Perth Voice Interactive

THE East Perth Power Station also has a fiery new Noongar name; 

its redevelopment is be known as Koomba Kalark. 

The name “place of the big fire” references the site’s former use as a power station, rather than any local tradition.

Premier Mark McGowan said in May 2019 he wanted any redevelopment to have some public use space, along with the apartments and commercial space: “It may well be an Indigenous art gallery, it may be something like the MONA in Tasmania, but it will be open to the public,” the ABC reported him saying. 

But the government chose developers Australian Capital Equity and Minderoo’s proposed mix of residential, commercial, recreational and tourism uses.

PERTH city council’s new CEO will be Michelle Reynolds, currently CEO of the Rottnest Island Authority.

Ms Reynolds is due to start August 4 when current CEO Murray Jorgensen’s contract ends. The commissioners sitting in for an elected council are happy with Mr Jorgensen’s work but from the beginning he was intended to be a short appointment to get the city back on track.

Ms Reynolds isn’t taking interviews this week but Mr Hammond said she “has a long and successful career as a senior public servant”. 

She’s been CEO at the RIA from January 2017, and before that was CEO of Workcover from 2008.

She’s done a few stints with the Department of Premier and Cabinet across different governments, working in the Public Sector Management division from 1994 to 2008. She was seconded to the DPC in 2012 to develop the state’s first Emergency Preparedness Report, and in 2013 to assist then-premier Colin Barnett in his role as science minister. 

A new council and lord mayor is due to be elected in October. They’ll have about four months to test the waters with the new CEO before her six month probation period review.

The inquiry into the city’s malfunctions during 2015 to 2018 was due to be out this week on April 30 but inquirer Tony Power has requested another extension due to Coronavirus-related disruption.

By DAVID BELL

Poison lake kills ducks

HYDE PARK’S birdlife is suffering a botulism outbreak, with more than 50 dead birds collected so far and 20 taken away for intensive care.

Botulism outbreaks are common at this time of year but this has been a bad one at Hyde Park. The bacterium paralyses the birds and in bad cases the muscles used to breathe stop working and the bird dies. Even in milder cases they become unable to hold their heads up out of water and can still drown.

For about three weeks Volunteers from WA Seabird Rescue have been rescuing Hyde Park’s birds to bring them in for nurturing until the toxin wears off. The mud is deep and sticky and the water levels are so low they’re using paddle boards to get to the lakes’ islands on daily patrols. Along with Native ARC they’ve been able to nurse some back to health and release them at Herdsman Lake, because they’d be at risk returning to Hyde Park while the outbreaks are ongoing.

The dead ducks also have to be removed to prevent botulism spreading. 

Some animals are too far gone and have to be euthanised. While the smaller ducks seem most affected, all vertebrates are at risk of botulism poisoning, and an ibis has also had to be euthanised. 

WASR president Halina Burmej says saving the birds takes “round the clock nursing”. 

“With mild breathing difficulties, we can get them through,” Dr Burmej says. “It’s very diligent nursing with lots of fluids, and often a dose of charcoal at the beginning to soak up any toxins… we keep the birds warm, we change the bedding every time we deal with them.”

Ducks take a few days to a week to recover, while bigger birds like pelicans take two or three weeks.

Vincent mayor Emma Cole said the council has been working with WASR to rescue and remove the birds and thanked the volunteers for their efforts getting to the harder-to-reach birds. 

“At this time of year, access to the island can be difficult due to the low water levels in the lakes.

“The volunteers have been a great help to the city as they have provided the required expertise and equipment to access the islands and remove the birds.”

The water’s just inches deep in most places, and a lot of the outer area is just thick mud.

“When water levels are low the sediment is easily stirred up when we get rain. This releases the botulism bacteria and can result in an outbreak,” Ms Cole says. “Outbreaks are often an annual occurrence towards the end of summer, but the severity of them varies.” She says the council will work with WASR to learn more about how to prevent future outbreaks.

by DAVID BELL

WITH no Dawn Service and no veteran’s march this Anzac Day, the RSL is encouraging commemorators to walk out  on their driveways at 5.55am to observe the day.

Musicians around the country are planning to play the Last Post, but Mt Hawthorn’s Coogee Street will be lucky enough hear it done by a musician trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Clarinet player Alexandra Thomson was in her final term of study in London when the coronavirus situation worsened. 

Her course is extremely tough to get into – only five people worldwide are admitted per year – and she was close to graduating in June.

“It’s a two-year masters degree and it’s three terms per year, so I got 5/6s of the way through before Covid really stuffed it all up,” she says. 

“My parents had planned to come over for graduation, and I had all this travel I was going to do. But that’s okay.”

When the Department of Foreign Affairs advised overseas Australians to return home, she bought a ticket the next day, packed everything in her London room into six boxes, and flew home to begin 14 days of quarantine. 

Ms Thomson, 28, has been continuing lessons online. Dates for her final recitals and exam aren’t set but they’ll likely be done via a livestream to London.

Anzac Days are usually pretty casual for the Thomson family: They’d normally go to a local bowls club. With those all closed Ms Thomsons’ dad Peter suggested a dawn driveway rendition of The Last Post. 

It doesn’t need too much adapting to be played on clarinet compared to a bugle or trumpet and most likely only her Royal Academy teachers could tell the difference.

“It only involves three notes, but I can’t stuff up those three,” Ms Thomson laughs. “I studied at the Royal Academy – I can’t come back and stuff up the The Last Post!”

Anzac Day online

ANZACS knew well the dangers of infectious disease, with the deadly Spanish Flu having all but scuppered the first post-war Anzac Day celebrations.  

Having lost 62,000 people across four years of war, another 15,000 Australians died from a flu pandemic the year after.

A parade planned in Sydney was cancelled, replaced by a commemorative service in The Domain where participants wore masks and stood three feet apart.

That’s no longer considered distant enough and this Anzac Day the Dawn Service has been cancelled, replaced by an online commemorative service. 

“Anzac Day happens every year and it will happen in 2020, albeit in different circumstances,” Australian War Memorial director Matt Anderson said in a media statement this week.

“Anzac Day is traditionally about acknowledging the resilience and fortitude demonstrated by

the Anzacs at Gallipoli and the subsequent legacy that was born. Across the community, peopleare drawing upon their own resources to deal with this global health crisis.”

“It is vital that we have the opportunity to take time to pause and reflect on Anzac Day, if not as some brief respite from the overwhelming nature of the pandemic, but because it’s what we do.”

Stories by DAVID BELL

WESTERN AUSTRALIAN and Indian artists have teamed up for a new program that connects kids to art and captures their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Local WA theatre Barking Gecko has teamed up with ThinkArts in India to create Isolate>Create>Connect, an online workshop for kids to join around the world. 

The 10 week program encourages kids between five and 17 to participate in weekly video tutorials to create small pieces of artwork, capturing their perspective on the world during COVID-19. 

Kids can digitally upload their creation to the Barking Gecko website.

“It’s will be like a time capsule,” says the company’s artistic director Luke Kerridge.

“We’re … living through a once-in-a-generation event and the aim of this project is to capture that experience through the eyes of children.”

Kerridge said the creative tasks allow kids to see the world in a different way. 

“We’re looking at video documentary; so, a day-in-the-life sort of thing,” he said. 

“As well as various forms of visual, 3D, photography, building.”

Mr Kerridge said by the end of the program Barking Gecko will have a digital scrapbook documenting these generation-defining times through children’s eyes. 

The program starts on Wednesday April 29 and children can join for free any time via the Barking Gecko Theatre website. 

A NEW 37-level hotel and 22-level office building has been approved for the old Hostel Milligan site.

Most of the 1930s hotel that currently sits on the site will be demolished, keeping only the walls facing Murray and Milligan Streets. The 1930s hotel was built around an older 1880s house known as “Pearl Villa”, which will mostly be¬†retained aside from two internal walls.

Owned by the Singapore-based Fragrance Group, the $175 million plans tout the new design as opening up more of the old Pearl Villa to the public as glass walls will make it viewable from the street. “Interpretive material” on the ground floor will tell some history of the building.¬†Both the villa and the hostel are on the City of Perth’s “register of cultural significance” and the plans were referred to the Heritage Council of WA which says “the impact to the cultural heritage significance has been mitigated” compared to older plans from 2018.

Long-time caretaker of the building Tony Ransom isn’t a big fan of the re-design and would’ve liked to see far more of the 1930s building preserved. He ran the Hostel Milligan there until October last year when he and the last of the residents were moved out to prepare for the new project. 

He says part of the buildings’ unique heritage value is that “it’s like a Russian Doll: A building inside a building,” and shedding so much of the 1930s layer loses some of that value. 

Previous plans had been approved by the Development Assessment Panel in 2018. The latest plans approved on April 11 add an extra storey to the hotel and snips one storey from the office tower.

PROTECTING the CBD’s Christmas ornaments and events cost Perth city council near $450,000 in payments to a private security company.

In 2018 someone wrecked one of the giant baubles on the city’s Christmas Lights trial, so commissioners spent an extra $100,000 on security last year. It was also hoped a strong security presence would encourage families into the city after a series of media stories about homelessness and troublemakers. 

The city’s latest list of payments reveal the final bill to Ace Security to protect our 2019 festivities was $447,500, including: 

• $292,000 to guard the Christmas Lights trail;

• $64,000 for security of Christmas decorations;

• $20,000 to protect the nativity scene;

• $14,800 for security and crowd control at the Christmas Carnivals;

• $43,000 for New Year’s Eve security.

The PR industry was the other big beneficiary: Initiative Media Australia was paid $259,000 for the Christmas advertising campaign and $54,000 for the New Year’s campaign. 

The festive spend comes at the start of a lean period for PCC: The latest financial statement only runs to February 29, just before the effects of coronavirus really started to empty out CBD carparks, but already their parking income was $1.5million under budget for the year to date.

They recouped some of that with fines: Since July 2019 they’ve brought in $592,000 more in infringements than they budgeted for.

by DAVID BELL