Perth Voice Interactive

A BIG idea from little Mount Hawthorn has spread across the world, with Pippa Candido’s The Little Bar Cart branching out to Rhode Island, Vancouver and Connecticut. 

Four years ago Ms Candido came up with the idea of hiring out an old-timey wagon decked out as a bar, with top-notch service staff for weddings, parties and festivals.

“I wanted to find a little part-time job for myself while I was a stay-at-home mum, and I thought there was a gap in the market for a champagne service after a [wedding] ceremony so guests had something to do while the photos were taken,” Ms Candido tells us.

“I came up with this Champagne Cart idea — that was the original name. Then the Champagne Society contacted us.”

Champagne

The French organisation has lawyers at the ready to ensure the name is only used to describe sparkling wine from the Champagne region. 

But even in the earliest days of operation the business was expanding beyond just sparkling wine as local drinkers sought other tipples, so a name change to The Little Bar Cart suited on both fronts. 

“They did us a favour, because it gave us a push to do that anyway, so it was perfect timing,” Ms Candido says.

The carts were built locally: “I was getting quotes from all over the world: China, Indonesia, Thailand, and I just couldn’t guarantee the quality of the build, so I had a family friend who was in the industry who built the first one. In the first week of launch we were so busy we had to order a second cart.”

Word spread through hospitality circles and enquiries started coming in from industry folk in other states wanting to license their own bar carts, starting with a Melbourne branch in 2017, then Brisbane and now internationally.

A licensee has started up a branch serving the Rhode Island and Connecticut area, and now it’s spreading north to Canada.

Earlier this year one of the Little Bar Carts was on a boat to North America for a big hospitality convention.

“That was meant to happen in May this year,” Ms Candido says. “Then Covid happened, and it was all cancelled.

“The bar cart was already on the boat, and we’d been talking to some potential licensees in Vancouver. We rerouted the cart and sent it up to Vancouver,” and it’s now ready to launch as soon as lockdown’s over. 

On November 26, The Little Bar Cart took out the top Innovation Award at the Belmont & WA Small Business Awards.

by DAVID BELL

FIFTY actions required to prevent a repeat of the poor behaviour that led to Perth council’s suspension have not been started.

The state government-initiated City of Perth Inquiry report was finished on June 30 and publicly released on August 11 “outlining a litany of dysfunction, poor governance, factionalism, and fertile ground for greed, incompetence and mismanagement”, according to the WA Department of Local Government.

The council was handed a list of 215 actions to ensure that kind of dumpster fire could not reignite.

Four months after the public release, 48 are complete. A briefing report to new councillors states 117 are “in progress” and 50 are “not started”. 

Pressing

Some of the “not started” items aren’t exactly late — like the action to hire a coach for the new lord mayor to ensure better leadership which is meant to happen “within three months” of October’s election — but others are more pressing.

Outstanding items include: Undertaking a “corruption and misconduct risk assessment” for staff involved with contracting, financial management, human resources, information management and service delivery. The inquiry report said this was meant to be done “within three months” but it hasn’t been started, and is now scheduled to be done by March next year; 

• Training to make sure financial management staff know what they’re doing;

• A review of the “governance unit” to ensure it’s adequate and properly resourced. That unit is meant to ensure the rules are followed, and failings and understaffing in the old regime’s governance team led to serious complaints being incorrectly dismissed without proper investigation, and allowed illegitimate voter roll entries and council candidate nominations to go unchallenged;

• Ensuring the policy for giving out grants, sponsorships and partnerships is above board. The inquiry report pulled up the old council for the huge amount of cash being poured into the Perth Public Art Foundation without proper oversight over how it was spent;

• Fixing council’s tender system which previously allowed price manipulation. Some parts have been beefed up, some are “in progress” and others haven’t been implemented at all, but overall it’s not nearly a pass mark yet.

Councillors will discuss the progress and vote on a plan of attack at the upcomingn December 15 full council meeting.

by DAVID BELL

THE Wotton Reserve skate and BMX park has been given a stay of demolition until 2022, and the state government has now confirmed it’ll give Bayswater council $2.5million for a new park.

Skaters and supporters previously thought the park would be demolished as early as March 2021 to make way for Metronet’s Bayswater train station upgrades, and were growing concerned Bayswater council was acting too slowly to find a replacement site.

Councillors were meant to decide on a replacement site in December but a split vote saw it deferred until next year, and one of the reasons for deferral was not having the state government contribution locked down. 

This week the McGowan government confirmed the $2.5m allocation and transport minister Rita Saffioti said “the current facility won’t be removed until 2022”.

“There is plenty of time for everyone to have their say about where the best location is and what the new skate park should look like,” Ms Saffioti said.

Maylands Labor MP Lisa Baker said in a statement: “Metronet isn’t just about building new train lines – it’s also about making sure our local communities have the facilities they need.

“Skate parks and BMX tracks are very important to young people in my electorate and I know many were very worried about what the potential loss of these community facilities may mean.

“Now we have funding allocated we can work together to design a brand new skate park.

“I can’t wait to hear from young people in the community about what they would like to see at their new skate park.” 

The Bayswater Skate Park Community, which has been working with the council and prodding them along to find a replacement site, welcomed the news and told us continuing “the location selection, detailed design and delivery timeline is now more important than ever”.

by DAVID BELL

PUBLIC comment is now open for Vincent council’s 40kmh speed limit plan, with the results of a trial in the southern half showing a modest drop in crashes and a jump in pedestrian and cyclist numbers.

The southern half of the council area’s currently in the midst of a two-year 40kmh trial on local residential roads (not the big state routes) which started April 2019. 

The first year’s data has been released and shown a small reduction in the average speeds of vehicles by 1kmh.

Crashes were also slightly down, but the consultant’s report says it’s hard to tell if the slowdown reduced “killed and seriously injured” crashes because only two of those were recorded in the trial area; “single crash events can skew this data”. 

However 14 per cent more pedestrians and cyclists were counted on the streets compared to before the trial. Those numbers were taken before Covid took off, which saw a massive 70 per cent boom in cyclists as people sought to avoid crowded buses and trains. 

While the speed reduction is modest, the report notes it’ll likely continue as people get used to the 40kmh limit, and if road designs are updated to better suit the slower speeds.

The slowdown’s part of the overall Accessible City Strategy now out for public comment. 

The strategy’s designed to get more people out of their cars and walking and riding, and other actions include safer pedestrian paths and intersection lights and more cycling routes.

It’s up for comment at imagine.vincent.wa.gov.au until February 19 but there’s also an in-person drop in day at the Vincent library, February 13 from 9am to noon.

by DAVID BELL

JUST 25 people will be invited to Vincent council’s consultation session over its new consultation policy, despite more than 70 people applying. 

Vincent’s had a few hiccups owing to shortcomings in its consultation recently, like the upset over the surprise Carr Street bike lanes which much of the street was unaware of (cancelled after backlash), and the implementation of the new electronic parking permits (going ahead despite backlash).

To avoid repeats, councillors have been urging staff to finish up the year-overdue “Community Engagement Framework” to clarify what’s consulted on and how it’s done.

But even consulting on consulting has had problems: A reader who wanted to head along to this week’s community workshop tells us it was “very disappointing” to be told they couldn’t attend because numbers were capped at 20. 

It’s since been bumped up to 25.

More than 70 people wanted to go but Vincent limited numbers and picked from applicants to ensure representation across categories of age, income, gender, ethnicity and “previous level of participation,” to mix some new voices among the old.

Mayor Emma Cole tells us there’s wider consultation coming, and the workshop-runner wanted this first session small to allow for in-depth discussion.

“This is really the starting off point, where we’ve engaged a consultant to have a deeper conversation with a demographically representative focus group,” Ms Cole says.

“We’re going to do much broader consultation with the whole community in early 2021.”

by DAVID BELL

A MYSTERIOUS book last checked out from a Minnesota library was returned to the City of Vincent library by an unknown figure last week.

Library staff quickly realised the copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe didn’t belong to them when they noted the last checkout date was January 29, 1969 from the College of Saint Teresa in Winona, Minnesota, USA.

The last borrower’s name appears to be “S. Nanson,” though we couldn’t find a matching name in local phonebooks. There are records of some Nansons in Minnesota, but far north from Winona. 

The college closed down in 1989 and the book had obviously been withdrawn so Vincent library staff contacted their counterparts in the main Winona Public Library, which has also posted on its social media trying to find out more clues about how the book travelled 10,723 miles across 51 years and ended up in the wrong library. 

The book is a 1949 printing of the 1794-published tale of terror taking place in an Italian castle, and is considered the archetypical gothic romance novel that paved the way for books like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. 

By DAVID BELL

A BUS driver has been charged with “dangerous driving occasioning death” over the October 6 death of 54-year-old North Perth man John Ferrington at the corner of Beaufort and Newcastle Streets.

The driver, a 54-year-old man from Averley, was charged on November 3 and had his first brief court appearance on December 4. 

Police allege at about 4.10pm the charged man was driving a bus travelling north on Beaufort Street and entered the intersection to turn left onto Newcastle Street, where the bus collided with Mr Ferrington who was riding his bike heading north. He died at the scene. It was a recent change to the route.

Police are still seeking information or footage via Crimestoppers. 

Mr Ferrington, a well-known figure in the local music scene, was preparing for the MSWA charity bike ride in November. While he wasn’t able to make the ride, friends and supporters still made $1,379 in donations, soaring past his $300 goal.