Maylands Waterland in mid-February, with still a ways to go before the splashpads and sprinklers can re-open. Photo by Catherine Ehrhardt
HOPES of resurrecting Maylands Waterland for Easter have been dashed as scorching weather and logistics issues delay construction.
Construction started mid-2021 and initial hopes were for a summer 2021 reopening, but then heavy rains, labour shortages and global supply problems saw the date pushed back to mid-March in time for an Easter holiday reopening (“Delays push back Waterlands opening”, January 15, 2022).
This week Bayswater councillor Catherine Ehrhardt broke the news that there’d be more delays. Supply chain problems are still plaguing the project, and now it’s hot weather rather than rainfall getting in the way.
“Recently hot weatherwith conditions in excess of 38 degrees… has impacted both labour supply and the ability to pour concrete to schedule,” Cr Ehrhardt reports.
Cr Ehrhardt tells us the dry playground and picnic area could be opened around late April or Early May, but even once the water play elements are built it’ll still be a while before official opening: State laws require the WA Health department to carry out water testing that’ll take at least three weeks.
With the watery bits usually closed in the cold months, the next likely date for a full reopening is September or October 2022.
MY search for the best deli in Perth took me south of the river to Angelo St Market.
Part of a lovely group of shops, cafes and small bars in South Perth, it was formerly the much-loved Scutti, before rebranding in 2019.
Opened in 1988, the deli has become a South Perth institution with the glazed hams a particular favourite with locals at Christmas.
The owners have maintained their high standards and when I visited the narrow aisles were crammed with delightful produce including small goods, pasta, imported sauces, gourmet snacks and freshly baked bread.
The fruit and veg aisle was a highlight – an array of vibrant colours and aromas.
It’s how fresh produce should be displayed and made you feel like the place really celebrated food.
On Tuesday lunchtime, Angelo St Market was packed with a long line of people queuing for the made-to-order continental rolls.
There was also a hot meals section and a takeaway cafe with pre-made sandwiches that could be toasted – a great range of lunch options.
I had already sampled the delicious rolls on a previous visit – packed with fresh goodies at a reasonable price – so I decided to get some of their made-on-site pasta to take home for dinner.
I plumped for the family-sized vegetable lasagne and cannelloni (both $19.99), which after 45 minutes in the oven at 180C were piping hot with an alluring carapace of golden brown cheese.
The cannelloni was outstanding with the large pasta tubes stuffed with a delicious mix of minced pork and herbs.
It was a moreish stuffing and the pasta was super soft and light, while the tomato sauce and cheese wasn’t too rich (sometimes cannelloni can be too salty and full-on).
The vegetable lasagne was like some haphazard work of art with several thin layers of pasta piled high on top of each other.
Somehow it all held together when cut into quarters for the family to share.
The pasta was again super light and tasty, while the tomato sauce and vegetable filling had an unexpected spicy reprise.
There was definitely spinach in there and a trace of kale, plus a liberal sprinkling of herbs, so maybe they conspired to produce the unexpected heat.
The kids weren’t so keen, but my wife and I enjoyed the salutary burst of veggies in this light and yummy dish.
In for a penny, in for a pound – my post-Xmas diet went out the window when we decided to have pasta as a side with our, ehm, pasta.
Pasta overload? Perhaps, but the cold Sicilian pasta salad ($14.47) was irresistible – a creamy mix of red pepper, ham and fusilli.
Packed with flavour, it would be perfect for lunch on its own or as a side to a salad. Or like me, death by pasta.
The portions were large and there was plenty left for dinner the next night.
Some delis are expensive flops – you spend a lot of money for produce that flatters to deceive or doesn’t fill you up.
Thankfully my trip to Angelo St Market was a success – the goods were high quality and you got decent portions for the price.
Angelo St Market 67 Angelo Street, South Perth angelostreetmarket.com.au
THIS fantastic Highgate apartment has loads of fringe benefits.
It’s got two courtyards, a communal pool, gym and lounge, and is one street back from Beaufort Street.
It’s also on the edges of the St Marks apartment complex, meaning you have access to the facilities but none of the noise and busyness.
Everything looks pristine and new inside this two bedroom two bathroom apartment (it’s been freshly painted) with the high-quality timber floors a highlight.
It feels light and airy with plenty of space in the open plan lounge/dining/kitchen area.
For an apartment, the kitchen is a good size and includes a water filtration system, dishwasher, breakfast bar and built-in pantry.
Both bedrooms are spacious and have built-in wardrobes with the main featuring a lovely ensuite.
It’s great that both bedrooms have large glass doors leading to the outside.
Having a private courtyard is important in an apartment, giving you that little bit of fresh air and outdoor space.
This has two cute courtyards and a little strip of artificial grass for your pets, which are permitted in this complex.
After a hard day in the office, head to the 21m lap pool to get some exercise and banish all that stress, or pop into the gym and pump some iron.
Lifestyle is another drawcard with this apartment situated in the heart of Highgate, around the corner from an endless array of cafes, bars and restaurants including the Queens, Bar Rogue, Ischia and Mary Street Bakery.
You could even walk into the city, or jump on the number 950 bus if you are feeling lazy.
Come Sunday, head to the nearby Forrest Park or Hyde Park, where you can chill in the cool, leafy surrounds.
The apartment includes split system air-conditioning in the living area and bedrooms, secure car bay, store room and has its own private entry off Stirling Street.
If you want a spacious pristine apartment in the heart of Highgate – this could be the one for you.
Buyers over $499,000 122/131 Harold Street,Highgate ACTON Mount Lawley 9272 2488 Agent Carlos Lehn 0416 206 736
Artistic photographer Michael Jalaru Torres (bottom) Photo by Rebecca Mansell.
THE majesty and trauma of the Kimberley is captured in equal measure in a series of a stunning photos taken over six years by Djugun and Yawaru photographer Michael Jalaru Torres.
Featuring everything from vast abstract landscapes to a person wearing a feather mohawk and high heels, the exhibition Jurru is as much about the local people as the region’s natural beauty.
Jurru doesn’t shy away from the dark history of the Kimberley, reflecting the appalling treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
But for every shadow there is light – colourful, vibrant photos showing the love of life in the tight-knit communities.
The exhibition is a deeply personal affair for Torres, whose dramtic life is weaved into the art on the walls.
“This goes to the maturity and confidence that I was finally able to share my trauma and how it shaped me as an adult later in life, going through broken families and cancer to depression and a relationship ending and becoming a single father,” he says.
“Those life lessons I hid for a long time, but now I feel it helps with my storytelling and to connect more with people through my art.”
Hailing from Broome, Torres has a background in graphic and web design, often incorporating techniques like etching and drawing into his photos to create a unique aesthetic (his “bending light” style captures the colour and texture of the landscape in a unique way).
A self-taught photographer, about four years ago he started to really focus on his craft, developing his technique as he photographed the people and places in the Kimberley and Pilbara. His work soon gained recognition, securing solo and group exhibitions across Australia, and it was somewhat of a personal landmark when Jurru recently opened at the WA Art Gallery.
“To be honest it wasn’t until the second viewing of the space and prints that it all hit me emotionally, knowing that my work is now inside the building after many years of walking past the art gallery dreaming of one day having my work inside those walls,” he says
“I sat in the corner and took it all in: Seeing my name on the wall and people engaging with my prints was very emotional and a belief that is not a dream anymore.”
Torres says he enjoys the “crazy iconic” work of American photographer and director David LaChapelle, who is known for his kitsch pop surrealism, but says his biggest inspirations are not photographers.
“My longest inspirations are H.R. Giger for his work with the shape of figures and shadow and light in a monochromatic opera, the technical mastery of M.C. Escher with his mathematic illusions, and the eye-bleeding world-building work of Salvador Dali.
“All of them have inspired both technically and thought provokingly how I can create my vision.”
A Djugun and Yawuru man with tribal connections to Jabirr Jabirr and Gooniyandi people, Torres says photographing his beloved Kimberley homeland over six years has brought him closer to his roots; learning as much about himself as the people and places.
“My work has adapted to my environment and people, but it has grown with my storytelling,” he says.
“…Maturing enough to speak about my own personal story within my expanded view, and allowing the viewer to see myself more and connect to the way I choose to share knowledge.”
Michael Jalaru Torres | Jurru is at the WA Art Gallery until July 3.
• This big tree is one of the hundreds that might go under the golf club’s plans.
A PLAN to cut down mature trees at Mount Lawley Golf Course has divided the club’s membership.
Of the hundreds of trees facing the axe and 64 that have already gone, most are the club’s tallest specimens along the fairways, leading some members to fear they’ll be left with a harsh, sunbaked course – and a possible case of heatstroke.
Club GM Troy O’Hern says the removals are part of a revegetation plan and says each felled tree will be replaced with tubestock.
The club’s draft 15-Year Tree Maintenance Plan states there are 554 more trees to be removed, but Mr O’Hern says that number will likely be revised down.
Most trees marked for removal were planted in front of lower-lying banksia bushland, and tower upwards of 11m over their shorter cousins. An arborist report from 2020 shows most were in good shape and only 55 trees were recommended for removal.
Club member Tim McAuliffe has been working on the replantings and says: “This area was banksia and melaleuca” back before the other species were planted. “What we’re doing is trying to restore that.”
He says the newer trees, mostly non-endemics like river red gums, need to go because they are “high water users. They outcompete [new native tubestock] when we’re trying to re-establish the understory”.
Fairway widening
While Mr O’Hern told us straight up that fairway widening wasn’t the motive for removal, that was hard to reconcile with the club’s own documents showing “revegetation” areas set well back from the course.
And a video presentation on the draft masterplan that also states: “Wide fairways are an important part to creating thoughtful and strategic holes.
“Our proposal is to use the 1948 aerial as a guide and where possible move back closer to the original clearing lines … most of the trees identified for removal as part of the project were those that were planted since this time and have led to turf-related issues such as shading and tree root encroachment, plus architectural issues where trees come far too far into the line of play.”
The fairways have been criticised by golf pros, with Golf Australia judge Alex Murray saying they were “too narrow for the green complexes waiting at the end of the hole. Widen the playing lines,” he wrote in the 2020 course rankings.
At the club’s AGM in December members concerned by the planned removals tried to move a motion calling for the club to come clear on which trees had been marked for removal, but it was defeated 90 votes to 139.
Members opposing what they call the “deforestation plan” are now hoping Stirling council will intervene. The land is owned by the state of WA and managed by Stirling council, which leases it out to the golf course.
Several club members attended the February council meeting asking why the council had permitted so many healthy trees to be removed; of the 64 gone in the past two years only 16 were in the “high risk” category according to the arborist’s report.
Mayor Mark Irwin said they’d look into it, adding “it is the city’s understanding that the club should be prioritising these [high risk] trees”.
For now, Mr O’Hern’s told us that until Stirling council approves the rejigged draft tree maintenance plan, there’ll be no more felling – unless the tree is a risk.
Australian Jigsaw Puzzle Association president D’Arne Healy wandered into the World Championships in Spain in 2019.
PERTH’S puzzle pros are preparing for the WA State Jigsaw Competition, a race to put together a 500-piece brainteaser that’s a closely-guarded secret until the big day.
Australian Jigsaw Puzzle Association president D’Arne Healy says “a lot of people don’t realise there’s a big speed-puzzling world out there”.
Ms Healy has long been into puzzles, starting around eight years old. “I enjoyed my own company and found it really soothing,” she says.
She first heard of competitive puzzling a few years ago and then competed in 2019.
“I was going to Spain for, of all things, a soccer tournament. And I found out there was a jigsaw competition … I thought, I can’t miss this.”
The tournament was a bit bigger than she anticipated.
“I went to the one in Spain only to find out it was the World Jigsaw Championships. I was a little bit out of my depths, but absolutely loved it.
Adrenaline
“The kinds of people are incredible. I’ve never seen such a diverse group of people, and I wish others would witness it.
“The room is full of adrenaline, excitement, anticipation.”
And then when the comp starts, countless thousands of pieces are upended from boxes and a cacophony of sorting starts.
“The sound is quite unique. Everyone stops talking, and all you hear is the flipping over of thousands of pieces of jigsaw puzzles.
“People handle competitive puzzling differently,” Ms Healy says. “Some people are really chill and relaxed and puzzling away, and some people are sweating and taking it seriously.”
While the state comp will attract some of WA’s fastest puzzlers, newcomers to jigsawing are also strongly encouraged to attend.
“We go out of our way to make it enjoyable for all puzzlers, all ages, all levels of ability,” Ms Healy says, and everyone gets to take their puzzle home so you can finish it there if you run out of time.
Serious competitors often plan ahead, finding out the brand of puzzle to be used by the competition and practicing hard to get used to that brand’s particular puzzle shapes.
For the WA comp, puzzlemaker La La Land has created two new 500 piece puzzles.
• JIGSAW puzzles have helped many keep sane while stuck in isolation, so much so it’s been hard finding new ones in the stores. But there’ll be two new mystery ones available when the Australia Jigsaw Puzzle Association holds the WA championships at the WA Italian Club in West Perth on March 12. And if you think it’ll be a sea of bent grey heads, think again, as jigsaws have captured a whole new generation such as Holly Mayo thanks to Covid.
Social
“That’s part of the excitement of a competition,” Ms Healy says. “You have no idea what puzzle will be presented to you.”
Ms Healy founded the AJPA in 2019 after the finals in Spain, wanting to bring the competitive scene here. But it’s proved to be a social endeavour too, as shortly afterwards Covid lockdowns began and puzzling enjoyed so much renewed popularity it was hard to find them on shelves.
Puzzlers solved the shortage by swapping them between each other once finished and making connections along the way.
“It’s actually developed into something bigger and better than I ever imagined,” Ms Healy says. “It has become a social platform, it has become a real networking place for the community, especially through Covid when people were disconnected; the association has become a place to connect in ways we never imagined.
“Puzzling is very private and in some ways a very solo act, so for the first time ever we are finding groups of other people doing the same hobby they can connect to and relate to.”
The state competition ison March 12 at the WA Italian Club from 9am. Register
for pairs or the solo race via australianjigsawpuzzle.org.au, check it out on the day or take part in the free puzzle exchange.
The winners go on to represent WA at the nationals, where the Australian representatives will be chosen for the next global competition in Spain.
PLANS are out for the landmark Perth Girls School site in East Perth with a proposal for four towers, 742 apartments, a supermarket, arts hub, brewery and restaurant.
Stretched across two sites on the corner of Wellington and Bronte Streets, owners ADC and Warburton want to close part of Bronte Street to join the two blocks.
They’re billing the project as a keystone of providing housing for a growing inner-city population, and 500 of the apartments will be “built to rent”, with the developer maintaining ownership.
One hundred of those will be social housing rented out to people with income under $70,000 (or $90,000 for couples), and rent can’t be more than 30 per cent of income. Having at least 12 per cent of dwellings be affordable is a planning requirement and this one comes in at 13.5 per cent.
The plans are open for comment via the DevelopmentWA website until March 9.
The heritage listed school building will be kept, with two of the 25 storey towers built atop it.
The school closed in 1962 due to declining numbers.
While there’s been a few calls in the last decade to turn the building back into a school to service the growing inner city family population, the state government sold it off in June 2017. It was the same month WA Labor canned plans for a new inner city school near the Perth train station.
The drones made out a cheery spaceman in honour of John Glenn’s orbital pass over the city. Photo courtesy City of Perth.
THE smooth running of Perth council’s City of Lights drone show on Saturday shows how close WA is to returning to a regular schedule of big events, says lord mayor Basil Zempilas.
After a last-minute location change due to high winds, the 15-minute show saw 300 lit-up drones forming spacey shapes above Elizabeth Quay, marking 60 years since John Glenn spotted Perth from space during his five-hour spaceflight mission on February 20, 1962.
Lord mayor Basil Zempilas, who’s been driving the campaign for Perth to take back the “City of Lights” mantle, dubbed the event a big success in his address to the February 22 council meeting.
Safely
“Preliminary figures on crowd attendance at Elizabeth Quay precinct were in excess of 7,200, but we know there were significantly more people in the wider area,” he said, with watching from the foreshore, bell tower and Kings Park.
“We operated that event safely and with common sense, and everything was framed around the premier’s health message or Health WA’s message and the framework they put in place for us,” Mr Zempilas said.
“I think what it showed was people are capable of coming out, following the rules, doing it safely, enjoying themselves and everything that the West Australian lifestyle has to offer, and then going home and returning to their normal lives. And I think that sent a very strong message.
“And we know that lots of other events in our community have been cancelled as of late. This is not singling them out, there are lots of reasons why other events have had to be cancelled and we appreciate some of them have been financial considerations.
“But I’m super proud of the fact that the City of Perth ploughed on, we decided we could do it safely, and people turned out in great numbers, and it’s a great triumph for the City of Perth.”
The feedback’s been pretty good for an event in its first year, with the minor gripe that from some vantage points buildings obscured some of the drones so they seemed to spell out “PERT”.
The original wind telephone in Otsuchi, Japan. Photo by Matthew Komatsu via Creative Commons 4.0
A “WIND telephone” may be installed in a local park to help people grieve lost loved ones via one-way conversations into an unconnected phone.
Bayswater council recently received a request to install a wind phone from the family of local man Chris Taylor, who died in his sleep aged 34 while on a family holiday in 2018.
Having never heard of a wind phone, council staff turned to Wikipedia to investigate and learned: “The wind phone (kaze no denwa) is an unconnected telephone booth in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones.
“Initially created by garden designer Itaru Sasaki in 2010 to help him cope with his cousin’s death, it was opened to the public in the following year after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake nd tsunami killed over 15,000 people in the Tohoku region.”
Other wind phones have now been built around the world, and the Taylor family have built one they’d like to install on a tree in Claughton Reserve. It would likely be the first one installed in Australia.
A timber telephone crafted by the Taylor family, proposed for a Bayswater park.
Mr Taylor’s mum Merle Taylor wrote that people found the phones “very therapeutic and emotionally soothing in their time of grief”, and the act of picking up the handset and talking into the mouthpiece brought comfort to loved ones.
She said the wind phone they built wasn’t a memorial to her son but was “inspired by his death, and my hope is that others who have suffered loss may find this phone a tool to ease their grief”.
On Tuesday the council approved the phone’s installation by the family at Claughton Reserve, subject to discussions with Indigenous elders about a suitable location.
A staff recommendationto councillors said: “A wind telephone would be a delicate installation, and as such could be subject to vandalism if not protected or positioned in an appropriate location.”
A SPLIT Perth council has decided not to force the Returned and Services League to include Aboriginal people in its Anzac Day ceremonies in order to access bonus funding.
Last week council staff recommended the RSL be given $100,000 funding for Anzac Day, and proposed an $10,000 extra “conditional upon the delivery of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion considerations including engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” (Voice, February 19, 2022).
The RSL’s had a shaky history on Aboriginal inclusion and for many years refused to fly Aboriginal flags or allow Welcome to Countries at Anzac Day ceremonies.
But deputy mayor Di Bain opposed the diversity incentive plan, arguing at the February 22 meeting: “We should be respectful of the sanctity of this important event, and encourage inclusivity and not dictate it via cash carrots.”
She also proposed giving the RSL $98,000 in cash as well as having the city paying for $51,000 of “in-kind” expenses.
That covers expenses like traffic management which has become a huge impost in recent years due to new requirements for “hostile vehicle” barriers in case of terrorism attacks.
A majority of councillors agreed with Cr Bain’s plan, outvoting lord mayor Basil Zempilas and Crs Sandy Anghie and Catherine Lezer.
They’ll still ask the RSL to do their best to include Aboriginal people, just without a cash incentive.
Perth Voice Interactive 