerous organisations have been able to develop their facilities, including the Carmel school which bears the Hoffman name in its official title,” Mr Irwin said.

“As mayor I had the privilege of meeting Dr Hoffman on a number of occasions, and this remarkable man survived the Holocaust and went on to develop entire suburbs within Western Australia.

“Moving to Coolbinia since before the City of Stirling’s conception, Dr Hoffman remained an active resident for the city throughout his wonderful and long life.”

by DAVID BELL

TODAY’S delve into the past from the Vincent Local History Centre features an interview with architecture graduate Dexter Wong, whose masters thesis maps out significant sites for Perth’s queer history across more than 120 years.

LAST year during Pride month, the City of Vincent Local History Centre put the call out for photos, flyers and stories about the history of the LGBTQI+ community to help fill a gap in the collection.

The centre received material from the Freedom Centre, the Perth Pride Choir and most recently, architecture graduate Dexter Wong who shared a copy of his Master of Architecture thesis, plans and drawings on invisible queer spaces in Perth. 

Mr Wong said the queer history of Perth could be traced back to 1901.

“The queer community’s existence has historically been under threat with plenty of claims used to describe the indecency and harm towards society,” he said. 

“Historically queer individuals were persecuted, resulting in their queer history not being valued. 

“During a time when identifying as a lesbian and gay was unlawful, many queer people endured hardship and oppression as a consequence. 

“Thus, queer history in Perth was not archived or recorded. 

“In my research, I wanted to explore the hidden spaces significant to the queer community in Perth, past and present.”

Mr Wong said Northbridge was the epicentre of Perth’s queer community, with several hotels on Beaufort and Brisbane streets and nightclubs on James Street.

“My research explored eight historical queer spaces in Northbridge,” he said. 

“A lot of these spaces were historically clandestine due to the past illegality of homosexuality. 

“The places were hospitality venues such as hotels, pubs and bars concentrated on the fringes of the Perth CBD. 

“Patrons on these queer spaces had to be discrete and cautious about personal safety and egress before the decriminalisation of homosexuality.”

One of the key locations on the map is the Freedom Centre, formally located on Brisbane Street and now in Leederville.

Established by the WA Aids Council in 1994, the Freedom Centre provides a safe space for queer youth to meet others and explore and acknowledge their sexuality and others. 

“Hopefully exhibiting my work and having my research available in libraries and archives will allow queer voices, past and present to be heard and shine a light on Perth’s queer history,” Mr Wong said.

To access Mr Wong’s work, visit the City of Vincent Library and Local History Collection at https://library.vincent.wa.gov.au/