Perth Voice Interactive

THE new name of “Warndoolier” for Banks Reserve has been approved by Landgate after a six-year effort.

The Mount Lawley reserve has long been a culturally significant site for Aboriginal people, and Vincent mayor Alison Xamon describes the renaming as a revival of the Noongar name. 

“We are proud to acknowledge and preserve the history of the reserve as it has been for many millennia,” Ms Xamon said in a press release this week.

“This is a major step towards reviving traditional names of Aboriginal areas in Vincent.”

The area was named for former Perth councillor Ronald Frederick Banks in 1963, but earlier maps from the 1900s to 1940s label the area as “Warndulier”. The exact location differs b

y source, with an early newspaper from 1833 describing the name as applying to “the northern, or main branch of the river.”

The spelling Warndoolier was endorsed by the Vincent Boordiya Reference group, the Elders who advise the council on these issues, as it led to closer phonetic pronunciation.

Warndoolier doesn’t have an exact translation to English and the words have multiple meanings in different combinations: ‘Warn’ is a digging stick, ‘dool’ is a spirit or misty fog, and ‘doolya’ means big leaves. Some interpretations see the name as referring to a place related to a woman’s spirit, or a place where spirit mist dwells.

Vincent council endorsed the name change back in February 2024, but the renaming campaign goes back to 2018 during consultation with local Elders.

There was some debate in February about whether to dual-name the area and keep the Banks moniker. From 276 responses, 154 favoured Warndoolier alone, 62 supported a dual-naming of Warndoolier/Banks Reserve, and 55 opposed any change. 

Some of Banks’ descendants were among those requesting his name be retained alongside the Noongar name, but Vincent councillors opted for the full renaming.

Signs will be updated in the coming months and a community event will be held in early 2025 to celebrate the new name, as well as the recent upgrades to the reserve like the cultural interpretation node and the footbridge across Walter’s Brook that was completed this week.

by DAVID BELL

AMID reports of ripoffs and assaults during internet-facilitated trades, Stirling council wants to set up safer exchange sites under CCTV surveillance.

Stirling deputy mayor Suzanne Migdale got the idea after seeing Victoria Police set up “safer trading zones” outside 24-hour police stations (“Exchange spots stiff the crooks,” Voice, November 9, 2024).

“The reason that this came about is because many people are now transacting on sites like Marketplace, Gumtree, etcetera,” Cr Migdale said at the November 22 council meeting.

“On these sites there are many people who are under the age of 18, or who are… [of] advanced years, I guess, and in many instances there is a feeling of being unsafe when someone comes to your home to make a transaction.”

Just this week a Melbourne man planning to sell his car was stabbed three times by a prospective buyer during a test drive gone awry.  

“And so for the young, the old, and everybody in between, I would like to create safe places for them to transact,” Cr Migdale said.

“So whilst over east it’s out the front of police stations, in our city we have very few of them.”

Instead she proposed they could be in areas covered by Stirling council’s CCTV, envisioning one such safer exchange site in each of Stirling’s seven wards.

“I was going to suggest maybe Bunnings stores, but it might be too soon,” mayor Mark Irwin proposed, referring to controversy over Bunnings secretly using facial recognition CCTV. 

While there was a unanimous vote in favour of getting a report from council staff about optimal sites, a couple of councillors had concerns they might be stepping out of local government remit.

Cr David Lagan asked: “Will the report include a section that explains how the City will be indemnified if it was ultimately seen as a facilitator in the process steps?”

Mr Irwin said “all of those things will be included in the report,” which council staff will prepare after conferring with WA Police, and which councillors are due to vote on by March 2025.

by DAVID BELL

A PRIDE flag will soon fly outside Bayswater council HQ in a reversal of the council’s decision earlier this year not to erect a fifth flagpole.

Councillor Nat Latter first put up a proposal in January to install the extra pole outside the Broun Avenue civic centre to fly the Pride flag and other optional banners alongside the existing four: The Australian flag, WA state flag, Aboriginal flag, and Torres Strait Islander flag.

The first attempt was voted down 5/5 with mayor Filomena Piffaretti using her casting vote against.

While one resident last week commented that “there’s a sense of de ja vu about this notice,” the balance of power has shifted at Bayswater following the re-election of Sally Palmer in March (“Pride flag revisited”, Voice, November 16, 2024), and this week councillors voted 6/5 to install the extra pole at an estimated cost of $11,500. 

Speaking in favour of their revived motion this week, Cr Latter said “whilst I accepted that January council decision it made me really sad to hear the lack of understanding of the issues being faced by marginalised members of our community, and I received many emails from residents who felt dismayed by the decision.”

Cr Latter referenced the events in Albany in August when a group called “Keeping Children Safe Albany,” backed by the Australian Christian Lobby, urged the council to ban books which they claimed were “sexualising” children. Two of the titles at the focus of the furore were sex education books that depicted same-sex relationships.

Cr Latter said: “I want to give you a little bit of context for me bringing this back: I spent some time in Albany during the recent special electors’ meeting down there and saw firsthand the impact on the LGBTIQA+ community of groups using public institutions to further their bigotry, discrimination, and hate speech, where local councillors have been using their platform to sow that division. And this is the context that we work in now: An imported politics of division. 

“It’s important, really important, to demonstrate that the City of Baywater is a welcoming and inclusive place, to fly the flag, and show that hate has no home here…”

Cr Latter said: “The arguments made in January were largely about cost: It was too costly to do this. 

“And then some months later council unanimously voted to install a flag pole in Halliday Park to fly the New Zealand flag one day a year, and I supported that because I believe it’s important that people see themselves represented in the ways that are important to them on the occasions that matter to them… no one tut-tutted about the cost for one day, and it’s the same cost that you see before you today.”

Those in favour of the new pole were councillors Latter, Palmer, Elli Petersen-Pik, Dan Bull, Lorna Clarke, and Giorgia Johnson. Those opposed were Assunta Melecca, Steven Ostaszewskyj, Josh Eveson, Michelle Sutherland, and Ms Piffaretti. The mayor has been a firm supporter of Pride, voted in favour of funding Pride events in Bayswater, and stood up for Drag Queen Storytime at local libraries, but did not speak on the flagpole issue at this week’s meeting.

by DAVID BELL

THE rich and rarely heard history of Chinese people in WA is being uncovered as part of a massive research project being run at UWA.

Community members are being called on to come forward with their own stories, photos, and recordings for the collection.

The Two Centuries of Chinese Heritage in WA project was funded by the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations with an aim to better tell these oft-forgotten stories. 

It’s based on foundational research conducted by historian Anne Atkinson, who collected nearly 10,000 pages of notes, photos, and articles during the 1980s and 1990s. They’ve now been digitised and are publicly available for perusal, and the researchers hope more stories and documents keep coming in to continue building the archive, and a podcast is soon to launch to highlight individual lives. 

Project officer Lucy Hair says the history of Chinese people in WA goes back far further than most people realise. A Chinese man named Chow Moon (sometimes recorded as Moon Chow, Johnny Chow, or “Chau”) arrived in Fremantle in 1830, and as a carpenter he likely worked on some of the foundational buildings of the early colony. 

Ms Hair says there’s many common misconceptions about the role Chinese people played in WA in the 1800s and 1900s.

“Many people think of Chinese people [working] in the goldfields,” she says. “But that’s typically the eastern states, not the goldfields here, because we had all the horrible restrictions keeping them out of the goldfields here.”

Many of the prominent professions worked by Chinese people were not due to choice or affinity, but government restrictions. Xenophobia and fear of competition led to Chinese people being banned from working in certain industries, at times leaving them few options aside from working in market gardens, laundries, domestic service, agriculture, or furniture-building. 

“There’s more than a dozen pieces of legislation that were enacted in the 1800s and 1900s that specifically restricted Chinese people,” Ms Hair says.

Despite the restrictions, many thrived. “The stories are really unique.” Ms Hair says. “I think there’s a lot of tales of resilience.”

One effect of the strict government policies on entering Australia at the time is the large number of records that were left: Entry documents, photographs both frontal view and profile, and ink handprints on documents remain to tell their stories.

“It’s bittersweet,” Ms Hair says. “While it’s harrowing, the level of detail that these people were examined in, it’s a really rich set of records to work from.”

While the database has many official records, the next step is to gather more personal tales. “A lot of our research is done from records,” Ms Hair says. “I’m very much hoping for family contributions.”

The podcast series starts December 5, keep an http://www.chinesewa.net for episodes, and the collection of images and documents is at collected.uwa.edu.au/nodes/view/36653 for public viewing. If you have any stories to contribute, contact the researchers at ChineseWA@uwa.edu.au

by DAVID BELL

THE Christmas light trails were switched on this week in Perth and Vincent, and will be on every night through to early January.

These particularly speccy photo opps are at Braithwaite Park (the walk-through baubles) and the Leederville town centre (the very instagrammable walk-through arch).

WITH owls dropping dead across the state after eating poisoned rats, Stirling council is the latest to get on board with an “Owl Friendly” approach to killing rodents. 

Councillor Tony Krsticevic implored colleagues to become an “Owl Friendly” council at their November meeting. 

“What people don’t realise is that these supermarkets and Bunnings sell you these pesticides which basically kill our native fauna,” he said, specifically when owls eat a rodent that’s consumed potent ‘second-generation anti-coagulant rodenticides’. 

“If an owl eats a mouse that’s died of this poison, the owl will die as well, so that’s very concerning. 

“We don’t have a great amount of fauna out there and we need to protect it.”

This year several councils have become “Owl Friendly”, including Vincent, Fremantle, Cockburn, and Melville. A 2018 study found more than 50 per cent of dead southern boobook owls collected around Perth and south-west WA had dangerous levels of rat poison in their systems.

While owls are the poster-child, other birds like eagles and magpies can also be affected, and some ground-dwelling mammals can also be attracted to the rat baits. 

Stirling council staff have confirmed they don’t use the second-gen poisons, but Cr Krsticevic wants to go a step further and exclude its indirect use through contracts and to promote more owl friendly products for use in the community. An alternative is ‘first generation’ anti-coagulants, which break down more quickly in the rodents, and would require multiple doses to kill an owl. 

Cr Krsticevic’s notice of motion does note that even those are still poison, and an ideal approach should involve reducing rodent numbers though “hygiene, blocking access, and use of non-poison traps… while accepting that sometimes there is a need to resort to poison”.

A report is due back to council in March on how they can ensure indirect use of the second gen poisons, on how they can promote more owl friendly measures, and how they can best work with Birdlife Australia and other councils to promote the owl friendly movement. 

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Authority is currently conducting a “reconsideration” of anti-coagulant rodenticides. This includes re-assessing their risks and considering whether there are adequate instructions on labels.

by DAVID BELL

UNIVERSITY of WA adjunct research fellow Christine Groom is calling on everyone from urban planners to home gardeners to make the suburbs more friendly for under-threat Carnaby’s Cockatoos.

Historical clearing of native vegetation has decimated their natural habitat, so the suburbs are now a vital lifeline for the endemic WA species.

Dr Groom says any planning, landscaping and gardening should consider their key needs – foraging, drinking, roosting, breeding and commuting.

“Planting species that  Carnaby’s cockatoos use for food is the easiest way to attract them to your garden,” she says. 

“Native banksias and hakeas are great food sources. You can also plants shrubs like grevilleas and bottlebrushes that have colourful flowers that produce nectar that Carnaby’s cockatoos enjoy as well as attracting a lot of smaller birds too. Installing a bird bath is another great way to attract Carnaby’s cockatoos, especially if you live near a night roost.

“They like to drink in the evening before roosting communally at night. There’s an important night roost site at Manning Lake which may be familiar to readers.”

Dr Groom says planning, landscaping and gardening with black cockatoos in mind will also create greener, cooler suburbs.

An adjunct research fellow at UWA, she lives in the Perth hills and Carnaby’s cockatoos regularly visit her garden to feed on the banksias and hakeas she planted.

She’s a bit of a cockatoo buff – in 2015 she completed a PhD on Carnaby’s in urban Perth using satellite tracking to follow their daily movements.

“I was surprised at just how many exotic plants that Carnaby’s cockatoo has learnt to feed on,” she says.

“A third of the species I observed them feeding on were species not native to WA. Like many parrots they have curious personalities and will often chew on things around them. I think this has helped them try new foods.

“They are a very adaptable bird and would certainly be even more endangered if they hadn’t learnt to feed on plants found in gardens of urban areas. Their favourite exotic foods include the seeds of liquid amber and tipuana, and also the nuts from macadamia and pecan trees.”

In recent years, infill and sub-dividing have further reduced the habitat available for Carnaby’s Cockatoo. 

Dr Groom says urban planners need to ensure green spaces are part of their designs.

“Infill housing results in less space for gardens and mature trees that provide food for Carnaby’s cockatoos,” she says.

“Infill is preferred to continuing urban sprawl but we have to get better at ensuring there is also space for trees and gardens.

“Green spaces are nice places for people too and there are a lot of studies that have shown the value of trees for improved wellbeing, cooling effects and more.”

Dr Groom has combined her two passions – Carnaby’s cockatoos and landscape design – in her new book Creating Black Cockatoo Friendly Suburbs, published by UWA Publishing.

It’s an accessible, easy read that will appeal to the casual nature fan as well as planners, policy makers, scientists, home gardeners and naturalists.

The advice can also be used for other varieties of black cockatoos.

Dr Groom hopes her book will promote urban biodiversity and help ensure the survival of Carnaby’s cockatoos.

For more info see uwap.uwa.edu.au.