IT will be jazz hands galore when Adam Hall and the Soul Playboys play a two-hour fundraiser in Perth later this month.
All proceeds from Jazz for a Cause go to the Solaris Cancer Fund, and with the Playboys’ set including songs by Stevie Wonder, Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, it’s set to be a fun-packed night.
Velvet-voiced trumpet player Adam Hall has won a suite of music awards over the years and his band has just returned from a successful tour in Europe and America.
Hall went to Freo’s Christian Boys School and says he was inspired to take up music by a group of “amazingly inspirational teachers”.
Many jazz musicians are introverts and can be quite reflective, but Hall is larger than life off and on-stage: “It’s turned all the way up to 11,” he laughs.
Jazz for a Cause is the brainchild of his brother Brad, a keen cyclist who took part in the cancer fundraiser Red Sky Ride.
“Riding is about being out in the sun and everyone’s been touched by cancer in some way,”Hall told the Voice.
Hall says he is excited to be back in Perth and looking forward to performing “two solid hours of music”.
“It’s a tremendous chance because it’s the first time the band has been back in town for a long time,” he says.
“It’s also a wonderful listening experience in The Sewing Room – acoustics are great and it’s a comfy setting.”
Jazz for a Cause is at The Sewing Room in the Murray Street Basement on October 20.
The Revelation Perth International Film Festival will again partner with the City of Vincent for the 2019 City of Vincent Film Project.
The City of Vincent has allocated a total of $15,000 to fund three short documentaries, providing a great opportunity for filmmakers, with each winning film receiving a $5,000 budget to tell their story.
Revelation Film Festival Director Richard Sowada said the project was a fantastic community-based creative initiative.
“We’re proud to be again associated with the commissioning of new work from new filmmakers.”
“The quality of work produced in the 2018 competition was sensational by anyone’s standard with the films being accepted into the film festival screening circuit since our premiere”.
Films from last year’s event were an eclectic mix of styles and themes; Quality Time, a poetic exploration into the art of neon bending; Ghosts of Vincent, an expository ghost hunt and The Beeman, an observational look at one man’s crusade to save the honeybees.
Project coordinator Ashleigh Nicolau says the competition is a terrific stepping stone for emerging filmmakers to showcase their talents and add to their portfolios.
“Cody Greenwood, Producer of The Beeman, was chosen to participate in the 2018 Screen Producer Australia “Ones To Watch” program.”
The City of Vincent Film Project is now calling for submissions, with a closing date of 30 November.
Submissions will be considered by a panel of industry professionals, and representatives of the City of Vincent and the Revelation Perth International Film Festival.
Successful applicants will be expected to commence production in January, and the three completed films will screen as part of the 2019 Revelation Perth International Film Festival in July.
In an added bonus for filmmakers, their works will be available to international audiences through REVonDEMAND – Revelation’s own on-demand platform.
TREELESS suburbs seem to be the way of the future, but the leafy streets of Menora will continue to charm.
From the second level of this Melrose Crescent home you can enjoy a sea of green, with mature trees stretching as far as the eye can see.
Adding to the verdant view, there’s a delightful park over the back fence and across the road is a swathe of grass courts at Alexander Park Tennis Club.
Built in the early 1930s, this four-bedroom home has lots of art deco charm, including gorgeous leadlight windows and french doors, and decorative ceilings.
The spacious main bedroom includes a lovely study, and has leadlight windows, a walk-in-robe and stylish en suite.
Across the wide hall is the formal dining room and lounge, a huge space with an imitation coal fire and more leadlight windows.
Old meets new in perfect harmony in the vast open-plan, which has a bank of stacker doors that open onto the charming garden.
Beautifully appointed, the huge modern kitchen has white stone benchtops, an integrated Miele dishwasher and a generous walk-in-pantry.
Alfresco dining is every bit as stylish with a covered patio and flagstone paving.
Limestone steps lead to a lawn terrace with raised garden beds.
Off to the side is a sparkling pool with a sitting area and a beautifully manicured backdrop.
The second level is the kids “wing” with three bedrooms (one semi-en suite) and another lounge area.
Despite its tranquil leafy setting, Melrose Crescent is close to cafes and shops, and only four kilometres from the Perth CBD.
There’s a heap of schools nearby including Coolbinia Primary and Mt Lawley High, as well as Perth College and Edith Cowan University.
by JENNY D’ANGER
28 Melrose Crescent, Menora auction 11am, Saturday October 27 Peter Menaglio 0417 904 935 Edison Property 9201 9800
• Peter gets ready to Kayak for Carers in the Indian Ocean. Photo supplied.
A SERVICEMAN from the Australian army aims to put the navy to shame when he takes to the Indian Ocean in a kayak to raise awareness about family carers in WA.
‘Peter’ (elite soldiers can’t reveal their true identity) will launch from Hillarys Boat Harbour on Sunday (October 14) and kayak south approximately 60km per day, for six days, along the WA coastline.
Peter and his wife cared for a family friend who had terminal cancer, and also spent a lot of time providing support to the friend’s three children.
Now an ambassador for Carers WA, the digger says he now appreciates the immense physical and emotional stress carers experience and how vital these unpaid individuals are to society.
“The reality of this stress was not lost on our family when our friend became terminally ill and her decline put increasing demands on her family,” he said.
“As a family we had to do the best we could to support our friend and her family when they needed assistance.
“For us this was only a snapshot of what life is like as a carer, some families deal with this their entire lives with no respite.”
Caring friends and families save the Australian community more than $60 billion per year, yet too many carers experience declining health, financial hardship and social isolation because they are not adequately recognised and supported.
Carers WA is a registered charity dedicated to improving the lives of the estimated 320,000 family carers living in WA.
Carers WA CEO Paul Coates said community-focused campaigns like Kayak for Carers increase awareness of caring roles and help reduce stigma.
“Carers often feel invisible and undervalued; campaigns like Kayak for Carers with the help of brave community members like Peter help us continue to spread the word and encourage the wider community to put their support behind, the 320,000 unpaid carers in Western Australia,” Mr Coates said.
“We want carers to realise there is support out there for them so they can seek out the services they need and are entitled to.”
Kayak for Carers will be held during National Carers Week (October 14-20) to raise awareness about Carers WA and to raise funds for family carers.
• Abheeti Kathryn Pass and Amy-Rose Goodey are the creators of podcast Crypto Clothesline. Photo by Molly Schmidt.
Perth tech podder Abheeti Kathryn Pass has put out the call for more women to jump into technologies like cryptocurrencies.
She makes the call through her podcast CryptoClothesline, hoping this will encourage more women to get involved in the ‘cryptosphere’.
She says industry
after-parties in the heavily male-dominated blockchain and cryptocurrency scene were taking place in strip clubs until recently.
“Some strip joints even had sex workers with their QR codes – a digital bar code – tattooed on their breasts or buttocks so instead of putting $50 down their bra, men could pay with their Bitcoin or their cryptocurrency wallet,” Ms Pass says.
Crypto Clothesline co-host Amy-Rose Goodey says “It’s hard to be a woman at blockchain events because there’s like five of us out of 200, and you’re immediately assumed to be dumb.
“We’re creating a soft space for women to land, because when you first jump in, you don’t have a lot of places to go that aren’t masculine dominated, swearing and sexist.”
According to research about 95 per cent of the world’s Bitcoin community are men, despite a study by National Australia Bank revealing that “more women than men say they are solely responsible for making financial decisions for their households.”
Ms Pass says many women are afraid of talking about tech and finance, so (in their podcast) they host accessible conversations with prominent women, and sometimes men, in the tech industry.
“Women are saying, ‘I can control the family budget, I can micro-manage a family, I can multi-skill til the cows come home, but you want me to talk about investment? Nah’”, she says.
“So with our podcast we say, ‘Hey girls, you’ve got the capability like any other person on the planet’.”
The pair met about seven years ago when Ms Goodey took her daughter to Ms Pass’ family daycare, and they bonded over their love of crypto.
Juggling different time zones and young children, the women record their weekly podcast, which includes an interview with an industry guest, like Perth councillor Jemma Green.
Ms Green is the cofounder and chair of Power Ledger, a company that uses blockchain technology to enable the transition to a low cost, low carbon energy market, with the potential for peer-to-peer energy trading.
She says the early pioneers in computer science were women, and it’s time to bring more female role models into the scene.
In 2016 she launched Power Ledger, just seven weeks after giving birth to her first child.
Her second child is now three-months-old, but she’s not slowing down and the company is launching projects in renewable energy and blockchain all over the world.
She says she went to 25 meetings with her daughter in tow and works with her son in a bouncer on her desk.
“Although I’m working, I don’t want my kids to be separate from my life,” she says. “I’m breastfeeding now. Women have babies, throw them over their shoulder and continue.”
Ms Goodey says there’s no reason for women not to get involved in the future of
digital currency.
“Even if bitcoin and cryptocurrencies aren’t the future of currency…we just need to step up and own it.
“We need to teach our daughters it’s okay to be computer programmers, it’s okay to be a developer, it’s okay to be brave.”
If you want to know more, you can go along to a Women in Blockchain Perth event, or you can listen to their podcast at http://www.cryptoclothesline.com
• After five attempts, Pastor Binh Nguyen – one of the original boat people from Vietnam – has finally found a permanent home for his Sonlife Church in Leederville. Photo by Steve Grant
SONLIFE CHURCH has moved into the long-empty St Mary’s Hall on Oxford Street in Leederville.
“This is our fifth home,” says founding Pastor Binh Nguyen. “We started in my living room,” with about 13 people in 2011.
These days about 200 people attend his engaging service.
Pastor Nguyen was originally from southern Vietnam and his family left as refugees when the regime in the north took over.
He was one of the original boat people, leaving at age four.
It was a desperate voyage and they drifted for days without enough food and the hardships led to their faith.
“My parents came to know Jesus out at sea.”
Sonlife Church were temporarily located in the Loftus community centre and then at UWA lecture hall, before moving into a warehouse on Cleaver Street in 2014.
But Pastor Nguyen says they’ve bought St Mary’s and it will be their permanent home.
“This is it: a stake in the ground, a presence in the community,” he says.
“We get to be a lighthouse in this part of the city…”a city on the hill,” where everyone can see us.”
They had their first service on September 30, but Pastor Nguyen says they plan to be more than a Sunday-only operation.
He says they want to be a part of the local community, “blessing the businesses” by injecting money into the local economy, and he has plans for members to visit residents at the nearby Rosewood aged care facility.
“If we can be their family, if we can go over there and sing songs with them and just encourage and love them? I can’t wait to do that.”
Pastor Nguyen says a community welcome service is planned for later in the year once they’ve had a chance to settle in.
• Transfolk WA vice chair Misty Farquhar with an “It’s ‘they’ actually” badge.
THE Australian passport office has issued just 110 gender ‘X’ passports since they became available in 2002 – an average of seven a year.
In 2017-18 more than two million Australian passports were issued and the government estimated that about 57 per cent of the population, just over 14 million people, had one. The 2016 Census counted gender diversity for the first time, and while 1260 people listed themselves as “other” the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that’s likely to be a very low figure for a bunch of reasons.
In March last year Fremantle resident Sami became one of the few Aussies to be issued with a gender X passport, which has X (unspecified) instead of M or F in the gender section.
Sami says non-binary people are reluctant to get one in case they are refused entry to certain countries or get hassled at passport control.
“I am aware of someone with an X passport who was detained for some hours in Singapore,” Sami said.
“I am unsure whether they were deported back to Australia or let through; certainly they were subject to discrimination.
“Ironically this is more of an issue for gender-unspecified folx, rather than female-to-male or male-to-female folx, since it’s the third gender that is at issue.”
Misty Farquhar, vice chair of Transfolk WA, has also heard of people with gender X passports experiencing problems when crossing international borders.
Sami says a lack of support from Australian consulates also deters people taking up the gender-neutral passports, with people who’ve been robbed seemingly getting ahead of them in the queue.
Shortly after receiving a passport, Sami received a letter from Australia’s foreign affairs department saying there was little they can do to help overseas Aussies with gender X passports.
The international civil aviation organisation does permit ‘X’ sex passports, but ultimately it’s up to individual countries to decide who gets in.
Sami, a 50-something dual citizen, uses a British passport with gender ‘M’ when visiting the UK and other countries that don’t recognise a third gender on passports: “Ironically the UK doesn’t recognise a third gender on passports like Canada and Australia do, but they all have the same head of state.”
In August last year, Canada became the first country in the Americas to introduce a gender X option on passports, following the lead of Australia, Denmark, Germany, Malta, New Zealand and Pakistan. Farquhar says WA residents might also be reluctant to apply for a gender X passport because it’s inconsistent with their birth certificate.
PERTH council will spend $4 million on replacing the council building’s flashing exterior lights.
Commissioners, sitting in for suspended City of Perth councillors, voted to approve the new lighting system at last week’s council meeting, ignoring a $500,000 option to remove the lights and not replace them.
The existing T-shaped lights were installed nearly 10 years ago and are starting to fizzle out, costing the city $195,000 a year to maintain.
The lights were installed in the early days of LED technology and it’s now getting hard to find replacements when they fail.
The new lights will cost $25,750 a year to maintain.
The cost could go down a little if they decide not to go ahead with new lighting around the council’s main entrance.
• Michael Sutherland when he was speaker in WA parliament. File photo
ARE Michael and Michelle Sutherland the new power couple of the WA Liberal party?
Last Thursday Mr Sutherland, a former WA parliamentary speaker, was appointed president of the Mt Lawley branch of the Liberal party.
His wife Michelle is the president of the neighbouring Yokine branch.
The two branches will be involved in preselecting the Mt Lawley Liberal candidate for the next state election in 2021.
Mr Sutherland says he’ll be “keeping the wheels oiled” until then, making sure the Liberal party maintains a strong presence in the area.
“I’ll be flying the flag nice and high,” he says.
The colourful, South African ex-pat was the Mt Lawley Liberal MP from 2008-2017; losing last year’s state election to Labor’s Simon Millman. A few months later he unsuccessfully ran for Perth council.
It will be a busy time for the Sutherlands with Michelle recently being re-elected to Bayswater council. Mr Sutherland takes over from Stirling councillor Joe Ferrante as branch president.
Perth Voice Interactive 