Bass Coast Post - Bass Coast Arts news and features

A writer's life

18/5/2026

Meryl Brown Tobin by Michele Tobin

MERYL Brown Tobin’s writing journey started when she was eight years old and contributed to the children’s pages of The Age and The Sun.

Since then her writing has continued in one way or another and she presumes it will go on until the end - an ‘Unbreakable Bond’.

On Sunday, June 21, 1.30-3 pm U3A Bass Valley is hosting her for an afternoon at the Corinella and District Community Centre. She will tell the story of her writing journey.

The day will culminate in the launch of another, Unbreakable Bond, her third solo collection of poetry and 22nd book.

Meryl Brown Tobin’s books include activity books, black line masters of educational puzzles, primary school work books, a travel book and a picture storybook. As a guest on the set of Channel 7's children's program The Book Place, she read her picture storybook LEFTY with regular presenter, Lynn Weston.

Not fighting, dancing

16/4/2026

Gonzalo Varela: 'Starting over with nothing, just us', 2026

By Catherine Watson

IN THE paintings of Gonzalo Varela, the world feels both ancient and not-yet-born. Figures drift in luminous, half-ruined landscapes, as if time has folded in on itself.

It’s a fitting visual language for his exhibition, The Second Horizon, now showing at Berninneit Art Gallery.

This is Varela’s return to painting after years of multidisciplinary work, but nothing about it feels like a step backwards. If anything, it’s a deepening, a slower, more introspective process that mirrors his shift from inner-city life (Argentina, Spain, Melbourne) to the quiet of South Gippsland.

Coming to a screen near you

16/4/2026

Keith Stevens screened the first Wonthaggi
International Film Festival in 2010.

By Larry Hills

This weekend's Wonthaggi International Film Festival (WIFF) enters its 14th year with another outstanding array of international films.

WIFF was the brainchild of Keith Stevens, the past manager of the Wonthaggi Cinema. Keith was a projectionist and a cinematographer and had some amazing connections in the film industry from all over the world. He was able to bring in some fantastic films, some even before their Australian release.

Keith inaugurated the first WIFF 16 years ago in February, 2010. (This would have been its 16th year, except for Covid.)

The WIFF sparked an interest in fine films amongst the local community and the Bass Coast Fine Film Group was formed in order to get an audience for regular screenings of fine films in Wonthaggi. There were 46 members in the first year and that’s grown to more than 250 in 2026!

The art of illusion

1/4/2026

By Catherine Watson

EVERY time I pass Pat Wishart’s place I slow down, scanning for something new, a life-sized dinosaur, perhaps, or some other surprise.

The other day I stopped for a chat and a closer look. Stepping into Pat's garden is a fantastical, slightly mind-bending experience. Giant crabs munch on seashells. An echidna stands guard over a spiky banksia cone. An oversized fist crumples the letterbox.

The show goes on

20/3/2026

Gwen Derrick, centre, the 'creative, tireless heartbeat' of the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group.

By Karen Milkins-Hendry

This was Gwen Derrick’s 100th year and I was struck by the sheer amount of change and generational influence she faced, yet she always appeared so contemporary and ‘living in the moment’ to me.

Born on 5 November 1926 as one of eight children, Gwen grew up in Richmond. As a young child she was sent to live with a wealthier relative in Richmond who could take care of her. When she was 14 her mum came to collect her, took her out of school and she was sent to work in a factory.

At the age of 19 she married John (Jack) William Derrick on 6 April in 1946. She moved to Wonthaggi as a young war bride and out of the several jobs she had was most well known for her work in the pharmacy for 28 years.

So real you can almost smell them

16/1/2026

JAM Jerrup fibre artist Jennie-maree Tempest is forging a growing reputation with her extraordinary botanical works.

She works with fabric and thread on her sewing machine in a free motion form to produce botanical sculptures, predominantly native.

Her studio at 219 Bay Road, Jam Jerrup is open from 11am-4pm on Fridays. You can see more of her work at facebook or Instagram Jemartem Textiles.

Where words grow wild

15/1/2026

Poet Kathy Wiltshire finds her voice on stage.

By Kathy Wiltshire

LAST September, I set a goal for creating a place where I could share my poetry and share the spotlight with others, without having to drive hours to get there. I stepped onto the stage at Archies Creek Hotel as host and began the ‘Wild Words’ poetry and spoken word nights.

I consider myself a quietly spoken person, but when on the stage I have the courage to release ideas and emotions that are too complex to say in conversation.

Everybody’s experience is unique. I get the audience involved too, inviting them to choose a favourite poem or poet.

My appreciation of poetry grows as I meet people. I see how one person can adore a piece that another finds distasteful, shaped by the experiences we each bring.

The back story

13/12/2025

Author Kate Mildenhall is presented with a tray of Grandma's Lemon Slice from a recipe in her childrens' book To Stir with Love

By Julie Statkus

WILL they turn up? Will they get lost? Will the punters come? Will they enjoy the talk? Will the author sell lots of books?

I’m a bit of a worrier at the best of times and it's always a bit scary when you organise an author talk.

Many, many years ago I declared that if I ever went on another committee it would be the Friends of the Inverloch Library (FOIL) committee. It took a while but I’ve now been a member for a couple of years and I reckon I’ve found the perfect job!

End of the journey

12/12/2025

By Daryl Pellizzer

LAST Monday at Bass Coast Adult Learning we celebrated our Long Journeys project. We had around 45 people party with us and we were honoured to host some special guests to our little party.

There was a beautiful welcome from Aunty Fay Stewart-Muir, a Boonwurrung / Wamba Wamba Elder. She made a special Welcome to Australia for our migrant students. We also had Kate Gorringe-Smith attend. She is an artist who lives in Melbourne. We have worked with Kate in the past creating some beautiful bird images using the cyanotype process.

The summer canvas

11/12/2025

The hanging team at work before the opening of the Small Works Exhibition at Berninneit

By Catherine Watson

On Tuesday, some 50 artists descended on Berninneit Art Gallery carrying around 130 artworks for the Small Works Exhibition, which opened Phillip Island’s summer season of art.
It was absolute bedlam – and curator Warren Nichols loved it.

Now in his fifth year curating the PICES (Phillip Island Contemporary Exhibition Space) program, Warren still feels the same buzz on delivery day. He likens it to tackling a giant jigsaw puzzle: finding the right piece for the right place.

The Small Works Exhibition reflects the PICES ethos of giving everyone from beginners to seasoned professionals a chance to exhibit at Berninneit. It’s a non-curated, open-entry show, with all works accepted provided they measure no more than 50 x 50 centimetres.

Millowl comes alive

12/11/2025

Vegas Fitzmaurice turned to nature for a moving artistic tribute to his late mother.

VEGAS Fitzmaurice’s deeply personal and powerful new exhibition Millowl – A Mother’s Element was created in honour of the artist’s late mother and of Millowl (Phillip Island) itself.

Fitzmaurice, who has Aboriginal heritage (Yarra Yarra, Wurundjeri), says the works draw inspiration from the four sacred elements – fire, water, air and earth – as experienced across the island’s landscapes and seascapes.

Into the music

8/11/2025

After the long quiet of lockdown, Anne Olsen found her voice
again in singing with others.

By Anne Olsen

WHEN I moved to Phillip Island I was still working part time as a secondary school teacher. I was looking forward to retirement and had some vague ideas about joining something or other at some stage. Despite my good intentions, after the Covid lockdown I seemed to become something of a recluse. It was only two and a half years ago that I started thinking about joining a community choir.

I’ve always loved music and singing but I had not been a member of a choir since my student days and I was not at all confident about my abilities. I found the Island Harmony Choir through searching online for a choir close to home. Reassured that no audition was required for membership, I turned up at the rehearsal venue … just to listen.

Fleeting moments

16/10/2025

Kate Muir’s and Tessa Hubble’s contrasting styles and painting techniques open different windows on the passage of time for their joint exhibition at ArtSpace.

Kate Muir: Glimpse of Western Port Bay, oil on canvas

Painting with purpose

15/10/2025

Mix art, nature and community and you get the Landcare Art Prize, writes Janice Orchard

By Janice Orchard

A SPECIAL kind of energy will fill the Kernot Community Hall in mid-November, a blend of creativity, hope and a shared love for the land we call home.

Established last year, the Bass Coast Landcare Art Prize brought together artists, families, and environmentalists on Melbourne Cup weekend, continuing a long-standing tradition started by the KernArt Prize six years earlier.

The event hit the ground running in its first year, with almost 250 paintings, sculptures and photographs entered by artists from around the state. A record crowd filled the Kernot Community Hall on opening night to hear the judge Herman Pekel announce his selections.

The art of dishwashing

14/10/2025

“It is a scientific fact that when men have their hands in warm, soapy water, they relax, and their minds inevitably lead to thinking about their life, love and other important things.”
John Mutsaers

Artist and writer John Mutsaers

By Catherine Watson

Inverloch artist John Mutsaers has long maintained that writing is the superior art form because words can paint a picture in the reader's mind.

Now, with the publication of his first book – A Thinking Man’s Manual for Effective Dishwashing – he’s proved his own point.

Dishwashing becomes both a meditation and a framing device for the memories that rise to the surface while his hands are in the sink, readying him for a day in the studio.

Awaiting shoulder surgery and unable to paint, Mutsaers turned his energy to the keyboard. The words, he says, simply poured out. He revisited the small house in Eindhoven, Holland, where he grew up, the fear and shortages of the German occupation, the family’s migration to Australia in 1956, life in the Latrobe Valley in the 1960s, and courting an Irish lass called Mary who was to become his wife, muse, English teacher and "first reader".

Kelp and the Sentient Sea

9/10/2025

WHEN local artist Kim McDonald heads down to the beach, she’s stepping into her studio, a vast, breathing, ever-changing space that feeds her imagination.

Her niece, Jasmine Susic, does the same. A dancer and choreographer, she moves with the rhythm of the waves, feeling for the pulse beneath the surface.

Together, the pair have created Kelp and the Sentient Sea, on exhibition at Berninneit Art Gallery until October 26. A multi-sensory dive into the ocean’s living force, it combines printmaking, dance, film and installation in an exploration of the mysterious relationship between humans and the sea.

Ms Vale is still waiting

9/10/2025

Maggie Millar brings Miss Vale to life.

By Ian Hayward Robinson

MAGGIE Millar’s contribution to this year’s Seniors Month has a fascinating history. In 1990 Maggie had the lead role, Miss Vale, in an ABC radio play by Elizabeth Jolley called Little Lewis Has Had a Lovely Sleep. After the play went to air, Maggie received a card from Elizabeth which began “I have just listened to your wonderful performance as Miss Vale. You were superb. Thank you very much for bringing her to life so well.”

Not long after, Maggie was performing a stage play in Perth with Jacki Weaver. She made contact with Elizabeth and they became friends. So when Maggie planned an evening of dramatic monologues, Elizabeth was an obvious choice for one of the writers, and a reprise of Miss Vale the obvious choice of character.

Reflections of a life

18/9/2025

A Roiling Boil is San Remo artist Marcia Rolfs’ first book, an exquisite collection of her poetry, accompanied by her paintings and photographs.

The striking cover features a turbulent sky, hence the title.

The poems range from amusing accounts of the transitory life in outback camping grounds to sharp observations of nature and reflections on ageing.

Marcia writes: “My poetry is born from reflections on life’s journey, shaped by travels that broadened my perspective and everyday moments that reveal the beauty and complexity and sometimes bitter sweet nature of the human experience.

Proceeds from sales of the book are going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

They are $25 plus postage. You can email her at [email protected] to order a copy.

We have been singing ...

18/9/2025

Community members gathered at Berninneit on Monday for an event featuring poetry and music from students of the Bass Coast Adult Learning’s English as an Additional Language Program.

By Daryl Pellizzer

WE HAVE been singing. Laura Brearley has set some of our beautiful poems to music, Rhythm And Poetry and other lovely melodies. She came in to rehearse the songs and share her lovely creative spirit with us at BCAL.

It’s a joy. We read and sang, and I improvised some interpretive dance, which I quite enjoyed and it helped the students to laugh.

My brush with art

18/9/2025

Ellen Hubble: “It’s sitting still in one place, being immersed in the environment."

By Catherine Watson

“BYO art materials, water, chair, drinks, snacks, picnic,” the invitation to the first Artists in the Woodlands session stated. I’ve brought none of them. I can’t paint or draw so I’ve brought a camera. My plan is to watch artists at work in an en plein air session.

When we meet at the Dunbabbin Road Picnic Area at the top of the Gurdies the storm clouds are looming and a devilish wind is swirling across the bay. Sensibly, most people have decided to give it a miss so there are just three of us – Ellen Hubble (the organiser and an accomplished artist), Lisa Buckley (also an accomplished artist) and me.

Artists in the woodlands
En plein air sessions are held every second Wednesday from 10.30am-1pm. Meet at the Dunbabbin Road Picnic Area. BYO art materials, water, chair, drinks, snacks. Email Ellen at [email protected] for more information.

The singer not the song

16/9/2025

The Invy Horn Jam heads up McBride Avenue taking their audience along for the ride.
Photo: Dyonn Dimmock

By Alison Chapman

RICHARD Osman, in a British podcast with Marina Hyde, The Rest is Entertainment, claimed it took him just 35 seconds and a chatbot to create a band, a song and a video clip. The band was called Quiet Alibi, the song Rewind the Summer, with a fuzzy film of four young men performing.

I couldn’t find it on YouTube (where I had found the Osman podcast). Maybe he was joking – Osman is often very funny, whether on the game show Pointless or in his Thursday Murder Club novels. But toward the end of the podcast, he did play a sample of the “band” performing the song.

That’s the unsettling bit: what is real? Can we even tell?

Maths makes history

10/9/2025

Robyn Arianrhod, left, with the other 2025 NSW History Award winners, defied her own expectations to win a major history award with a book about maths.

By Catherine Watson

BASS Coast writer and mathematician Robyn Arianrhod has pulled off a surprise win at the 2025 NSW History Awards, taking out the General History category with her book Vector: A surprising story of space, time, and mathematical transformation.

Thereby hangs a tale

16/8/2025

Tears, laughter, resilience and recipes … the Phillip Island
Festival of Stories had it all.

By Julie Statkus

“I COULDN'T imagine doing it and surviving,” said Peter Greste. I couldn't imagine it either. In June 2014, Greste, an investigative journalist, was sentenced to seven years prison in Cairo. He ultimately served 400 days before being deported to Australia.

Greste was the first of many speakers at the Phillip Island Festival of Stories who generously shared their stories of resilience, the strategies they developed to survive and the discovery of their inner strength.

Over a recent cold wet weekend hundreds of people gathered at Berninneit for the festival, and what an incredible weekend it was. A small group of local people with a vision enlisted the support of council, volunteers, donors and supporters to bring their vision to life.

Stanley McGeagh: a life in many acts

13/8/2025

Irish-Australian actor Stanley McGeagh in UFO, screened in 1970. Stanley died on August 5, leaving behind a Coronet Bay community that claimed him as one of its own.

By Catherine Watson

YOU’VE almost certainly seen Stanley McGeagh on television. For decades he was a fixture of British drama and comedy: Doctor Who, The Bill, Minder, Dad’s Army and Softly Softly, among many others.

He was never the leading man but always a memorable supporting actor, lean of frame, with piercing blue eyes, a presence that stuck in your mind long after the credits rolled.

Stanley – never “Stan” – was born in wartime Belfast, one of five children in a shipwright’s family “poor as church mice”.

A German bomb hit the house opposite, blowing in the front of the McGeagh home. “My father was one of those who came to dig us out of the rubble,” he recalled.

The family found refuge in the tiny coastal hamlet of Ballintoy, a place steeped in fairies, ghosts and the salty tang of the sea. He reckoned it was the place where he became superstitious.

Play it on the porch

13/8/2025

Michael Whelan, on guitar, will be play with the Bass Coast Pickers
on the Berninneit porch.

By Michael Whelan

WHAT if, just for one day, the world stopped – and we all listened to the music?

That’s the simple idea behind Play Music on the Porch Day, a grassroots global event where people step outside, pick up an instrument, and fill the air with song.

On Saturday 30 August 2025, porches, parks and public spaces from Washington to Wonthaggi, from Cannes to Cowes, will come alive with the sound of music.