Bass Coast Post - Environment

Flights of fancy

26/9/2019

By Sue Woolley

I’VE always loved birds, but have never really had the time to pursue birdwatching as a hobby. Working, and bringing up children who were never really interested in the outdoors, meant that the idea of spending time walking, identifying birds and photographing them was out of the question until recently. I joined Birdlife Australia and Birdlife Photography many years ago, and avidly read the magazines and watched jealously as outings and talks were advertised.

Growing, growing, gone …

14/9/2019

Carbon auctioneer Greg Price orchestrated some spirited bidding at Australia’s first auction of carbon insets, held in Cowes last weekend. The auction raised $7000 to promote carbon farming on the island.

By Bhavani Rooks

DON’T get confused about carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon. It took me a while. They’re two different states of the same thing. The bad stuff is the CO2 in the air; the good stuff is the carbon in the soil or vegetation. Carbon farming, or regenerative agriculture, is all about putting carbon dioxide back in the soil.

Each year on average on Phillip Island 19,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent has been stored in vegetation thanks to Landcare, Westernport Water, Nature Parks and all the groups that are planting trees across the island.

Special day for plover lovers

13/9/2019

Mother plover and chicks. Photo: Glenn Ehmke,
courtesy of Birdlife Australia

BASS Coast’s Friends of the Hooded Plover are shining a spotlight on these vulnerable and much loved local birds as part of International Plover Appreciation Day on Monday (September 16).

The day is aimed at raising awareness of the plight of ground-nesting plovers who share our beaches, including Inverloch, Cape Paterson, Harmers Haven, Williamsons and Kilcunda.

Local co-op unveils new power deal

12/9/2019

By Susan Davies

THE ENERGY Innovation Co-operative has announced a new retail electricity offer to benefit the Bass Coast and South Gippsland communities.

In 2018 the Co-op joined with similar groups to start the move towards a community-owned electricity retailer in Victoria. The aim is to keep electricity prices as low as possible, to make pricing as transparent as possible, to return benefits to the local community, and to help fund community owned renewable energy generation.

The first step is a partnership with a commercial retailer. “Co-operative Power” is now taking customers. Local householders and businesses are invited to visit the Energy Innovation Co-op website and click on the Co-operative Power link to check out the new power offer.

Here’s to a bright future

31/8/2019

Visitors to the open day can visit Bimbadeen, the scene of Bob Davie's ground-breaking trials of carbon farming.

Electric vehicles, a carbon farming tour, and a low carbon lunch are on the menu as Totally Renewable Phillip Island marks its first year of action.

An open day at the Cowes Cultural Centre next Sunday is a chance for locals to catch up with what the group’s been doing as it plans for a decade of action to help the Island transition to 100 per cent renewable energy.

Highlights of the open day include:

TRPI energy challenge. Reduce your energy use by 20 per cent and compete for a 5kW solar system and other energy solutions.
There will be electric vehicles on display, with someone to answer all your questions.
Solar installers will be on hand to discuss the SmartBuy solar and battery program.
Carbon farming tour to Bimbadeen Farm in Ventnor where Bob Davies is conducting ground-breaking trials of carbon farming (Bookings required).
Stalls promoting sustainable living.

The fine art of mending

18/8/2019

Happy customer Florence with her newly mended wardrobe drawer.

By Hilary Stuchbery

BEFORE the doors even opened for the first Fixit Café at the Wonthaggi Men’s Shed on July 21, people were lining up with items to be fixed.

A rocking chair, a garden fork, a sander and a saucepan were all weighed and handed over to the appropriate volunteer.

Robert Mesley and his team of fixers from the Men’s Shed kept up a blistering pace of mending, while guest volunteers from Melton, Karen and Danny Ellis, concentrated on electrical faults and sewing.

Meanwhile, Iain Ritchie served up endless coffees from the machine and visitors enjoyed the delicious contributions as the buzz in the room intensified.

Our natural treasures

17/8/2019

Moonah trees, Churchill Island. Print by Robert Ingpen

Some of Phillip Island’s trees are as historic and memorable as our heritage-listed buildings, writes Greg Buchanan.

By Greg Buchanan

THE old Moonah trees growing around the coastline of Churchill Island are perhaps 200 years old or more. Their twisted and gnarled limbs and dense canopy may have been part of the landscape for indigenous Australians well before the issue of a pastoral lease and farming of the island in the mid 1800s.

This iconic species, a feature of Robert Ingpen’s drawings of Churchill Island, are as memorable as the heritage-listed buildings on the island.

Where did our beach go?

3/8/2019

Ecologist Alison Oates, South Gippsland Conservation Society vice president Dave Sutton and Marine and Coastal Council chair Anthony Boxshall inspect the beach after the launch of the report. The wet sand fencing trial can be seen in the background.

By Catherine Watson

WE ARE in uncharted waters when it comes to understanding what’s happening to the Inverloch beaches, according to geomorphologist Neville Rosengren.

He made the comment at the Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club yesterday as the South Gippsland Conservation Society launched a major report that called for a range of short-term and long-term measures to address or slow Inverloch’s coastal erosion.

The Inverloch Coastal Resilience Report, the culmination of 12 months of investigation and consultation, draws on specialist consultant studies in geomorphology, ecology, cultural heritage and economics commissioned for the project.

All hands on deck

20/7/2019

Inverloch beach. Photo: BC CAN

By Michael Nugent

YOU’VE installed solar roof panels, you avoid heavily packaged goods, you leave the car at home and walk or bike, you take your own cup for takeaway coffee …

But while you and I are trying to reduce our carbon footprints and to live more sustainably, individual actions alone won’t save us from climate change’s most severe effects.

We also need collective action from federal, state and local governments to reduce emissions, i.e. climate change mitigation. Collective action is also needed for climate change adaptation, i.e., to help communities adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change, including those already upon us in Bass Coast, such as increased coastal erosion.

Power to the people

25/6/2019

Tidal generators at San Remo, a biodigester at the Grantville landfill, floating solar arrays on the Candowie and Lance Creek reservoirs … just some of the ideas put forward for a local energy roadmap. Catherine Watson reports

People to power energy roadmap

16/5/2019

Photo: Geelong Sustainability

RESIDENTS of Bass Coast and South Gippsland are invited to help identify local opportunities and challenges in a renewable energy roadmap.

The Roadmap will be developed through a series of community-wide workshops, one-on-one meetings and an online survey.

The project is being co-ordinated by community energy group Energy Innovation Co-operative (EICo-op), the group behind the 92 kWh solar farm at the State Coal Mine.

EICo-op chair Moragh Mackay, who is leading the roadmap project, says it will include recommendations for government, community and business to realise renewable energy projects in Bass Coast and Souyth Gippsland.

Council on the wrong path

16/5/2019

A shared pathway incorporating 138 parking bays, will require the removal of coastal vegetation. Image: Bass Coast Council

By Aileen Vening

THIS week I attended the council’s environment advisory committee meeting and showed images of changes at Inverloch beach since 2004.

The purpose of the meeting was to persuade the council to defer the second stage of the shared pathway at least until a local coastal hazard study has been completed.

Inverloch surf beach has lost up to 40 metres of sand, as well as dune vegetation, in the last few years, leaving sand cliffs six metres high.

Life in Wonthaggi, 2050

15/5/2019

Harvey Green with his 2050 diary

By Catherine Watson

ELEVEN-year-old Harvey Green set the scene for a recent climate change forum with a reading from his imaginary diary set in the year 2050.

He describes a world where the dams are empty, the tomatoes are cooking on the trees, Silverleaves is underwater and Inverloch is ablaze.

Harvey asked: “Will my world be too hot, flooded, drought stricken, full of fires and severe storms? Will the wonders of nature be long gone before my children are adults?”

Harvey’s reading was the opening act of the Bass Coast Climate Action Network’s (BCAN) first event, a showing of Accelerate, a film about climate action featuring 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and panel discussion.

A Mother’s Day mourning

15/5/2019

Extinct: the Bramble Cay melomys

By Suzanne Deed

WHILE many people in South Gippsland honoured their mother with breakfast in bed and lunch at a local restaurant on Mothers’ Day, others gathered in Inverloch for a vigil for Mother Nature and a memorial service for the latest mammal to become extinct in Australia.

The Bramble Cay melomys lived on a tiny sand island in the Torres Strait, in Northern Australia. The species has not been seen since 2009, when Bramble Cay was flooded by rising sea levels. It was officially declared extinct on February 18, 2019, the first mammal known to become extinct due to climate damage.

From little things big things grow

4/5/2019

From left, project manager John Coulter, EICO chair Moragh McKay and Energy Minister Lily D'Ambrosio

By Catherine Watson

FIVE years ago, a few people gathered at the State Coal Mine cafe for a coffee and a chat about putting on a few kilowatts of rooftop solar panels.

Yesterday that initial chat became a reality when Energy, Environment and Climate Change Minister Lily D’Ambrosio performed the ceremonial switching on of the system.

In the five intervening years, however, the little system had blown out to a mini solar farm of 92 kWh of solar panels and 41 kWh of battery storage that will power the whole of the energy-hungry State Coal Mine tourist attraction.

A bolt from the blue

5/4/2019

Could Western Port’s mangroves help to tackle climate change? The answer, writes Neil Daly, is in the tea leaves, if only the politicians would take notice.

Yes we can

5/4/2019

Still from Accelerate produced by 350.org

By Maddy Harford

THERE’S a new kid on the block: Bass Coast Climate Action Network, or Bass Coast CAN to its friends.

We're a small group of Bass Coasters committed to getting the word out about the reality and the impacts of climate change.

An increasing number of individuals and organisations are coming to understand the stark ramifications of the remorseless increase in overall global temperatures: rising levels – and acidification – of the oceans, increasing frequency of extreme weather events and melting ice caps to name a few.

Is this a climate emergency? We think so!

The magic of trees

10/12/2018

Snowgums, Mt Baw Baw by Catherine Watson

Photo: Catherine Watson

Tree clearing on Phillip Island has reached epidemic proportions, writes Bernie McComb, as new research shows the profound effect of trees on keeping our planet habitable.

More power to you!

23/11/2018

By Susan Davies

THE current electricity market punishes loyal electricity customers who stick with their same retail company year after year. Those are the customers who tend to be paying the highest electricity rates.

The Energy Innovation Co-operative (EICO) is encouraging Bass Coast residents to check and compare their energy costs at the government website Victorian Energy Compare.

Glampers on a mission

31/10/2018

Gippsland Intrepid landcarers at a previous event controlling sea spurge at Sandy Point.

BASS Coast’s young conservationists have an opportunity to meet like-minded people in a beach clean-up and overnight camp on Phillip Island in early December.

The event is run by Gippsland Intrepid Landcare, a volunteer organisation that aims to connect young people aged 18-35 to the Gippsland environment and Landcare through adventure and meaningful activities.

Enough to drive you wild

4/10/2018

Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak

By Catherine Watson

PHILLIP Island wildlife carers Kaylene Mendola and Colleen Gilbee found plenty of support when the council confiscated their warning signs late last month.

The signs warned motorists to go slow to avoid injuring or killing the island’s native wildlife.

Inverloch home ticks all the boxes

31/8/2018

The walls of Cait and Peter Ghys’s strawbale house are half a metre thick and it has just received a 10-star energy rating.

By Catherine Watson

AS CAIT and Peter Ghys approached retirement, they decided to fulfil a long-held dream and build a strawbale house.

A walk on the wild side

29/8/2018

A tree goanna in The Gurdies, 2018. Photo: Bruce Preston, digitally enhanced by George Papas

If you’re lucky enough to encounter a goanna in The Gurdies, don’t stand staring at it for too long, advises Dick Wettenhall

High hopes for first solar project

28/8/2018

Ben Stephens at the Phillip Island Early Learning Centre Cowes, proposed for the island’s first community solar project.

Totally Renewable Phillip Island is seeking support for its first community energy project.

Full steam ahead

2/8/2018

Peter Wonfor and Moragh Mackay go through some of the options at the Totally Renewable Phillip Island workshop.

While the politicians are still arguing about renewable energy, Phillip Islanders are getting on with it.