Perth Voice Interactive

LEEDERVILLE has lost one of its most diligent amateur historians, with Florence Lehmann (nee Venables) dying on January 8, aged 98.

A church pianist and salvation army volunteer, she lived in Leederville her whole life and was the matriarch historian among the Venables clan, meticulously collecting documents and passing on old stories about the well-known traders.

Ruth Venables, her niece-in-law, would visit her every week and says Mrs Lehmann enjoyed chatting about memories and stories right to the end. “She wasn’t a lady that possessions meant a lot to,” Mrs Venables says.

“Memories meant more to her,” one of Mrs Lehmann’s nephews Geoff Venables agrees. “She was an accumulator of facts and memories.”

Along with family school merit certificates from the late 1800s, she kept everyday documents like a one pound receipt from the City of Perth electricity and gas department from when the power was turned on in her Loftus Street home in 1936.

The Venables family is synonymous with Leederville, having started up the family engineering (later hardware) business on Oxford Street in 1918.

Mrs Lehmann moved just three times in her life, each within Leederville, and lived independently until she died. She saw great change in the suburb, from the early days when the Leederville Hotel was surrounded by market gardens (she knew each of the Chinese gardeners by name, a rarity in those days) through to when the suburb was divided by the Mitchell Freeway in 1974.

Mrs Venables said her aunt-in-law gave her the history bug, and she’s optimistic that it’ll continue through the generations: Her own son is a keen local historian himself, and the family has huge files to pass down the line.

Before the split

GEOFF VENABLES will give a talk at the Vincent library on February 5 from 10am about Leederville before the Mitchell Freeway split the suburb in 1974. He says Venables family life centred around its Oxford Street business, but when the land was taken for the motorway the company was divided into four. Uncertainty had hung over Leederville since the Stevenson Report proposed the freeway in 1953, leading to the suburb’s decay. Leederville as we were… way back then is at the local history centre (99 Loftus Street).

by DAVID BELL

THE public transport authority has been given the green light to push ahead with a railyard extension in East Perth over the objections of nearby Tully Road residents.

Locals from the Tully Road Action Group fear the five dead-end tracks will lead to round-the-clock noise and vibrations might damage their homes.

Peter Kroll submitted a 36-signature petition to Perth council, which backed their plight and urged the PTA to choose a new site.

The metropolitan regional authority has overridden those concerns but this week announced the PTA would have to add a wall to halt noise.

ALANNAH MacTIERNAN says she misses being Vincent mayor and has mixed feelings about her new job as a federal backbench MP.

The veteran pollie—formerly a WA planning minister—stood down as mayor in September after winning Perth for Labor at the federal election.

“I knew when I took the job that it wouldn’t necessarily add to the quality of my life,” the 62-year-old grandmother says.

“But I felt a sense of obligation because so many punters in the street were pleading with me to run and the party felt that I was their best chance of winning.

“So on a personal level it may not have been the best decision for me, but it was best for the party.

Huge privilege

“But don’t get me wrong, this job is a huge privilege and I’m 110 per cent committed—I’ve been throwing myself into it, like I always do.”

Ms MacTiernan is the deputy chair of parliamentary committees on education and employment and Northern Australia.

Her first speech (actually her third, after WA’s Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly) bristled with trademark wit and passion, with Ms MacTiernan vowing to tackle climate change and fight for more federal funding for WA.

Four months into her new role on the opposition back benches Ms MacTiernan concedes she misses having the power to make immediate changes on the ground.

“Being mayor of Vincent was fantastic fun and a great opportunity to be creative and change the local landscape on an almost weekly basis,” she says.

“Federal opposition politics is a longer-term game, but it’s a great opportunity to fight for a progressive Australia and raise the profile of climate change and other important issues.

“I’m content in the knowledge that Vincent is in safe hands with my successor John Carey.”

She says was surprised that federal parliament is less sophisticated than the WA chambers when it comes to debating.

“There’s not the same opportunity for debate on new legislation. For instance, there’s no response from the federal government on a grievance debate.

There’s a lot of set speeches,” she says.

“In that regard, the processes in state parliament are far more robust and interactive.”

Ms MacTierna has struck up friendships already with eastern states Labor MPs such as Joel Fitzgibbon, Stephen Jones, Sharon Claydon and Michelle Rowland.

“There is an amazing diversity and depth of talent in the Labor ranks, it ranges from concert pianists to anthropologists,” she says.

“Although at a federal level those qualities do not often shine, because pollies tend to be stereotyped and are under more constraints.”

She says there is no conscious anti-WA agenda amongst MPs in Canberra: “I think it’s more a question of geography—people over there are more knowledgeable about the eastern seaboard because its on their doorstep. “We’re like a foreign country to some of them.”

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

CONRAD LIVERIS is shedding his suit and tie and living for a week on Perth’s streets.

He’s hoping sleeping rough will help him better understand homelessness and see where services are needed.

“It gives us an insight into the struggles for homeless people at this time of year,” he says.

“I’ll have a better understanding of the services there are and how homeless people use them.”

The 21-year-old policy analyst and student is a founding member of Street Smugglers, an advocacy group formed in 2012 by a group of friends concerned by the rise of homelessness.

Experiencing it first-hand has led to some insights he hadn’t previously picked up in conversations with homeless people.

While most people probably had the air-conditioner blowing on what they figured was a warm summer’s night on Monday, he was shivering through the early hours of the morning at Perth foreshore, sheltered behind a fence. He eventually left and caught a couple hours’ kip in the Royal Perth Hospital emergency room, a popular spot for homeless people on cold nights.

“During the day I struggle to keep myself cool enough, at night I can’t get warm,” he says.

Mr Liveris says he also didn’t realise how difficult it is to pass the time while homeless: Boredom quickly sets in, and he was so weary from only getting a few hours’ sleep the night before that he found focusing on his book impossible.

“One of the other things I realised is: I can’t fathom how homeless people [transition back] to work.

“Being homeless is exhausting. There is just a general tiredness. I never really understood that as well as I did this morning.”

The homeless people he’s spoken to so far have been supportive of his experiment.

“They’re glad they have some support and someone’s shedding some light on it.”

While some friends were concerned for his safety, Mr Liveris says he’s never felt in danger dealing with homeless people.

With a high rate of mental illness among homeless, he says people often misinterpret confusion or frustration as aggression, but he’s yet to run into any problems.

“We’re talking about people in a really vulnerable state… generally people asking for money have been homeless for some time, their ego has been bruised quite a lot.”

He says the problem isn’t easily solved because it’s often tied up in mental illness, family breakdowns and a difficult road back to employment, but people passing by can have an impact on homeless people’s lives.

“I’m a really big fan of people having a conversation with homeless people,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like much, but it adds a lot.

“Otherwise, buy them a meal, or some water!”

You can follow his week on the streets at the Street Smugglers Facebook page.

by DAVID BELL

STEVE FLETCHER has been inundated with calls from bee lovers following the Voice’s story on his battle with pancreatic cancer (“Stung into life’s joy,” January 11, 2014).

Steve used the therapeutic effects of bee-keeping to help him through a gruelling year of chemotherapy and surgery.

He wants to find homes for more hives and received around 25 calls after last week’s article.

“The response has been fantastic, I visited homes in Mt Lawley, Maylands, Inglewood and Dianella,” he says.

“Right now I’m drawing up a shortlist and working out which ones are most suitable.

“Most people who contacted me are nature lovers and aware of the important role bees play in pollination.”

A global collapse of commercial bee hives means local hives are more important than ever for the pollination of flowers and food crops.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

AFTER a 10-year struggle to try to keep them alive, Vincent council looks set to remove the ailing London Plane trees (right)in Birdwood Square.

The trees along Bulwer and Beaufort Streets are suffering from honey fungus, which damages roots but doesn’t immediately show visible symptoms. It spreads by producing fungal roots that emerge from the soil to seek fresh victims.

Ignoring an arbori-culturalist’s advice, the council plans to plant flooded gums as replacements (they’re also susceptible to honey fungus).

Birdwood Square used to be swamp or, as the trendies like to call it, “wetlands”. Its high water table and water logging in wet winters means honey fungus thrives and is near-impossible to eradicate. The council tried to stave off the infection with an “antagonistic pathogen” called Trichoderma, injecting it six times over the years.

Arboriculturalist Jonathan Epps advised council to chop off the top branches (known as pollarding) and continue treating the trees but staff aren’t keen as previous efforts were in vain. Mr Epps says if Vincent council must remove them, they should replace the sick trees with liquid ambar as they have some resistance to the disease.

However, staffers recommended flooded gums as “an indigenous native tree would be more appropriate,” and it was the most prominent species prior to the European arrival.

They call it “a better option than another exotic that is possibly resistant to the honey fungus”. The report also reckons the gums will better fit the park’s “eco-zoning”, which is about to start replacing water-guzzling grass with more sustainable native plants.

The council doesn’t sit in January but will have a chance to weigh in on the plan over the break before staff make the final call.

by DAVID BELL