Perth Voice Interactive

HOW did this bike rack end up out the back of a cafe owned by a guy dead against the Oxford Street bike lane plan?

At first we wondered if Greens & Co owner Stuart Lofthouse had nicked it to protest the bike lane, which he opposed, going down Oxford Street.

But it was hard to picture the trim cafe owner hauling the immensely heavy bike rack any great distance.

We got in touch with Mr Lofthouse, who said the rack had been chucked at his door shortly after a meeting where the bike lanes was approved.

Perhaps the lycra mafia’s version of a horse’s head in your bed?

Now it’s been spotted, Vincent city council is sending some workers down to collect it.

To add to the mystery, it turns out the rack is from William Street, not Oxford Street, suggesting someone’s gone to a bit of trouble to heave it at Mr Lofthouse’s door.

by DAVID BELL

BAYSWATER local Greg Smith bore solemn witness as the Halliday Park trees he’d fought to protect were cut down and fed to a woodchipper this week.

The town planner had argued with the council that the park’s heritage listing also protected its trees, ranging from 80 to 120 years old.

But mayor Sylan Albert says the trees’ age had made them dangerous so they had to go.

As the trees were cut into pieces, Mr Smith pointed out healthy trunk revealed by the cross section.

The self-described dendrophile says trees are important for mental health, cool their surrounds and act as food and habitat for fauna.

At Tuesday’s council meeting he faced down Cr Albert, asking if rumours were true that a local tree lopping firm gave city staff a carton of beer as kickback for each tree declared to require chopping down at ratepayer expense.

The question was not answered, with the mayor instead insisting Mr Smith resume his seat, saying he’d asked too many questions (it had been a long question time).

The council reckons it’ll replace the trees, but Mr Smith doubts they’ll be anywhere near as large.

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GREG SMITH says his scrutiny of tree-fellers coincides with trouble in  his quiet suburban street. 

On the day contractors showed up, Mr Smith attempted to take a photo of a vehicle to record the company name and licence plate. He claims the driver reversed at him threateningly. He immediately reported the incident to Bayswater police. 

On Tuesday morning he awoke to find the fog light on his car had been smashed. He describes the timing as a little suspicious, occurring the day after he’d called in the media to come and record workers felling trees.

by DAVID BELL

THIS year’s Beaufort Street festival was a huge success—almost too huge, with an estimated 160,000 people packing out the street.

Now in its fifth year it’s skyrocketed from the 50,000 at the inaugural festival.

This year the crowd was too tightly packed to go ahead with a planned Mexican wave.

Festival director Paul Fletcher from JumpClimb said “providing a safe environment  for all patrons is our number one focus, and in order to ensure this was the case, we decided not to proceed with the Mexican wave”.

Facebook feedback suggests many punters unhappy with the level of cigarette smoking, with plenty of calls for the event to be made smoke-free.

Mayor John Carey is keen to see the WA government stick its hand in its pocket via Eventscorp or other bodies to support the festival, saying it’s become too big for Vincent to properly resource by itself.

There were long lines to grab a snack but vendors seemed pretty happy: Jumplings Tasty Dumplings reports selling 4500 jumplings, using nine litres of chilli, six litres of Kewpie mayo, and 40 litres of Japanese Ponzu sauce.

Along with the usual events like the dog fashion show, this year the Laneway Project saw Jerome Davenport and 30 other artists transform a tired suburban laneway into a gallery of wall murals.

On the day Davenport painted locals’ portraits writ large on the wall, and the Voice came across him still putting some finishing touches on as mid-week rolled around.

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• JEROME DAVENPORT is creating a mural for the Laneway Project that features portraits of ordinary locals. Called 20 Faces, the models are some of those who responded to his call. The mural is organised by the Beaufort Street Festival and Vincent council. Davenport is a WAPA graduate and is busy with commissions in Australia and overseas. Photo by Matthew Dwyer

by DAVID BELL

A $32.5 million 10-storey apartment complex is set to be built in the heart of Morley.

Bayswater mayor Sylvan Albert describes the Boag Place development as “something special” and says it will kickstart revitalisation of the area.

The development will feature 128 multiple dwellings, 400sqm of offices and 164 car bays.

It is located just off Walter Road West and close to the Galleria. “We have been waiting a long time for something like this to happen in Morley,” Cr Albert says. “Hopefully there will be a domino effect and it will encourage other business and developers to follow suit.

“We want to make Morley a regional centre.”

Cr Barry McKenna says the city has been trying for 10 years to entice a big developer into the area. “It says to everyone that Morley is open for business,” he says.

Council staffers recommended approval and it will now go before a WA local development assessment panel. The Morley city centre masterplan, endorsed by the council in October 2010, aims to rejuvenate the area with commercial and residential developments and facilities.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

AN Inglewood man is hoping to kickstart a rational debate about refugee policy, based on fact not fears.

WA Humanist Society president Stevie Modern hopes his group’s event, Reclaiming a Welcome Australia, will also get people talking again about what sort of country they want Australia to be.

He says refugee policy is an ideal topic to study through a rational humanist lens, with policy to date centred on obfuscation and irrational fears.

“This is a faith that’s revolving around refugees being a danger to our country,” he says.

“It’s a faith not based on any evidence and it’s done a lot of damage to our country and our reputation.”

He says people complain about rumours of refugees’ welfare payments, without batting an eye at the documented fact it costs $900 a day to keep a refugee detained on Manus Island.

“[Offshore detention] isn’t a cost-effective way to go,” he says.

The 35-year-old interior designer describes the Abbott government’s quasi-military Operation Sovereign Borders as a “terrible misuse of our military forces”.

“This shouldn’t be a military operation,” he says, noting it’s allowed the government to get away with keeping the public in the dark about key facts, on spurious  “operational  security”  grounds.

He believes politicians are responding to what they perceive as an anti-refugee sentiment in the community and if community attitudes can demonstrably change then policy will follow.

Former refugee Carina Hoang will speak of her journey to Australia and the stories of the Vietnamese refugees.

The event’s at UWA on November 23 starting 10.30am. Contact ticketswa.com/event/reclaiming-welcome-australia for more.

Despite hosting a number of charitable events (the funds from this event go to legal help for refugees) the Humanist Society doesn’t qualify for tax breaks, unlike religious organisations.

Humanism is a secular movement emphasising rational thinking and the value of human beings.

by DAVID BELL

COLIN NUGENT has lost a supreme court appeal against a child pornography charge, after being caught with magazines from the 1980s depicting drawings and text of paedophilia.

Nugent, AKA Harry Holland AKA Emu Nugent, was fined $3000. He’d argued the copies of Rockspider magazine should be exempt from child porn laws as they represent an important sociological and historical primary source covering the sexual revolution. The law provides exemption for material “of recognised literary, artistic or social merit” if it’s justified in the public good.

Historical artefacts

Expert evidence from academics the magazines were “historical artefact[s] of a very different social and political period” was not allowed to be presented.

Nugent is a self-described paedophile, which he defines as a sexual orientation “to describe gay men who are sexually attracted to youths”. He maintains it is possible for men to enter non-abusive relationships with youths.

“The whole issue of men sexually abusing is never going to be solved until we have this conversation,” he says.

Following are excerpts from expert reports that Nugent had hoped to tender.

Terry Leahy from the University of Newcastle, whose PhD is in child adult sexual relationships, says the magazines “are very likely the only copies of this publication remaining from that time and as such are a significant part of Australia’s historical and social record…”. “The period covered by these journals was unique. The ‘sexual revolution’ as it was then called… was now being claimed for paedophilia. Not just in Australia but internationally, paedophiles linked their own problems to the repression of children’s sexuality and supported the rights of children to sexual expression… These magazines constitute one of the few written records of this phenomenon.” Dr Leahy wrote the magazines also had accounts from paedophiles who’d had dealings with the police and prison system and said “these are hardly likely to recruit people to commit paedophile acts, and in large measure constitute a warning not to follow in the footsteps of those who are reporting their experiences”.

Steven Angelides from La Trobe University agreed Rockspider was “part of the social and political sexual liberation movement that swept right across western societies in the 1970s and early 1980s”. He said Rockspider was “an historical artefact of a very different social and political period”. “I recognise that copies of the magazine Rockspider have literary and scientific merit and that it is in the public interest, and for the public good, that Rockspider be available to be studied. To destroy such historical records would make important scholarly work impossible.”

Graham Willett from the University of Melbourne said, “however shocking some might find this material, it is of inestimable importance to historians, sociologists and all those interested in understanding our society and its past in all its diversity”. Of the naked drawings, Dr Willett said “clearly no child was harmed or exploited in the production of these images”. “While it is possible that some readers may find some of the stories and images sexually titillating in the context of the magazine as a whole and in the context of the historical and political period, this aspect is simply insignificant to the assessment of the value of the magazines.”

by DAVID BELL

INSPIRATION is just about everywhere for Mount Lawley artist Clay Bradbury (pictured).

From the curious Lincoln Street sewage gas ventilation stack to the foreboding frontage of the brutalist monstrosity Fesa house, local landmarks find their way to his unusual canvas scavenged from bits of wood during roadside collection.

Bradbury says his affinity for industrial spaces comes from when he had a job as a youngster sweeping up old factories and washing windows at night after everyone had gone home.

“That feeling of being alone in an industrial space … that forms what I do now,” he says. “I did have an affinity for mathematics and geometry plays a strong part in my work. Functionality is a big part of my work: A lot of buildings I paint are public buildings and the objects I paint are common objects.”

Buildings that have been demolished are almost an unintentional theme in his work: he didn’t set out to document places that have since been demolished like Fesa House, it just so happened that so many places were being knocked down it was an unavoidable side-effect.

“It seems I like the things that the government doesn’t or the developers don’t. These days we just seem to use excuses like it’s going to cost too much to get the asbestos out, but it seems ridiculous that we’d pull out some iconic modernist building because it’s got some asbestos in it.”

Bradbury has often worked in the industrial world: he spent time as a hazardous waste engineer, and recalls wading through waste-deep cyanide in a full hazard suit and armed with a giant sucker to get it all out.

These days art is becoming his main gig “more and more”.

His first solo exhibition Wayside opens November 23 at 3pm and runs to November 28 at kurb gallery, 312a William Street, Northbridge.

by DAVID BELL

THE Origin NYE event at Wellington Square has been knocked back by a divided Perth city council, despite promises the DJs would keep the bass down.

Lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi and councillors Jim Adamos, Janet Davidson and Judy McEvoy lodged no votes, outnumbering Origin-supporters Rob Butler and Reece Harley. The vote comes despite the city staff recommending approval.

The organisers have been selling $150 tickets for about six weeks and their ads were plastered across Facebook, with a fine print disclaimer on their site noting it’s “subject to council approval.”

Council staffers initially wanted to knock it back on advice from WA police who were concerned about having another event to handle, and the public transport authority which was worried about mass crowds leaving the area at 1am when it wrapped up.

Organisers have now appeased the PTA with shuttle buses to disperse the crowd.

The coppers still aren’t happy about it, but city staffer Margaret Smith told councillors “that appears to be a standard response to licences [and] concerts”.

New security measures were to include a double fence with dogs patrolling the gap so people can’t hop the wall and sneak in.

“It’ll be like Alcatraz, but with people trying to get in instead of out,” Ms Smith says.

The other concession to the neighbours was that the DJs would have had to keep the bass down on the mixing desk.

They were also bringing in a variety of acts so the nearby residents weren’t subjected to a wall-to-wall evening of bassline junkies.

by DAVID BELL

REHABILITATED offenders and a local artist have joined forces to create a giant mural at a seniors centre in Maylands.

Artist John Cox, 69, and four young men from Outcare, a not-for-profit group that helps young offenders re-enter society, spent eight weeks on the mural.

“It’s very rewarding and for most of these kids it’s a completely new world we are exposing them to,” Cox says.

“At the start some of them scared, because they are out of their comfort zone, but then they get into it and really enjoy it.

“We’ve discovered some great talent and one of the Aboriginal guys from the Kimberley is an amazing artist—I’ve never seen someone who is so connected to the land and spirit.”
The mural at the Maylands Autumn Centre on Ninth Avenue reflects the history of the area, including the old Maylands Aerodrome (where the first non-stop flight across the continent by Charles Kingsford-Smith in 1928 landed), and a steam train chugging along the Midland line.
Cox took Outcare volunteers, who worked on the mural, to the WA Art Gallery to expose them to different styles of art.

The Outcare youth program, supported by Bayswater city council, has been running for nine years and has worked on several community projects, including building barbies at Bardon Park.

“Last year Bayswater council gave us funding to establish an art studio in a building on Guildford Road,” says Outcare manager Sam Mesiti.

“It means we can now link up with the community to do art projects as well as practical building projects which we have done in the past.

“We help youths between the age of 16 and 22, and up to 25 for Aboriginal youths.”
Outcare was established in the late 1960s and is WA’s only specialist non-government provider of crime prevention services and programs. The Maylands Autumn Centre provides support and services for seniors in the community.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK