A LOCAL heritage group is crossing its fingers that Stirling city council keeps the suburb of Mt Lawley in the looming council amalgamations.
The Mt Lawley Society says Stirling’s head and shoulders above surrounding councils when it comes to preserving heritage, and is backing the city’s call for its boundaries to stay the same.
Intact
MLS president Bruce Wooldridge said Stirling had mostly kept the 1900s-1950s building stock intact in Mt Lawley and surrounding suburbs Inglewood and Menora.
“Stirling has adopted the approach of classifying Inglewood, Mt Lawley and Menora as heritage protection areas which ensures heritage character is retained,” he says.
“It is unfortunate that it has not been replicated by other councils with heritage suburbs.
Rampant
He said Vincent and Bayswater had let development run rampant in the parts of Mt Lawley under their control and many historic properties had been lost.
At a meeting between local government minister Tony Simpson and WA mayors last week, Mr Simpson said the government would release its preferred model for reform in about two months.
However, any boundary changes would not be finalised until well after the October state elections and could take up to two years to implement.
Russell Butler is closing Allure. Photo by Matthew Dwyer
BEAUFORT STREET is losing another independent business.
Allure Furniture in Highgate will close on July 25, with co-owner Russell Butler saying “we’ve had a great innings” but it was time to move on.
Mr Butler says high rents were a factor, as was declining pedestrian traffic caused partly by more night-oriented venues in the area and the introduction of paid parking.
But he says the “final straw” was Vincent council putting the clamps on a no-parking zone they’d historically used as a bay for seven years.
Vincent CEO John Giorgi points out rangers allow Allure to use it as a temporary loading bay, but it is a no parking zone and to be consistent the council would have to allow anyone to park there if they’d bent the rules for Allure.
Along with co-owner Andrew Barnett, Mr Butler will continue to operate Allure’s Morley outlet sales business.
Nearby quirky homewares store Simply by Life also recently closed after opening in September 2012. Before that, Test Tube Objects came and went, its friendly store dog now long gone.
They join Antonio’s Continental deli, Ottobrino’s butcher, Vintage Tatt, Soto Espresso and Raah which all closed on the street in the past year.
BAYSWATER mayor Terry Kenyon says he has been given an assurance from the Barnett government Bassendean and Bayswater won’t be forced into a merger.
WA mayors met with local government minister Tony Simpson last week to discuss the amalgamations, which are due to be announced within months.
“I asked the minister for his view regarding the possible amalgamation of the town of Bassendean and the city of Bayswater,” Cr Kenyon said.
“The minister advised there would be no forced merger and he would consider what is best for the community and a decision would be made soon on the reform process.”
Cr Kenyon said the amalgamation process had been dragging on for too long.
“The reform process has been ongoing for around five years now and the city would really like to know from the local government minister what direction the local government sector is going in,” he sighed.
RESIDENTS in Perth city council’s demesne can expect their rates to go up about 6 per cent this year.
PCC says employee costs are up due to council staff winning a 5 per cent enterprise bargaining agreement, and additional staff being recruited.
Consultants have also gobbled up the cash, the $633,000 allocated this year an increase of 38.4 per cent from the last budget. It’s due to the city needing a public health plan, traffic management study, waste management review and a drainage survey.
The big item on the budget is $27million for the Cathedral Square library and plaza project.
RATES are set to rise about 3.5 per cent in Stirling this year, according to a council insider.
Council staff reportedly wanted to slug ratepayers a few extra per cent, but councillors took out the red pens and whittled it down.
Waste fees are set to remain the same and security fees will increase by around $1. Last year the city increased rates by 3.95 per cent to cover an increase in utility costs, including street lighting and the carbon tax, which equated to a quarter of the increase.
Leaf our trees alone WE all know the saying ‘better late than never’.
So, congratulations to the Perth city council for taking action to reduce ecocide by recognising the social, environmental and economic value of trees and giving this a monetary value (“Big fines for tree killers”, Voice, May 25). Hopefully other local governments… take similar and urgent action to preserve the amenity of their localities by protecting trees (a most significant element in the character of an areas).
It is not bad luck but bad management that has facilitated the deregulated town planning zeitgeist that is clear felling our city.
Proper town planning—amenity preservation town planning—has gone significantly backwards over the last 30 years: there is a Greek saying “the fish goes rotten from the head first” so maybe the responsibility for systemic town planning failure rests with the undemocratic, unaccountable, but all-powerful WA planning commission.
We know that the WAPC’s former head Gary Prattley was given the push for misusing his credit card, but what about the much more significant failure to deliver on the core principle: amenity preservation.
I am sure Prof Gordon Stephenson would be ‘turning in his grave’ as town planning’s raison d’etre is being trashed by simplistic development facilitation (unthinking and often expensive and vandalistic theft of public open space: eg; Perry Lakes, Perth Esplanade, Trinity Rugby Field…).
It’s town planning so devoid of consideration of good amenity preservation that it brings the profession into disrepute and causes me to be ashamed and hesitant to own up to my profession as a town planner. Greg Smith Rose Ave, Bayswater
A valuable perspective BROCCOLI and cabbages guarded me the night I slept rough, circa 1950.
Guinea fowls giving welcome to a summer sunrise, and a cat’s purring, awoke me in the kitchen garden of a Yorkshire farmhouse. The cat? On my chest.
What prompted my night under the stars? An adventure strip: Jeff Arnold of the Texas Rangers in the Eagle newspaper for boys.
With a saddle for a pillow—six-shooter beneath it—and a Scout’s sleeping bag, I ignored baffled parents and periodic complaints from my hips.
There’s a yawning difference, of course, between voluntarily sleeping rough and its being tragic necessity.
The lord mayor of Perth will readily acknowledge this.
Lisa Scaffidi expects her sleep-out at the WACA on June 20 to be an “eye-opener.” Chances are her predecessors would have considered even the idea a poor joke.
Her example should encourage all with a bed, or even abed, to empathise with, and more importantly do something about, the reported global 15 million-plus—boat people among them—who will sleep rough tonight; and without comfort or prospect of veggies. Bill Proude First Ave, Mt Lawley
Almost vantastic WE loved your story on our van—especially making the front page!
We had a good chuckle; it was a fun article. But we just thought we should let you know that the names got a bit mixed—the gorgeous lady in the photo is Kirsty Fagan, co-owner. Giorgia Johnson (yes, that is really how I spell it) Co-owner, Cool Breeze Cafe Bayswater The Ed sys: Thanks for pointing that out Giorgia. The sub responsible for the slip is off with the flu, and we couldn’t help but think there was a bit of karma there.
Who writes these F’n letters? FRESH from the controversy about potentially non-existent Voice letter-writer ‘Naomi Clark’, it seems the paper may have let another pseudonymous correspondent through.
Either that, or the Voice is now running fake letters rather than just the traditional fake ads. I strongly suspect there is no one in the world called ‘T Greta Gatsby’ (“Give teeth to the trees”, Voice, June 1, 2013), much less one in little-old Perth, a place with much of its Art Deco heritage sadly lost.
It’s surely a fun nom de plume (or witty nom de guerre), although if I was to use it myself I might have dialed it up a little by listing “(F Scott) Fitzgerald Street, Northbridge” as my address. Cameron Poustie Federation St, Mt Hawthorn The Ed says: Well spotted Cameron, ‘T’ is indeed a nom de plume, but as the Voice knows the writer and they weren’t using anonymity to hide a cheap shot we’re happy to give them a run.
A woodchipper gets stuck into the Esplanade’s Moreton Bay figs. Photo by perthhdproductions
ALEX JONES is a long-term member of the Save Our Trees network. In this week’s SPEAKER’S CORNER she congratulates the Perth city council for taking action against tree killers, but says a lot more needs to be done to preserve WA’s precious greenery.
CONGRATULATIONS to the Perth city council for taking the initiative and imposing hefty fines on the killers of our trees.
Killing trees is in many ways both a systemic and insidious practice depending on the perpetrator of the crime.
Unfortunately, in the time I have been the promoter of the Save Our Trees network since 1995, local governments and bushland managers have been some of the biggest offenders.
Their wanton destruction of these health-giving public assets has gone totally unpunished.
Tree-killing policies have been the subject of much controversy and many protests where local communities have questioned the use of public funds for environmental vandalism and the destruction of public assets worth millions of dollars to local amenity and real estate values.
We have seen the senseless destruction of thousands of mature street trees and other amenity trees in the metropolitan area, including the Manning Road trees, the QEII medical centre’s therapeutic gardens, Monash bushland, AK reserve, Perry Lakes trees and Perth’s heritage-listed Esplanade reserve, to name just a few.
Who will ever forget the glorious heritage fig trees hacked to death on the Esplanade reserve from 7am on Saturday June 16, 2012?
I was there with my ‘Stop Killing Trees’ sign that was also present when the Canning city council wood-chipped its way through 168 trees on Manning Road.
These acts of vandalism have no doubt been indelibly etched into the minds of all those who were present at the scene of these environmental crimes.
Most outrageously, many tree protectors have been left with fines and criminal
records as a result of trying to stop tree destruction activities that were authorised by local and state governments.
Local and state governments with their misguided tree replacement and weeding policies have also been responsible for and facilitated the poisoning of our land and trees with toxic chemicals. Individual trees in front of residential developments have, for no apparent reason, gone from being perfectly healthy to diseased and dying.
Pesticides
This means that a city’s ratepayers and not the developer have paid the costs of tree removal. Councils simply accept to remove these trees on the basis that they are dying or that they have died a natural death.
It is not standard practice for local governments to test the foliage of trees to see if poisons were involved.
There is very little evidence of local and state authorities taking seriously their duty to stop this harm from pesticides.
One example of large-scale “unexplained” tree deaths occurred on the now
Waterbank Precinct which according to the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority was an “under-utilised, low-lying reserve”.
Well before public knowledge of the proposed development, the beautiful paperbark trees on this reserve next to the causeway suddenly started to die.
Why?
There is an absence of routine testing for poisoning of our trees, soil and water.
Most disturbing of all is the inability or unwillingness of our government laboratories to test for trace levels of some of the most commonly used herbicides.
If they can’t test for these chemicals how can they possibly know the state of contamination in our environment?
I was recently advised that the trees on Heirisson Island had coloured chemical rings at their base. Our photos taken just a few days ago after a few days of rain clearly show the residues of blue-green dye near the base of some of the trees. How long will it be before these trees die and will we see some form of development in their place?
Killing public trees and poisoning public land has been a standard land management practice in Western Australia for too long. There need to be fines for those who wantonly kill our public trees but also for those who contaminate our soils, air, waterways and ground water with pesticides that cause inevitable and foreseeable harm to public health and our environment.
Strong environmental health laws with hefty fines are a good starting point if we are serious about stopping the broader public harm and the spiralling cancer rate in WA’s children but Perth council and other authorities will need to lead by example.
THE complexity of the mother/child relationship is a theme photographer Toni Wilkinson has recorded since her children were born.
With a daughter now 20 and a 12-year-old son that’s a lot of images.
But it’s the past five years that form her latest exhibition Uncertain Surrenders.
The images were part of a PhD with a very post-Freudian slant of looking for beauty and menace in the maternal bond.
Talking to the Voice via phone as she dashed to her day job at Curtin university, Dr Wilkinson sounded anything but menacing.
“When I take pictures I’m trying to trap that moment, which I know won’t last.
“[But] you can’t hold onto them, you have to let them go.”
Mothers are often stereotyped as passive and one-dimensional, which is at odds with how Wilkinson feels about her children and sees other mums.
“Maternal passion is fierce. I’m passionate about my children, but I’m not always benevolent.”
She’s keen to record the test of her relationship with her son as he enters puberty, but fears it won’t happen.
“He’s got to the point now where he says ‘don’t photograph me’.”
The Bassendean local has a stellar career behind her with works in major galleries.
She’s off to Paris in September after being one of just two Australian photographers selected for the prestigious Photoquai 2013.
Life-sized photos of Wilkinson’s children and their friends will be on display under the Eiffel Tower.
But before wowing the crowds strolling the Seine river, Wilkinson joins fellow photographers Svetlana Bailey and Juhani Koivumaki in an exhibition at the Perth Centre for Photography in Northbridge.
Sin, a video piece about the desire for the forbidden, is Finnish-based artist Koivumaki’s first showing in WA.
In Fog, Russian-born Bailey’s ethereal collection of photos looks at the ambivalence between belonging and being separate.
You can catch them at PCP, 100 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge, June 14 to July 14. Entry free.
ONE of quite a number of things I like about Royal Street in East Perth is I never have trouble parking. It makes me feel like I’m in a movie.
You know the scenario, Jenny the heroine screams up ready for action, and there’s a parking bay right out the front—no matter if it’s downtown New York or the heart of London. Even in peak hour.
This four-bedroom/three-bathroom apartment has a lot in common with both, offering gracious, almost inner-city living.
Then there’s the cafe culture on Royal Street, and the fact this grand apartment looks out across a delightful, sprawling parkland leading to Claisebrook Cove.
It’s not quite Central nor Hyde Park but a delightful place nonetheless to stroll and stretch your legs.
This penthouse is one of just nine apartments and is more house than apartment, oozing elegance and charm from the minute you step into the entry, with its lovely domed ceiling.
Blonde timber floors shine in the massive open-plan living/dining area and nearby kitchen of this four-bedroom/three-bathroom dwelling, which spans a whopping 271sqm.
Banks of doors/windows off the living area open onto a spacious balcony taking in park views, while a mature plain tree is a lush privacy screen from the apartment across the road.
The kitchen is astonishingly huge, with gorgeous black and brown granite benches providing plenty of preparation space, and there’s a swag of cupboards and a floor-to-ceiling pantry.
Adjacent is a cute dining area offering a casual dining option in a sun-filled nook.
Three of the bedrooms are on this level, including one that could be the main, with semi-ensuite and a walk-in-robe.
For sheer grandeur head upstairs to the grand suite, with its own terrace balcony. There’s a walk-in-robe and dressing room that have to be seen to be believed. You could throw a party in here and it’s got city views.
The term ensuite doesn’t do credit to the bathroom, which is a huge space with double vanities and a spa.
Royal Street offers the delights of city living, while the East Perth location has all the charm of a village lifestyle.
This close to the city there are many public transport options so you won’t need the three car bays in the garage but an additional five metres of storage is always handy—no matter how much room you have.
by JENNY D’ANGER
1/9 Royal St, East Perth $1.675m Brendon Habak 0423 200 400 Realestate 88 9200 6168
WA BALLET has won a $20,000 exemption on its annual rates following a fiery clash at Bayswater city council.
Troupe directors pirouetted in panic when they received a $35,000 rates bills—a near 800 per cent increase on their budget—for their new HQ in Maylands.
The bill was due to the value of the old Senses building in Whatley Crescent rocketing after a multi-million dollar heritage transformation.
“In 2010 it was clearly stated and noted the rates WAB should budget for in the business plan was approximately $4000 annually,” ballet chair John Langoulant wrote to the council.
“This figure was subsequently submitted to the state for approval as part of the business plan.”
Cr Marlene Robinson says it’s another case of the WA government bleeding councils dry.
“This is WA Ballet, not Bayswater Ballet, but here is the state again with its begging bowl out,” she says. “If a regular ratepayer can’t pay his rates he can have his home sold, but here we are bailing out the state government. The department of local government said if we granted an exemption it could set a dangerous precedent across the state for all dance studios.”
Cr Alan Radford noted the council had received little recognition or thanks from WA Ballet for the millions of dollars it had poured into the building.
“Woodside is plastered all over their brochures—the council gets very little recognition despite pouring millions into it,” he noted.
Mayor Terry Kenyon says the company is a not-for-profit organisation and had coughed up $11m of its own money when moving from Perth to Maylands.
The council voted to approve the $20,000 exemption and to approach the WA arts minister to set a fixed yearly rate of $4000 plus CPI for the remainder of the lease.
Perth Voice Interactive 