Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH COLLEGE this week demolished houses on Lawley Crescent that local heritage lovers had tried to save.

Mount Lawley Society patron Barrie Baker is “very sad” the four houses were torn down and says the college’s new building will be out of kilter.

“It’s modern, and big and rectangular,” Mr Baker says, noting the old houses, built in the 1920s, had real character.

The college is replacing the homes with a sprawling, multi-million dollar learning and leadership centre for its senior students.

“SO many people have seen my butt in the past year. At least 50.”

Some might think it’d take courage to talk about problems related to your nether regions, but actor Annabel Maclean reckons sharing the nightmarish tale of her pilonidal cyst is “hysterical”.

“It’s weird, it’s just an ingrown hair in your arse crack. It’s like a giant golf ball of pus.”

Maclean says the ailment that causes a cyst to form and fill with pus near the tailbone is weirdly common but no-one ever talks about it.

“I know five people who’ve had it,” she says, and since she went public “more people have come out”.

The cyst interrupted her move to Canada, where she’d hoped to pursue acting in Vancouver (the Hollywood of the north due to tax breaks). She’d saved for a year to get over there, but needing a second bum surgery brought her back on an uncomfortable transcontinental flight where she wasn’t able to even tilt her chair back for fear of angering the cyst.

She couldn’t sit for weeks and nurses had to pack the gaping hole in her crack with gauze to keep it draining and not seal up. She also had to choose between scary surgery options, such as “the butt flap operation”.

“It’s basically where they cut out the skin in your arse crack, the entire arse crack, they cut it out then they get the skin from your right butt cheek and flip it into your arse crack and use skin grafts to put more skin in your butt cheek.”

She didn’t go through with that one.

While it’s put a dampener on her Canadian acting career (where she’d nabbed a role as a redshirt extra for the new Star Trek flick and got to watch Idris Elba stomping around set), she has parlayed the horrific seven-month ordeal into a stage show: Pain in my Ass, her first at Fringe which tells the disturbing and frank tale.

“It’s a massive blow to your self confidence… not being able to exercise and just feeling gross,” Maclean says.

And while many people find it icky, Mr Cysty has, oddly enough, brought her closer to her boyfriend.

“He has been amazing. He was packing my cyst for a few weeks there. I was itching myself like a baboon, there was a lumpy disgusting red rash. He had to deal with that, not to mention not being able to have sex for a long time.

“He’s moved to Canada with me, he’s moved back with me, he’s my number one supporter. He’s put up with a lot!”

And, her butt surgeon’s agreed to come along to see the show.

Pain in my Ass is at Babushka Leederville (upstairs from Bills Bar & Bites) January 22, 23 and 24 at 7pm, tickets from http://www.fringeworld.com.au

by DAVID BELL

ANOTHER boy has been charged over the clotheslining of a motorcyclist on Demeber 17, this one just 11 years old.

At about 11.30pm that night, 19-year-old Lawson Mills was riding along Wellington Street near the Perth train station when he slammed into rope tied across the road.

His alleged attackers then smacked him in the head with a bottle, and he was taken to RPH to treat his scalp wounds and the rope burn to his neck.

The child, from Innaloo, was charged with “one count of acts or omissions causing the life, health or safety of a person to be endangered”.

A 12-year-old Bayswater boy has already been charged.

THE Perth city library and local history centre at 140 William Street closed its doors for the last time Saturday January 9, with the new seven-level library at 573 Hay Street set to open in March. Anyone with outstanding books can keep them till the new library opens, so you still have time to finish off the final 800 pages of Twilight (but you really don’t have to). The new library is the first major civic building to be constructed since the Perth concert hall about 40 years ago.

EVERY local paper is required by law to find a local angle about David Bowie, so here we go: The Rocket Room is hosting a tribute, Let’s Dance, with Wesley Goodlet Jamboree Scouts playing The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders From Mars in its entirety, along with some other old favourites, and they want people to dress in their Bowie-est outfits. Tickets are on the band’s Facebook page or on the door from 8.30pm on Friday January 15. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky…

BRANKA RADANOVICH’S dream of a leafy Bayswater town centre may finally be realised after 35 years of campaigning to the local council.

The council will next month consider planting street trees along King William Street and Whatley Crescent.

Mrs Radanovich says it’s long past time. Frustrated with what she calls false promises by the council and poor greening policies, the local woman was on the brink of moving to a leafier area.

“It’s like pushing something heavy up a steep hill,” says Mrs Radanovich, a member of the Bayswater Urban Tree Network group.

The council had promised 20 years ago — as part of a 1996 “Bayswater townsite improvement plan” — to plant “shade trees” and install street furniture.

Mrs Radanovich, who has lived in the area for 36 years, says all the council has to show for its grand promise is a bench outside the nearby IGA.

She says two trees planted at the corner of the main drag and Murray Street were pulled out, and lavender planted in 1996 along a median strip died two years later and was replaced with brick paving.

The council failed to respond to Voice questions before the paper’s deadline, but noted “we don’t have a member of staff who was around 20 years ago”.

In an email last April to Mrs Radanovich, then-acting chief executive Des Abel wrote: “With respect to your comments in relation to tree planting, I advise that aerial photographs indicate that there has been tree planting in the area over the last 20 years.”

She doesn’t understand what he’s talking about: ”there’s not a tree down here to provide shade for shoppers,” she says.

Greener plan

Next month, councillor Stephanie Coates will ask the council to spend $100,000 improving the town’s streetscape.

Under her plan the city will plant trees on King William Street, between Guildford Road and the rail line, as well as on Whatley Crescent up from the main street to Hamilton Street.

“Many people had mentioned it and requested it,” Cr Coates says.

“I believe all of our town centres and shopping precincts could do with enhanced urban greening and landscape renewals.”

She’ll also ask for the council to develop water-smart landscape plans over the next two years, with a “focus on enhancing the tree canopy” in all the city’s town centres and shopping precincts.

If all goes to plan, community consultation on a landscaping plan will start in April or May, and a report tabled in a June meeting.

Cr Coates says the greening plan should be a priority this year.

by EMMIE DOWLING

ANTIQUE painted advertisements likely dating back to the 1920s have been uncovered during demolition of an old bike shop next door.

The demolished building is making way for the Lyric Lane Concept, a live music venue planned for Guildford Road in Maylands.

Lyric Lane creator Michiel de Ruyter got in touch to tell us uncovering the ads “has caused significant public interest, with probably a hundred people taking photos”.

The signs advertise John E Mount, “Painter and Renovation Contractor”,  Wrights Limited Produce Store, said to be “general carriers” of “chaff, bran, pollard, bird feeds, potatoes, onions” and other goods still obscured by walls.

Mr de Ruyter has delved into the histories to research the names and found John Edward Mount and his wife Rohda came from England in 1911 with a brother George Parmenter and son Royston.

While the plan is to build up to the wall line (meaning the signs will again be obscured), the Lyric Lane team now plan to clean and photograph the signs to document them, and then look at reproducing them inside the new venue.

by DAVID BELL

THE more visually pleasing a street tree is, the pricier it will be to axe, dictates a new Stirling council rule aimed at combating developers’ penchant for cutting them down.

The council at its last meeting decided to start monetarily valuing trees’ “visual amenity”.

The new policy also compels developers to lodge a bond for planting and/or protecting verge trees, and forbids residents from axing or pruning trees for lousy reasons such as it’s “too large” or drops “nuisance” leaf litter.

The stricter policy aims to “address the increased impact of development” by protecting and maintaining mature trees and ensuring more are planted to meet a canopy coverage target of 18 per cent. It’s currently 12.7.

A council report states: “Where an existing healthy street tree is prematurely removed, reasonable costs associated with the loss should be borne by the initiator of the removal.”

As part of the Helliwell method of putting a price on the a tree’s amenity, a tree’s value will vary depending on visual aspects, such as its size, life expectancy and suitability to a setting.

Stirling parks and reserves manager Ian Hunter says the average valuation of a street tree is about $5500 — a “lower than normal figure due…to the large number of newly planted trees in recent years”.

As a guide, a healthy mature street in a well-treed street, not under power lines, such as the tree pictured, would be valued at $12,000. This tree would have a projected life expectancy of more than 40 years.

To remove this tree, a developer would have to pay 90 per cent of the removal cost, the tree valuation ($12,000) and tree replacement.

The new “street and reserve trees policy” also introduces a refundable “verge bond”, ranging from $1500 to $8000, paid by developers before construction begins.

If a tree is axed or damaged, the bond will be fully or partially retained. A $6000 bond would apply to the pictured tree, and if a developer pruned or damaged it, the council would keep $2500.

The council’s annual report states aerial mapping of vegetation changes across the city in 2014/15 found about 3500 “significant canopy trees” had been lost from private and council-managed land.

In that year, the council planted 63,600 trees and shrubs as part of its “million trees initiative”.

The Helliwell system was founded in the UK and has been extensively used in court cases and insurance claims.

Branka Radanovich, from the Bayswater Urban Tree Network, wants her council to adopt a similar policy and valuing system. Bayswater councillor Chris Cornish says his council’s fledgling “environment asset working group”, aims to improve Bayswater’s flora management. A review on that council’s efforts to increase its tree canopy is expected in a report later this year.

by EMMIE DOWLING

SHE was punched so hard, her right eye ruptured.

It’s been two years since Sarah Kelly’s ex-husband, the father of her two children, beat her in public at Hillarys Boat Harbour.

Now empowered after gruelling months of court and medical appointments, Ms Kelly helps others identify and escape the cycle of domestic violence. She’s part of a three-woman team running Morley’s new Domestic Violence Legal Clinic, Australia’s first private firm with a focus on domestic violence.

Ms Kelly will be in once a fortnight to share a cuppa with survivors and support them emotionally.

“I want to give them the courage to get out of the situation,” she says. “I had low self-esteem and I think that’s why I didn’t leave before the attack.”

She cites stockholm syndrome, a psychological phenomenon where victims come to empathise with those controlling their actions, and believe they are deserving of the treatment they receive.

Clinic fees are based on an individual’s income. Hourly rates start at as low as $125, but no-one is turned away if that’s out of reach: a client can pay in smaller increments over a longer timeframe — with no interest.

Clinic founder Shirley McMurdo says it’s a fraction of the $500 per hour many firms charge. “Most domestic violence victims can’t afford that,” she says. “In some cases, they have an income of less than $30,000.”

Ms McMurdo is also a director at Swift Legal Services, which helps to offset fees at the Morley clinic.

Lucette Combo-Matsiona, who’s deferred studying law and psychology at Murdoch University to work at the clinic, says the place isn’t for profit, it’s about making a difference.

In five years, the group expects to have collected enough anecdotal evidence to make a submission to the federal government asking it to tweak laws that make it difficult for domestic violence survivors to navigate the system.

The clinic is at 14/15 Collier Road. For more information, find Domestic Violence Legal Clinic on Facebook or visit domesticviolencelegalclinic.com.au.

by EMMIE DOWLING