Catherine Watson blog

The final curtain

15/1/2026

Gill Heal has left the theatre but a touch of magic remains. Gill with the cast of her 2015 production, Stormy Waters, from left, Peter Gilbert, Tanya Jackson, Stanley McGeagh and John Coldebella.

By Catherine Watson

“WHO’D be interested in my bloody story!”

The old woman standing at the front door looked at Gill Heal sceptically. Still, she invited Gill in, made her a cup of tea and allowed her to turn on her tape recorder.

Six months later she was in the audience to see the premiere of Stories of the Hinterland at the Archies Creek pub.

No one really knew what to expect at that first show. It wasn’t a play. There was no acting as such. The cast sat on bar stools and conversed. Conversations were interwoven with home-grown verse and songs. But it wasn’t a musical. What the hell was it?

At the end, there was a moment of silence. Everyone held their breath … before rapturous and emotional applause from locals transfixed by seeing their own lives transformed into theatre.

In the audience that sceptical woman was overcome. Tears rolled down her face. “This is history!” she said. “This is important!”

Gill Heal died on January 11 in Wonthaggi. As an actor and director, she valued entrances and exits. After a rich life, she was ready to exit.
Please join us to celebrate Gill’s life at The Shed, State Coal Mine, Wonthaggi at 3pm on Monday, January 19.

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MICROSOFT™ versus me

14/12/2025

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All I wanted was a functioning computer. Microsoft had bigger plans.

By Catherine Watson

MY OLD computer served me well but after 10 years it was full and Windows 10 had been declared extinct. I put it off for as long as possible before going to see the boys at C&S Computers. They recommend a refurbished model with twice the storage and Windows 11. They assure me they’ve removed the Microsoft bloatware.

Day 1

I’m reasonably confident as I sit down to begin the long process of transferring the contents of the old machine.

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Here’s to you, Comrade

12/11/2025

Gough Whitlam on the steps of old Parliament House after the Labor Government had been sacked by the Governor General John Kerr, November 11, 1975. Photo: National Archives of Australia

By Catherine Watson

"WHERE were you when you heard that John Kerr had sacked the Whitlam Government?"

Jan Bourne’s question to a gathering of the comrades of the Wonthaggi-Bass branch of the ALP on Tuesday night – marking half a century since the Dismissal – prompted a flood of memories.

Leslie Adams was 15 and in a history class when her teacher stormed in and said “Shut up everyone! History is happening right now. You all need to remember this.” At the time, she said, she was fairly oblivious. It was only four or five years later that she realised the import of what the teacher was saying.

Irreconcilable differences

11/11/2025

Catherine Watson digs deep to discover the seeds of the great Wonthaggi Garden War.

By Catherine Watson

IN THE October 28 edition of the Sentinel Times, nestled among the death notices and job ads, is a small declaration.

There are many ways to end a relationship but a public notice in a local newspaper is one of the more unusual. The gardeners have had only a few hours warning. Late the previous afternoon they received an email from the secretary of the Wonthaggi Men’s Shed:

“I have been directed to deliver the following message to the membership of the Wonthaggi Men’s shed without prejudice.

“The Wonthaggi Men’s Shed inc. has made the executive decision to shut down the garden group operating within the grounds of the men’s shed precinct effective immediately.

“This decision was reached due to irreconcilable differences negatively affecting the Wonthaggi men’s shed purpose and vision.

Lighten up, you guys

20/8/2025

By Catherine Watson

I WASN’T paying much attention to Paul Cross’s comments on the Post’s Facebook page. Facebook is a bear pit. But when his comments started appearing on the Post website, I took notice.

What prompted them was a discussion on wind energy following a story about how Wonthaggi’s wind turbines are reaching their use-by date. There were commentators for and against wind power, but the discussion was amiable and courteous - until Paul jumped into the conversation, Facebook style.

No fixed address

14/8/2025

Beth Banks, centre, with other members of Housing Matters Bass Coast, including Cr Mat Morgan, second from right, and Jessica Harrison, right.

By Catherine Watson

BETH Banks grew up in Wonthaggi at a time when ordinary working people could afford to buy a modest weatherboard home. Today, she says, even nurses and teachers – people with good secure jobs – struggle to afford the rent, let alone buy a house.

Now 83, the former community nurse knows the places where hidden homelessness lives around Bass Coast: the cars parked in quiet corners overnight, the humpies in the bush, the sheds with a mattress behind the mower, the couches offered to friends “staying for now.”

“They’re people who’ve run out of options,” Beth says. “No lease, no fixed address – just goodwill holding their lives together. Many of them are children.”

Winding down?

21/7/2025

Wonthaggi's windmills are approaching their use-by date.

By Catherine Watson

The Wonthaggi Wind Farm is approaching its use-by date. Commissioned in 2005, it was one of Victoria’s early forays into renewable energy. The six turbines are now 20 years old, their nominal life span.

Peter Wyse, operations manager for EDL Australia, which owns the wind farm, says the company is working with the original equipment manufacturer to assess their condition.

“These assessments are common and help determine whether they can continue operating safely and efficiently beyond their original project life,” he says. “We expect to have the outcomes later this year and will then make a decision on seeking to extend operations at Wonthaggi Wind Farm.”

The last laugh

26/6/2025

By Catherine Watson

ANYONE wandering into the Manna Gum Community House in Foster last Friday morning might have wondered what was so funny. They would probably have been surprised to find they’d chanced upon a “death café”.

A group of us had gathered over coffee and biscuits to discuss our impending demise. Not next week, maybe, or next year, but somewhere down the line, as sure as Christmas.

Like any good funeral, there were some harrowing moments in our discussion – revelations of pain and fear – but there were also many moments of rollicking humour.

Shrooms, booms and a touch of magic

24/6/2025

By Catherine Watson

THE hipsters are back. They appear in early winter, like migratory birds from north of the Yarra. Too well dressed to be ours. They try to park out of sight, halfway down a back lane near the reserve, but you notice them at once because no one local parks there. That’s the second clue.

Then there’s the way they move through the bush, not scanning the tree tops for rufous whistlers but looking at their feet. I found one on his hands and knees way off the track. I asked him if he'd lost something.
“No,” he said, leaping to his feet.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Mushrooms.”

“Tell me what they look like and I’ll tell you if I’ve seen any.”

Against the odds

16/5/2025

First day in Parliament: Mary Aldred with the
new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley. Aldred’s election
was a rare good news story for a Liberal Party that suffered an electoral nightmare.

By Catherine Watson

MONASH’S new federal MP’s introduction to Parliament was an unusual one. She arrived last Tuesday morning just in time to vote on who should lead the Liberal Party following an electoral wipeout that took former leader Peter Dutton with it.

Mary Aldred declines to tell the Post who she voted for but the fact that she was photographed with new leader Sussan Ley after the vote speaks volumes.

She says Ley has been a frequent visitor to the Monash electorate over the past 18 months as she introduced the then deputy Liberal leader to the many issues confronting her electorate.

Aldred won the seat of Monash after a particularly complicated local election involving four strong candidates, and despite the national swing away from her own party. It took nine days of counting to determine the winner. Even now it’s not official.

The final set

27/3/2025

Neil Luke in action. Photo: Ted Grambeau

By Catherine Watson

LOOK at a photo of Neil Luke in action and you see the mastery of the man – and the mystery. A tiny human figure defying the superhuman forces of the ocean, he seems to barely touch the board as it slices through air and water.

An enigma, like the man himself. A kneeboarder in a surfing culture. A champion surfer and a top bloke. A Jehovah’s witness who surfed. When he discovered surfing he put the church on hold but in later years found a way to embrace worlds, spending several years as a missionary in Nicaragua, which also happens to have great surfing.

Neil’s old surfing mates gathered at Kitty Miller Bay on March 14 for a paddle-out. These days the hair is mostly white instead of sun-bleached blond, and the knees are stiff, but the stories are still about memorable days, the biggest breaks and how much fun it had all been.

The fixer

1/3/2025

Neville Goodwin: “Old school operator, wheeler and dealer, unorthodox, colourful character …”

By Catherine Watson

IT WAS standing room only at the Wonthaggi Town Hall on Wednesday as Neville Goodwin’s family, friends and colleagues from many walks of life gathered to celebrate his colourful life.

Among them were councillors and MPs past and present, road workers, CEOs, pensioners, Rotarians, business leaders, Vietnam vets and a few distinguished gentlemen from the Honoured Society of Calabria. They were easy to pick in a town like Wonthaggi because they wore black.

Despite his achievements – four-time Bass Coast Mayor, Bass Coast Citizen of the Year, Paul Harris Fellow – Neville’s do was not a solemn occasion. He was an intriguing blend of a conservative and a knockabout bloke who could always laugh at himself. Even in the formal photos, there's always the flicker of a grin.

Please come again, but not for a while

4/2/2025

The summer influx: too many cars, too many people.

By Catherine Watson

SO THEY have gone at last. The exodus started on the Friday before the long weekend with a trickle of caravans and utes stacked high with mountain bikes and kayaks. By Australia Day it was a cavalcade.

And this was Wonthaggi, the poor cousin. I can only imagine how it was in Inverloch or on Phillip Island. It must have felt as though the island floated a little higher as they left.

Many Phillip Islanders basically go into hibernation between Boxing Day and Australia Day. Even in Wonthaggi we have to change our habits, getting up at dawn to shop or going in as the sun is setting. By then the shelves look as if they’ve been hit by a plague of locusts.

Not quite true blue

9/1/2025

By Catherine Watson

TWENTY-five years ago I became an Australian citizen. These days you have to pass a test and prove you’re of good character but back then they took anyone.

stood in the Richmond Town Hall with 63 people from 20 nationalities and took the oath. Then the mayor bestowed on us the symbols of citizenship: a wattle tree and a certificate with an emu and a kangaroo.

It was all a bit kitsch, except that to my great surprise I found myself on the verge of tears.

Pledging allegiance to a country is a strangely profound act. Like many Australians, I now have two countries in my heart. Sometimes “we” is Australia; sometimes it’s NZ. “We” when I approve; “They” when I don’t.

The last cowboy

12/11/2024

Clive Dobson and his Fordson Super Dexta, “the little old girl”,
in late 2011, in their prime.

By Catherine Watson

A CROWD turned up this week to farewell Clive Dobson, a big bloke in many senses. It was a cheerful kind of funeral. He made it to 90, a miracle considering how hard he worked and how many accidents he had along the way.

Clive slashed our paddock for 10 years. It’s only a bit over an acre, no big deal, but there are trees everywhere and not a straight row between them. He had to steer round the new trees, hidden in the long grass, miss the asparagus patch, steer clear of the resident bees, which are enraged by diesel fumes, avoid the swampy area and mow a 20-degree slope without tipping over into the dam. A man in a hurry could come to grief in that paddock.

Mission accomplished

13/9/2024

Michael Whelan and Clare Le Serve at last year’s Municipal Association
of Victoria’s Councillor Service Awards where she was recognised for
10 years’ service as a Bass Coast councillor. Their retirement from the council ends a long working relationship that changed Bass Coast.

By Catherine Watson

To understand how Clare Le Serve and Michael Whelan changed our lives, I only have to listen to my friends and neighbours talk about the cataract operations, hip replacements, knee replacements, cancer treatment, shoulder reconstructions ... all done at our local hospital.

My friend Mark no longer has to make the dreaded trip to Monash Hospital for life-saving infusions. He now drives five minutes to the Wonthaggi Hospital where he settles in for a few hours with a team who know him well and bring him coffee and sandwiches while he’s infused.

I see the Bass Coast Secondary College’s senior students heading up McKenzie Street to a new campus with the specialist technology and art rooms, multimedia studios, and a massive indoor stadium. I drive past the new junior campus on Potters Hill Road and I still find it hard to believe.

Stuff and nonsense

12/7/2024

There’s something about a pile of stuff on a nature strip that’s hard to resist.

By Catherine Watson

I PASSED John just as he was turning into Dixon Street so I did a U-ey and followed him. I’d been meaning to check out the pile too. Chairs, couches, a giant TV, kitchen cupboards, a vacuum cleaner, a baby’s highchair, cupboards and shelves were laid out on the wide nature strip. It looked like a vast outdoor living room.

As we inspected the pile, the owner brought out more goodies. He said he’d collected too much stuff and now it was time to pass it on. “If anyone can use it, I’m very happy.” We were all of an age so we complained cheerfully about the throwaway society, forgetting our own part in it, until the late afternoon chill dispersed us.

Solidarity forever

15/5/2024

The Invy Horn Jam blast off at Apex Park,. May Day 2024.

By Catherine Watson

CHRISTMAS, bah humbug. Anzac Day, hijacked by politicians. Grand Final, nah. Give me May Day – May the 1st – when a motley crew of old socialists, greenies, romantics, ne’er-do-wells and dreamers gather in Wonthaggi’s Apex Park for an old ritual.

The deafening hoot of the old mine whistle kicks things off, which is appropriate since May Day celebrates the struggle of workers around the world to achieve an eight-hour working day, and this whistle once signalled the start and finish of the miners’ shifts at the State Coal Mine.

Nirvana Park

19/4/2024

Ivee Strazzabosco created a magnificent garden, but nature always wins in the end.

By Catherine Watson

THIS week I returned to a park that’s haunted my imagination since I stumbled on it 20 years ago. Nirvana Park in Koonawarra is an enigma. About five acres of park or garden, in the midst of other large private gardens.

There are no signs to tell you it’s a public place, just a couple of overgrown signs announcing an entrance. Hard to resist and I didn’t.

I wandered around and wondered once again about the woman who loved this place for most of her life. It took some searching but I found the small brass plaque that had so intrigued me on my first visit: “In memory of Ivee Strazzabosco who lovingly devoted her life to nurturing Nirvana Park, 1993.”

AI and me

23/2/2024

All images by Playground image generator

Words by Catherine Watson

RECENTLY I came across this in a book of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories:
“Hell, it’s about time somebody told about my friend EPICAC. After all, he cost the taxpayers $776,434,927.54 … I won’t go into details about how EPICAC worked (reasoned) except to say that you would feed numbers into him with a keyboard that looked something like a typewriter. It took EPICAC a split second to solve a problem fifty Einsteins couldn’t solve in a lifetime., And EPICAC can never forget any piece of information that was given to him.

"Clickety, click, out came some ribbons and there you were …”

The story was written in 1950. And here we suddenly are.

The woman with the x-ray eyes

23/2/2024

Melissa Lowery is transforming our knowledge of the
dinosaurs that once roamed Bass Coast.

By Catherine Watson

WHEN someone suggests the dinosaur bones are calling to Melissa Lowery, she doesn’t disagree. Melissa sees things that no one else does. In the midst of one of Bass Coast’s many jumbled, multi-coloured, rocky sea shelves, she can pick out a tell-tale speck or splodge that might just be part of a creature that walked here 125 million years ago.

Her colleagues on Dinosaur Dreaming call her “the electron microscope”. Mike Cleeland (‘Mr Dinosaur’) says her tally of bones is closing in on 500 and she has found over 100 dinosaur footprints in the rocks. Prints that most of us would never notice, although once they’re pointed out you wonder how you could have missed them.

And here’s the funniest thing. Melissa is not a trained palaeontologist or geologist. She is a citizen scientist, part of an old tradition of an amateur making a major contribution to science.

Her extraordinary abilities have transformed the search for fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures along the stretch of coast between Inverloch and San Remo.

Yes, no, dunno

24/1/2024

Cr Les Larke

By Catherine Watson

Bass Coast councillor Les Larke continues to perplex. It’s been many years since he attended a council meeting in person (he does Zoom in). His latest council lark is not to vote.

He abstained twice at the December meeting, without explanation and without speaking to the motions. The first time was on a motion for the council to apply to the Growing Regions Fund for $3 million funding for the Bass Coast Dinosaurs Trail.

The second was to amend the council’s investment policy to divest from banks funding fossil fuel projects. The motion passed unanimously, apart from Cr Larke’s abstention.

Plain sailing

13/12/2023

By Catherine Watson

IN A previous life, I passed the Tooradin inlet every day on my long commute to work. I sometimes daydreamed about skipping work and turning left off the highway, towards the old fisherman’s cottage and the BOAT HIRE sign. In my dreams I rowed a small dinghy through the mangrove channels until I reached the bay and was rocked by the gentle waves.

Perhaps it’s just as well I never gave in to temptation. As I found out last month, navigating the Tooradin channels is no job for the blissfully ignorant. At low tide, almost half of Western Port is exposed mud and seagrass. The captain of the Tidemaster remains on full alert as he beats a path for the bay through emerging mudflats.

Best of luck

18/8/2023

Almost $20 million was lost on Bass Coast’s 213 pokies in 2022-23.

By Catherine Watson

IT’S 9.48am when I enter, feeling slightly ashamed. I’ve warned my friends, in case they happen to be passing by and see me slinking in to the pokies. And worry for me.

They needn’t. I have many unfortunate addictions but this isn’t one of them.

I sign in to the club as a visitor, which is done by putting my licence in a card reader and receiving a three-day pass. It’s only later that I read the pass and see that I’ve certified that I live a minimum of 10kms from the venue. (I don’t.)

The gaming room is tucked away down a passage, far from prying eyes. This is actually a requirement for pokie venues. And staff are not allowed to disclose the identity of the clients. Make no mistake: there is embarrassment about entering a pokies venue. I hope I don’t meet anyone I know.

Enough talk

21/7/2023

Graham Street, "the concrete jungle". Beautification works are on hold until post-consultation consultation exclusively with traders.

By Catherine Watson

WE’VE been talking about the revitalisation of the Wonthaggi CBD since 2015. In that time we’ve seen a concept plan, an activity centre plan, a streetscape plan, an access and movement study, a traffic plan and a master plan.

Finally, after eight years of talk, councillors this week voted to adopt the Wonthaggi Activity Centre Streetscape Master Plan … with a proviso for more talk.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Cr Brett Tessari successfully pressed for a late amendment that means “beautification” works in Graham Street will not proceed until we’ve talked some more.

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