Perth Voice Interactive

A MAYLANDS resident stopped her seven-year-old daughter playing in the back garden after a worker urinated against her wall.

Michelle Smith says Bayswater city council’s approval of a three-storey development that looks directly into her garden and living room has ruined her family’s privacy.

Ms Smith says developers were told to erect privacy screens but never did, and now they’re trying to alter the terms of approval.

“It’s been horrendous, there’s a direct line of site into my living room,” she says.

“It’s impacted every aspect of our life and is making our day-to-day life a misery.

“The owner-developer now have the audacity to apply to reduce the required balcony screening to maintain their views to the hills.

“We feel this is an abuse of the planning process and are very disappointed and concerned that Bayswater council are considering the application.”

Mayor Sylvan Albert says the council will consider the issues at its November 18 meeting.

“The complaint regarding the anti-social behaviour being alleged is a matter that the owner may wish to refer to the WA police for investigation, as the city, although concerned, does not have the authority or power to resolve such issues,” he says.

Maylands Labor MP Lisa Baker says someone at council should be responsible for checking that developers comply with approval conditions.

“I know that Michelle and several neighbours made deputations to council with their concerns before the development was approved—it seems those concerns have not been addressed.”

Cr Terry Kenyon pushed for the council to appoint a planning compliance officer early this year. Stirling council has nine and Bayswater none, but his motion was defeated.

“The city’s system of compliance investigation is well-established,” says Cr Albert.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

MT LAWLEY Middle School pupils have helped repair bikes that are to be shipped to Timor.

Currently Timor kids face a 12km hike to get to school, but thanks to Year 9 students in the school bike repair club they will be able to pedal there quicker.

A local rotary club will organise transportation.

Mt Lawley school literary teacher Frank Camilleri says he’s delighted to get the first shipment out the door.

“In time, as we ship our bicycles to Timor, a small repair business may be established there to service the growing bike numbers,” he says.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

IT’S often feast or famine for full-time artists like Robert Davis.

When you’ve got a gallery showing you can be making some good sales, but between exhibitions it’s lean times.

The North Perth painter has been heading down to the Beaufort Street art market the past couple of months to sell a few extra pieces on the side.

“It’s a good way for artists to pay their rent,” he says.

Trained at the Royal College of Art in London, he’s been painting for 50 years. Most of that was full-time, though for a while he worked on projects for old lefty Phillip Adams.

Markets organiser Lesley Thomas says artists are charged only a small amount in order to cover the costs: “We’re not looking to make money, we’re looking to provide a venue for artists to sell their work,” she says.

For $15, suitcase artists can set up affordably enough that art students have been taking it up. One suitcaser sold $700 in one day. The markets run the first Sunday of the month at the Barlee Street car park.

by DAVID BELL

MICHELLE SUTHERLAND wants Bayswater council to set aside $80,000 for urban art in the city.

Impressed by Vincent city council’s commitment to installing public art within its boundaries the councillor wants her own city to follow suit.

Bayswater already has a public art scheme where developers of any commercial, non-residential or mixed use project costing more than $1 million contribute at least one per cent of the cost to the creation of a public art piece.

But Cr Sutherland wants council to take the initiative and not to be reliant on development applications.

“I think places like Russell Road in Morley are pretty shoddy looking and are crying out for a mural and some artwork to brighten it up,” she says.

“The city centre in Morley has got nothing and would really benefit from little installations and pieces like they have on Beaufort Street.

“We have already started to make inroads by installing a mural at the Mt Lawley subway, and the development at Ross’s Salvage Yard will have an artwork through the city’s public art scheme.”

Cr Sutherland says employing an arts officer would gobble up funds and she wants the elected council to decided how the $80,000 should be split across different town centre sites.

“I think some areas like Maylands would suit statues or installations and some areas, like Morley, would be more conducive to murals,” she says.

“We have to look at what works best for each location.”

Celebration—a series of silver spheres in the civic centre’s reflection pond—is one of the few public art pieces in Bayswater.

It was nicknamed “D’Orazio’s Balls” after former mayor, the late John D’Orazio.

Cr Sutherland’s art motion will come before council later this month.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

HERITAGE houses in Stirling now have legal protection against “demolition by neglect”.

The city is one of the first councils in WA to introduce a bylaw that prevents landlords deliberately allowing heritage buildings to become so dilapidated they require demolition (usually paving the way for a lucrative new development).

The council can now demand that owners undertake structural repairs and, if they don’t comply, the council can organise the work and then bill the owner.

“While instances of demolition by neglect are rare in Stirling, we know that run-down old buildings have the potential to attract squatters and can lead to anti-social behaviour, vandalism, and environmental health issues,” says mayor Giovanni Italiano.

“It is important to note that the provisions now in effect will only be applied once all other options have been exhausted.

“This amendment represents a positive step in our ongoing effort to conserve the city’s much-valued heritage.”

The Mount Lawley Society helped develop the demolition-by-neglect policy.

“We’ve been working together on this for around six years, so it’s great to see it come to fruition,” says patron Barrie Baker.

“I think if you have the ability and resources to maintain a heritage property and you don’t, then it’s an anti-community act.”

Only deterioration that leads to a loss of structural integrity, such as missing roof tiles, or the loss of an integral heritage feature, such as a chimney or verandah, can qualify as demolition-by-neglect.

The council is also investigating the use of financial and non-financial incentives to encourage the conservation of places with high heritage value.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

BURLY, testosterone-sweating muscleheads are making the sauna at Beatty Park leisure centre an uncomfortable place for some women.

Voice reader Zoe says “some men will try and chat up women in there who are just trying to relax”.

“On the last two weekends I have wanted to use the … sauna but just don’t feel comfortable sitting in a sauna in my bathers with eight huge, muscled, tattooed men and no other women.

“Women are being subtly excluded because it’s too intimidating—seriously, these blokes are big and they stare.

“I pay for my membership and can’t use the steam rooms on weekends.

“People would say ‘yes you can, just go in there’. But it’s really not that simple. And as there are no women in there on Sundays anymore, I am not alone in feeling this way.”

She used to live in London and said it was common for such places to offer single-sex sessions. Other places around the world will divide sessions into mixed, male-only and female-only timeslots.

“It’s far more relaxed and enjoyable,” She says.

She wrote to Beatty Park management but it’s not budging.

Vincent CEO Len Kosova says several years ago single-sex sessions were trialled, “although there was little-to-no take up and several members complained about the trial”.

“Based on this experience a business decision was made to discontinue the initiative.”

Now that Beatty Park’s been upgraded, Zoe thinks it’s time to revisit single-sex sessions.

“The area is changing, there are more people using the centre.”

by DAVID BELL

THE old Fesa House is slowly coming down, with heavy machinery picking away at the brutalist building’s concrete innards.

The Hay Street building’s construction was unusual and makes for a challenging demolition: high-tensile steel veins run through the concrete and the entire structure’s under tension.

It would’ve made it difficult to convert for other uses as even knocking out a wall would’ve proved tough.

Instead, the WA government wants a 350-room five star Westin hotel on the site, “providing much needed rooms in Perth’s CBD” according to WA tourism minister Lisa Harvey.

Fesa house wasn’t considered good enough for state heritage listing.

When Perth city council gave the rubber stamp for demolition, city architect Craig Smith said “once this is gone there’ll be no good brutalist buildings left in Perth”. “This generation is doing what the last generation did, knocking down all the buildings of the last 40 years.”

by DAVID BELL

IT’S already a decade late, what’s a few more months to bring in Vincent council’s new city planning scheme that’ll change the future of the city.

Councillors have had to defer their decision on sending the CPS 2 off to the state government for approval.

Because changes are so widespread some councillors’ homes are caught up in it. John Carey is seeking advice from WA local government minister Tony Simpson about whether affected councillors can vote. Major areas of contention for the new CPS include:

• Charles Street, where residents are worried about a new CPS allowing Charles Hotel owners to build a whopper development;

• Claisebrook, where the council wants to use the CPS to see an end to two concrete batching plants and make it into a more residential area;

• West Perth, where some locals don’t want to see five historic buildings along Newcastle Street bulldozed to make way for mixed office/apartment blocks.

The West Perth area attracted a lot of feedback from landowners keen on maximising the storeys they can whack on the blocks there. Bigger limits would see seven levels allowed on Newcastle, a potential goldmine for property owners.

One owner said allowing bigger buildings “will bring much needed vitality and interest to that area”.

The council’s looking like it’ll go for a more moderate increase to height limits.

by DAVID BELL

A COOLBINIA scribe has been named writer-in-residence at the Fellowship of Australian Writers this month.

Nathan Hondros is a contemporary poet and literary editor, and his work has been adapted into radio plays by the ABC and appeared in umpteen literary journals and magazines, including The Australian, Westerly and Masthead.

The writers’ fellowship was formed in the 1930s over a smoky booze-fuelled diner, and its WA branch has been visited by the likes of HG Wells and William Golding.

“Poet Peter Jeffrey says that over the course of three days William Golding drank more alcohol than he had seen in his entire life,” Hondros laughs.

“He says everyone present drank to excess and no-one has any recollection of getting home.

“So Peter remembers shaking hands with this literary icon and that’s it—the rest is a week-long blur.”

In 2012 Hondros and writer buddy Damon Lockwood launched Regime Books in Perth, a hard copy publication of poems and books.

Hondros says their commitment not to publish electronically—”it can diminish the form”—and not apply for government funding has been testing.

“We’re onto edition five now and it’s been a rocky road, but now we’re motoring,” he says.

“We’ve just moved to a print-on-demand model which keeps all the costs down and is sustainable, as small traditional print runs were very expensive.

“We deliberately didn’t apply for any government grants, because I have seen so many publications collapse because they relied on a grant that they didn’t get—we wanted to be self-sustainable.”

Regime now has six staff and shifts up to 300 copies every edition.

Hondros will host workshops at the Fellowship event on literary inspiration and practical tips on how to get noticed by editor.

For more info check out http://www.fawwa.org.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK