Perth Voice Interactive

THE federal court has provided a glimmer of hope for a group of senior and disabled citizens fighting to keep their bus route from being axed.

The group, known as Sandbag, won a temporary injunction on Friday which prevents the public transport authority from pulling the pin on route 14 through Mt Hawthorn until the matter is considered again. It was due to be heard on Thursday, after the Voice’s deadline.

Sandbag’s campaign against the PTA started when the authority realigned bus route 15, which left some residents of Mt Hawthorn up to 700m from the nearest bus stop.

Transperth trialled bus route 14 to cover the poorly serviced area, but decided it would stop last week because patronage was low.

Discrimination

Sandbag initially fought the closure in the supreme court and lost, but the federal circuit court considered the issue within its jurisdiction because it fell under the disability discrimination and human rights commission acts.

“It’s a really minor issue but I think it goes to a wider issue of how government deals with the community,” says Sandbag convenor Tad Krysiak.

“The damage to the community fractures it…people that used to meet on the bus no longer do.”

The PTA lodged a last-gasp affadavit on Tuesday which claimed route 14 had less than one passenger each trip and was costing more than $500 to run each day, which could have been used for better purposes.

But it’s appeal for the affadavit to be bought to Judge Antoni Lucev’s attention “as a matter of urgency” was quickly rebuffed by his associate Sandra Gough.

“No leave was granted for the filing of further documentation and the matter is listed for judgment on Thursday, 18 August 2016,” Ms Gough responded.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

MORE than 3000 signatures from the “No Houses in Wetlands” petition will be submitted to Parliament this week in an effort to halt further clearing next to Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary.

One block owned by the D’Orazio family has already been extensively cleared following WA planning commission approval for a subdivision, with a housing project in the pipeline. A neighbouring block owned by the Carters remains covered in greenery but is slated to potentially host a cul de sac serving the site next door.

Planning control

The petition calls on planning minister Donna Faragher to grant a planning control area for the wetland. NHIW spokesperson Rachael Roberts says “we understand that the minister for planning has the power to ensure no development occurs on this land until it can be reserved in the metropolitan regional scheme.”

Maylands MP Lisa Baker was due to present the petition in the lower house on Thursday August 18 and Amber-Jade Sanderson will table it in the upper house.

While the D’Orazio family hasn’t returned calls from the Voice, one of the owners of the Carter block, Dawn Hawkins, has reached out to the No Houses in Wetlands group on Facebook.

In 2010 and 2013 the Carters offered to sell the land to Bayswater council which would’ve secured its future. In the first instance councillors rejected the offer, the second time around the administration knocked it back without even asking councillors to vote on it.

Ms Hawkins described the wetlands campaign as being stressful on her family.

She posted “please don’t take offence, the Carter land is actually private property. When I was a child we used to play there as often as we could, we caught yabbies and enjoyed the long grass. The land was rarely under water.

“Life wasn’t too complicated, we didn’t have the hassles we are experiencing now that are causing our family a whole lot of pain. We rarely had the general public walking on our land, blocking the drains, protesting, dictating what we can and can’t do and making claims of contamination. Please spare a thought for our family. Thank you.”

Ms Hawkins went on to say: “I too grieve at the sight of destruction and clearance of various land areas that take away wildlife, however we are not planning destruction.”

by DAVID BELL

REAL faeries don’t wear plastic tiaras or wave sparkly wands, say eco-faerie Cara Walker.

She’s on a mission to send the Disneyfied image of faeries up in smoke and give them back their ancient reputation as fierce wilderness warriors.

Walker will be dropping by Maylands library for Book Week to teach local kids about looking after the wilderness, just like the faeries of old would protect their land from interlopers.

From Irish stock, she discovered her great great grandfather had been a famous storyteller (or seanchaidhe). It spurred her to learn the stories of old, and she went from village to village chatting with old timers around kitchen tables and in bars to learn the forgotten folklore.

Sacrilege

“When you realise where faeries came from it seems sacrilege to teach kids about Disney-style faeries!” she says.

And for a lot of old timers in Ireland the creatures are very real.

“In the Aran Islands I was talking to a gentleman who was speaking English at the start.”

As a few brews were downed he’d switch in and out of Gaelic and was telling stories of the fair folk who’d cause mischief around his house and bother his wife, and they were very tangible creatures to him: “This guy was saying ‘the wee bastards, I chase them out with my broom!”

Even governments have acknowledged faeries’ domain over nature: In 1999 the Clare County council delayed and rerouted a freeway at great expense to protect a tree that was said to be a meeting point for the faeries of Munster.

But the stories aren’t being passed on to the younger generation, disappearing along with the Gaelic language: “It’s kind of sad: Irish itself is a dying language. It’s taught in schools but it’s drummed into them very academically,” she says, and it fails to capture imaginations. “The stories are going with it.”

Back in Australia, Ms Walker has been using the faeries of the old world as a way to teach kids about looking after nature.

“We do a whole lot of songs and dancing to bring in a love of Australian animals, and [teach] what the children can do to help the wildlife,” she says, melding Australian bush songs with the old stories.

She works in schools and finds many kids have little concept of nature. She brings in containers of dirt from beach sand to mulch for kids to stick their hands into and overcome their fears.

“There are some children who cannot get their hands in there!” she chuckles. “They dip their finger in and scream and need to go and wash it. It’s the fear of the unknown… I explain what’s in it and that it’s safe to explore.”

She also teaches them how to plant and care for their own seedlings, or how to make wands out of things they can find in the bush rather than buying a moulded-plastic one with a Barbie logo on it.

She’s at the Maylands Library to talk to school kids for Book Week on Tuesday August 23 from 10.30am to 11.30am, and there’s also a few other adult-focused events coming up too. You can get info on all the sessions on 9272 0980 or http://www.bayswater.wa.gov.au/library.

by DAVID BELL

HERITAGE PERTH needs volunteers to pull off its increasingly popular Perth Heritage Days.

This year’s event will be run between October 15 and 16, with guests shown around historic locales not normally accessible to the general public.

Volunteers are needed as guides, exhibition attendants, marshals, patron counters and to help manage crowds and general queries.

Heritage Perth offers all necessary training. Head to http://www.volunteeringwa.org.au to get on board.

WHEN Voice readers Sandy and Chris Marsh spotted the remains of a dove in their Northbridge back garden they suspected neighbourhood cats. But they quickly spotted a more majestic predator sitting on the nearby fence, a brown goshawk rarely seen in the inner city.

Mr Marsh grabbed his camera and they snapped a photo of the fierce-eyed bird of prey. “It must have been soaring over Northbridge and spotted this poor dove in our backyard,” Mr Marsh said.

An avivore, the goshawk mainly feeds on other birds, often lying in wait until prey comes within attack range.

THOUGHTLESS drivers parking across suburban footpaths are making life dangerous for people with disabilities, old folks and parents pushing prams.

Disability advocate Suresh Rajan lives in Yokine and goes for prodigious walks every morning, routinely racking up 15km or more, but he doesn’t have to walk far before spotting the first car across the footpath.

For able-bodied folk it’s a mild annoyance, but for people in wheelchairs, on gophers, pushing a pram or getting around on a walking frame it can mean a dangerous detour onto the road.

“In some suburbs, and particularly around Vincent, if you go along Charles Street there’s absolutely no parking areas on the verge, it’s really hard,” Mr Rajan says.

“What about someone who’s blind? That person has to go out into the road. There’s potential for a serious accident there. And even people pushing prams, you now have to take the child and the pram off the pavement and onto the road. It’s more than an inconvenience.”

Suburbs like North Perth were built before cars and are hotspots for path-blockers, and with young people living with their parents longer, there can often be three or four cars vying for a spot on the driveway.

Peta Crane lives in Kalamunda and even up there it’s a big issue. Last summer she was taking her dog for a walk on her gopher and tried to navigate around a car blocking the path.

Her gopher tipped over on the verge and she fell heavily onto the searing road, stuck there until a passing motorcyclist stopped to help.

She told the car’s owner about what had happened, then carried on, only to find another car blocking the path three doors down. A few weeks later the first car was back, blocking the pavement.

Ms Crane says some people with disabilities give up and just go home.

“People need to put themselves in other people’s shoes,” Ms Crane says. “It’s not okay to block the path. I do see it a lot. I’m not knocking tradesman but they’re specialists in it.”

Mr Rajan says many people don’t realise it’s illegal: “A lot of people don’t actually know,” he says, and most people when reminded are happy to move their cars.

He’s contacting councils with a plan to get stickers printed up that can be slapped on offending cars alerting them to the law, and has already heard back from Stirling mayor Giovanni Italiano who’s promised to look into the issue. A similar plan has been used to good effect for people parking in disabled bays.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for us to go down the path of punitive action in the first instance,” Mr Rajan says. “If someone’s a repeat offender you can address the issue with fines.”

He says he’d like to have the sticker campaign ready for December 3, international Day of People with Disability.

by DAVID BELL

VINCENT council has been told there’s little chance of any state funding for its trial of 40kmh speed limits across its southern areas.

The council allocated $150,000 for the project in this year’s budget and hoped Main Roads and the Road Safety Commission would chip in half.

That support is “unlikely,” according to a report by council staff. Main Roads has pointedly reiterated an agreement the “council would be responsible for all aspects of the trial including funding”.

Mayor John Carey sounded underwhelmed by the  lack of support, but said he wouldn’t let it stop the trial going ahead if it had community support.

“We’re not going to wait around for government agencies to get their act together. We will proceed with this if the community supports it.”

He says there’s good evidence it saves lives, and a recent study by Monash University showed even a small reduction in speeds in urban areas sees a big reduction in road trauma and “relatively minor impacts on average travel times”.

City staff also reckon it’ll cut down on rat runners going through backstreets to avoid traffic, since they’ll only be able to putt along at 40kmh while arterial roads will still be 60kmh.

The next step is putting the trial out for public consultation to see if locals will support the plan.

by DAVID BELL

HUMBLE traders, former pollies and long-time citizens share stories at the Museum of Perth’s new exhibition Shaping Perth.

Helena Cohen Robertson from non-profit organisation Know Your Nation curated the oral histories from 12 Perth people which help shed light on how Perth has grown and changed through the years.

Penny Hoffman’s mother managed the Derwood Hotel, and as a youngster she watched the city grow up through the 1940s from the corner of Pier and Murray Streets,.

Immigrant

Humanitarian lawyer Rabia Siddique tells tales of growing up in Perth as an immigrant through the 70s and 80s

Former planning minister, federal MP and Vincent mayor Alannah MacTiernan recalls her days as an 18-year-old, shipped off to Perth for hanging around with too many long-haired men on big motorbikes.

Museum chair Reece Harley says they sought personal stories that shed light on Perth, with the everyday experiences telling a deeper tale about the city’s social, cultural, political and architectural history.

The exhibition contains everything from fond memories of lost buildings to Cold War conspiracies about freeways being built for tanks in case the Russians invaded.

Shaping Perth runs from August 18 to September 2 at Grand Lane.

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TREVOR HANCOCK describes himself as “a bric-a-brac man,” running Trinity Antiques in the CBD.

“I’m one of the dying breed of antique dealers in Australia. The number of antique shops in Australia has dwindled dramatically for one reason or another, but I also enjoy immensely finding little treasures. My passion is for early Australian pieces, and here, I have a passion for early Western Australian pieces. Australian history is so recent. I think white settlement in Western Australia is only 187 years old.  Putting that into perspective, the Queen is 90 years old. The Queen we have now has virtually been there for half the time that there has been settlement in WA, that’s how recent it is. And, I don’t know another place in WA that discards its history so quickly.

“I have seen early colonial jarrah furniture being destroyed, jewellery and the precious materials of Western Australia, the very few pieces of silver you could count on one hand, early paintings.

“I think we have probably identified just about every early painting there is in Western Australia, there are just so few of them. Jewellery, there’s just so little of it, whereas Melbourne in the 1860s was producing amazing pieces of gold jewellery. In WA, they were struggling to survive until gold was found here and the only jewellery they virtually made here were little brooches, mining brooches with the name of the mine above it like, Kalgoorlie or something. Then they carved pearls from the Broome area and set them in gold as well. There’s very little of colonial life left here, and it is interesting particularly with jewellery, it’s so easily discarded but it’s for some family, the last tangible relic that they have of previous generations.”

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ALANNAH MacTIERNAN came to Perth when she was 18, and wound up representing her new home in local, state and federal government.

“I was given a one-way ticket by my family to Perth when I was 18. I had a rather bossy older sister who decided [she] didn’t particularly like the friends I was knocking around with. They were blokes with a lot of hair and very big motorbikes and she had persuaded the family to give me a one-way ticket to Perth, and being someone who was always up for adventure, and always interested in Perth from the weather map, I agreed to come over.” It wasn’t long before she got involved in politics, with a foray on Perth city council in 1988, but even before that she campaigned against the Fremantle railway closure.

“Perth City Council prided itself on having a very car-friendly policy, and I’m not opposed to being car-friendly, but they were completely disinterested at that time in any of the arguments about public transport and building up the population in the city, so we became  involved in those issues, and one of the very important things that happened for my development… was a decision by the Court government to close the Perth-Fremantle railway line.”

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IVAN KING was born in Midland “beneath the shadow of the town hall clock,” and is a life-long theatre man on stage and backstage.

He now runs the Museum of Performing Arts below His Majesty’s Theatre, and recalls the wild days of the 1970s when players in “the profession” found their fun despite having to skirt archaic liquor laws that wouldn’t let you have a wine without a meal.

“We were instrumental in the liquor laws being changed in this city. Because up until then, the liquor laws were absolutely absurd.

“You could drink as long as it was ancillary to a meal. So you could have a plate of day old sandwiches with one bite taken out of them, as long as they were on the table you could have your grog.

“[Theatre-restraurant entrepreneur] Frank Baden-Powell was an absolute agitator, an activist for the matter and he pointed out the absurdity of it all and actually almost shamed the authorities into changing the drinking hours in the city.”

Photos by Belinda Gibson Photography

by DAVID BELL