Perth Voice Interactive

“DON’T divide Maylands” is the message walkers and bike riders have for the state government ahead of the closure of Caledonia Avenue’s railway crossing. 

In August transport minister Rita Saffioti announced a $15 million plan to close the constantly-clogged crossing and upgrade surrounding crossroads as part of Metronet upgrades, partially following up on a 2017 election promise. 

Locals are concerned the plan contained no provision for a pedestrian or bike crossing at Caledonia Avenue, and it’s a long haul to the nearest crossings: It’s 350m to walk to the Maylands train station crossing, and riders have to go an extra 500m each way.

In 2017 the closure was estimated to cost $50m to $70m, leading locals to speculate that ignoring pedestrians has allowed the government to put up a cheapskate option. Community group Don’t Divide Maylands has formed in response, and spokesperson Shannon Leigh says: “In recent weeks hundreds of people – including seniors, school kids, business owners, parents with prams, retirees on gophers and people with disabilities – have all told us how important this connection is to them.

“The government’s decision to block pedestrian access at the Caledonian Avenue crossing was just dropped on the Maylands community with no prior consultation whatsoever, while the $15m put forward for modifications to the nearby street network falls significantly short of the $50-$70 million Labor promised for the crossing at the 2017 election. 

“This is a broken promise from the state government and Maylands is being shortchanged.”

Ms Leigh says catering for walking and cycling in a growing inner-city area should be a no-brainer, especially as part of a large public transport project like Metronet. 

“We shouldn’t have to campaign for the right to get around in our own community,” she said.

Bayswater councillor Elli Petersen-Pik got up a unanimously-supported motion at the last meeting calling on council CEO Andrew Brien to write to Ms Saffioti and Maylands MP Lisa Baker to express “the council’s strong opposition to the state government’s plan to block pedestrian and bike rider access – and request that provision of such access be included in the plans, with a preference for a well-lit and safe underpass”.

Train network

Cr Petersen-Pik said overall the expanded train network was a good plan “but the effort to improve train services should not diminish the ability of other groups in our communities, such as pedestrians, cyclists and even car drivers, to be able to move around easily and safely”.

He said “this is exactly the recipe for discouraging people from walking and cycling, and shift them to use their cars. 

“If you have ever been at that station at peak time, you would know that it’s definitely not where you would want to direct dozens or hundreds of rushing cyclists. The interaction with passengers is likely to raise safety issues. 

“Sending cyclists to cross Railway Parade to get onto the Seventh Avenue bridge, and then force them to cross again Whatley Cres, to get to the principal shared path, in peak time, is also a serious safety issue. And don’t forget the amount of hundreds of additional cars that we will have in those two intersections because of the level crossing closure.”

Cr Petersen-Pik said only after community outcry did Main Roads WA announce it would undertake a high-level study to see if an underpass might work T Caledonia or somewhere nearby. But it’s up in the air until the department figures out if the design is feasible and what the costs might be.

Cr Petersen-Pik said “this is a positive move, but we wouldn’t want a study to justify the decision that they already made. If they understand the issues, we would need them to commit to keep the access for pedestrians and cyclists and allocate funding for this purpose”.

There’s still concerns over how long it might take to get that underpass, given the closure’s planned for the first half of 2022 and some of the motor traffic upgrades that were meant to be part of the package aren’t happening for another three years. 

A community reference group’s been set up to consult with locals.

Maylands MP Lisa Baker said: “I look forward to hearing the input from the community.”

By DAVID BELL

A PLAN to turf out Bayswater Sports Club from Hillcrest Reserve has been overturned by Bayswater councillors, but mystery still surrounds why they were ever threatened with eviction.

A farcical situation played out at last week’s council meeting as a city staff recommendation to terminate the club’s lease forbade discussing the reasons behind it because it contained  “information about the business, professional, commercial or financial affairs of a person”.

BSC is an umbrella body representing Bayswater Football Club and Bayswater Postels Cricket Club.

The only hiccups in living memory involved a glass door panel being broken, and rangers being called after some rowdy footy club members got on the roof in August. 

BSC president Mark Thomas led a deputation to council a week ahead of the meeting, saying they thought everything had been smoothed over.

“If they thought the matter hadn’t been dealt with I would’ve thought a phone call to either club would’ve given us an understanding to what’s going on,” Mr Thomas said.

Cricket club president John Boyd said they’d been good tenants and “we’ve always paid our way and done the right thing. If the lease was to be terminated it’d be dire for us; it’d probably be the end of cricket at Hillcrest.”

Money struggles

The footy club has struggled financially after most of its 2020 season was cancelled by Covid and the council ruled out a rate discount. 

In the distant past neighbours regularly complained about rowdiness, then the clubrooms burned down in 2011, but football club president Danielle Santoro told the council they’d had a near spotless record since. 

“For the past 10 years or so we have constantly tried to make positive relationships with the city and it’s never been reciprocated”.

She acknowledged “we had a couple of young players who did the wrong thing – the ranger was called, the boys admit to saying stuff they probably shouldn’t have, but from what I believe from other witnesses there they had their dressing down from the ranger, they apologised, and moved back into the clubrooms.

“Apart from that we’ve had one other issue with a member who is now actually not part of our club; we’ve removed him from our club, and that was dealt with as well: There was a broken glass panel in the door and we had that fixed.

“So apart from that if you look at the past eight or nine years there’s been very little antisocial behaviour at our club and we took full responsibility for the two incidents in those years.”

She’d only found out about the termination a week before councillors were due to vote.

At the meeting councillor Steven Ostaszewskyj proposed the city let the clubs stay and set up a new contact arrangement  to stay on top of any lease issues.

He also moved that a policy be developed outlining a proper process to deal with future breaches or disputes.

Cr Ostaszewskyj’s motion was unanimously supported. 

Councillor Elli Petersen-Pik said the process “caused so much angst and frustration and it shouldn’t have occurred, so I’m very happy we have a policy to rectify [this] so it can never happen again to members of our community”. 

But apart from rumours about rooftop shenanigans the clubs still don’t know why the termination was ever proposed. 

Cr Giorgia Johnson requested a redacted version of the reasoning be released for the public, but the CEO said they’d need time to come up with a report that could be put to council at a later meeting.

by DAVID BELL

THE Christmas Lights Trail is back on in the CBD with half a million lights and 500 decorations ‚Äì and city visitors are booming. Lord mayor Basil Zempilas says the lights have brought 36 per cent more people in the city compared to 2020. Mr Zempilas said the city’s often held up as a rival to suburban shopping centres, but he said the traffic’s so bad at some of those centres they’re having to give out Uber vouchers to deter people from driving, while he reckons “city centre parking is problem free”.

TECH heads want Perth to become the “Tech Capital of Australia” and are hoping a new action plan from Perth council will help keep startups here instead of fleeing east. 

Cullum Ashton from PropTech Hub WA, a CBD collaboration space for property-industry tech types, attended this week’s council meeting to implore councillors to show leadership in the tech sector.

“There is a line outside this room queueing to help – with a plan for technology and to help Perth be the tech capital of Australia,” he said.

Incentives

Following his speech the council narrowly endorsed Sandy Anghie’s notice of motion to investigate ways to keep local tech businesses and attract interstate and overseas techies with a “Tech Action Plan” for incentives and funding.

She said tech is a critical sector but WA’s losing business to cities like Sydney, which has a global reputation for entrepreneurship and has the highest concentration of startups in Australia.

“Think of Canva,” Cr Anghie said, referring to the online graphic design and publishing tool, “they started out here in Perth but are now based in Sydney. 

“According to recent media reports, Canva is now worth an astonishing $55 billion.”

She said the city had supported the tech industry with $926,000 for events and funding over the past eight years but more support was needed to compete with Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, all of which have some form of tech or startup action plan. 

“We need people to know that Perth is a tech hub, and we need to support them when they get here.”

Cr Clyde Bevan supported the motion saying “we don’t have a tech plan; we need one,” and revealed he’d been a long time fan of technology: “Many years ago when I joined the bank, I thought their calculators were sensational.”

Cr Viktor Ko agreed and said after visiting recent tech events he heard it wasn’t just funding that could support the sector, but also the exposure the capital city council could offer.

City staff weren’t keen on having something so zoomed in as a Tech Action Plan, recommending against it as they already had a broader Economic Development Strategy that promoted innovation. 

Lord mayor Basil Zempilas said the whole council seemed to agree it was important to support the tech sector, they just disagreed on whether the plan was the way to go.  

The vote was 5:4 in favour of the tech plan with councillors Anghie, Bevan, Ko, Di Bain and Liam Gobbert in favour. City staff will now come up with a plan and work out how much will be needed for next year’s budget to cover the actions. 

by DAVID BELL

EVERY week at the Vincent Local History Centre we hear unexpected tales of times past in our area. 

Last week, long time Leederville business owner Vince Carbone dropped in and told us a story so far-fetched we scarcely believed him until we found newspaper articles confirming the incident which took place on Oxford Street, Leederville.  

The year was 1952. Vince was working as a young tow truck driver at Master Motors, 359 Oxford Street. 

The 1950s was an era of burgeoning private car ownership with 70,000 vehicles registered in Western Australia compared to over 2 million today. Business was booming for Master Motors when young Vince got the call to attend a tragic and unexpected accident at the New Oxford Theatre (the present day Luna Cinema).  

That year, there were 7,510 accidents reported on WA roads between different cars, trams, carts and pedestrians. 

While Vince had attended all sorts of accidents, he’d never been called to remove a horse and cart from a cinema before.  

The accident happened on a Sunday before Christmas. 

Milkman Nick Mostert, a Dutch migrant, was delivering milk with a horse and cart for Masters Dairy when the horse was spooked by a car and bolted, crashing through the window of the New Oxford Theatre (now the Luna Cinema). 

The milkman was able to jump clear of the cart and escaped unhurt. However the horse smashed through the glass window and impaled itself on a shaft of wood from the cart and died on the scene.  

Vince, who got the call to remove the horse and cart from the cinema recalls, “It used to be joke that our company was the only one to ever take a dead horse from a theatre after a cowboy movie…” 

Local reporters put their own spin on events, reporting the first thing police saw when they arrived on the scene was the distraught Dutch milkman and a movie poster for Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.  

Local dairy companies like Brownes and Masters continued to deliver milk by horse and cart until the 1960s. Many senior residents recall the sight, sounds (and smell) of work horses and occasional catastrophic collisions between horses and vehicles.  

If you have interesting or unusual tales of times past in our area to share, contact the Vincent Local History Centre in the Vincent Library.

A LOCAL short film that’s won global acclaim for its portrayal of a young African refugee screens in both Uganda and Perth this week.

Two Sands tells the story of local writer and actor Kook Manuer fleeing war-torn Sudan, spending years of his childhood in a refugee camp in Uganda before finally making it to Australia. “The Sudan story in Two Sands came from my childhood, my roots,” Manuer says. 

Fourteen-year-old actor Garang John Deng, whose parents were refugees from South Sudan, portrays the lead character attending his first day of high school and struggling with memories of being lost in Sudan.

“I’m excited to have the vision of what I went through in front of me on screen, so it will make me and other people from Sudan feel truly welcome in Australia,” Manuer says. “It’s something I survived and learnt from and I want to share with people.”

Shortly after arriving in Australia as a teenager, Manuer met Leederville-based filmmaker Poppy van Oorde-Grainger at Aranmore Catholic College where she taught at the Intensive English Centre. He shared his story of being lost in the wilderness as a child. 

Years later when van Oorde-Grainger was living in France and unable to speak French, she thought back to Manuer’s story, and the film was born of melding ideas of being lost in the wilderness with the feeling of being lost in a new country. 

Audition

They brought on board producer David Kucha, who grew up in South Sudan, and searched at cultural events and churches seeking a lead actor. Garang did his audition on the grass at a huge community event with many other kids watching, and won them over. 

Van Oorde-Grainger says: “I hope Two Sands gives some audiences a deeper understanding of the experience of refugees from South Sudan and migrants more generally and makes those who’ve moved countries themselves think ‘ah, this character is like me!’.”

It was tricky to film some parts: 

“Finding somewhere in WA that looked like South Sudan, even for quick flashbacks, was challenging,” she says.

“We spent ages looking for a field with long grass and eventually we secured the perfect location but the day before filming, someone mowed it. 

“Fortunately they left about 10 square meters so from one angle we managed to still give the impression of being in the grasslands in South Sudan.”

Two Sands recently won best film at Port Shorts in Queensland and is spreading out to other global festivals. As it screens in Perth, it’ll also be shown in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, where Manuer was in a refugee camp.

Two Sands screens at UWA’s Somerville Auditorium as part of LotteryWest Films December 6 to 12 alongside Lingui, The Sacred Bonds, the story of a single mother in Chad. Tickets via perthfestival.com.au