Long-time secondary and tertiary trainer Malcolm Beasley says the lack of hands-on vocational training in Bass Coast is short-changing local students and forcing them to leave home for training.
YOU can’t miss the Chisholm Institute campus on a prominent intersection as you drive into Wonthaggi. But despite the attractive campus and the impressive advertising hoardings, the institute doesn’t offer a single in-person course.
Long-time secondary and tertiary trainer Malcolm Beasley says the lack of hands-on vocational training in Bass Coast is short-changing local students and forcing them to leave home for training.
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![]() "Where would you turn for help?" By Leslie Adams TAKE a moment to think about the things that sustain your income, your lifestyle, your well being. Now think about most – maybe all - of that disappearing. What would that be like? Where are you now? Where would you turn to? Family? Friends? Bass Coast Health? The Salvos? Vinnies? My answer? I’m not sure. If I didn’t work at Mitchell House, I probably wouldn't know that there is a food program that would allow me to take away a bag of basic food items and maybe a frozen meal or two. That there is a community lunch every Wednesday. I wouldn’t know that they can provide toiletries and feminine hygiene products as well as baby food and sometimes even pet food. ![]() Bass Coast Post: Tell Post readers a bit about yourself. Did you know Bass Coast before you came to work here? Where did you grow up? Where do you live now? Greg Box: I know the beautiful Bass Coast well and have family in the area where I have spent time as far back as the 1970s and 80s, particularly on Phillip Island. After many years of my partner and I raising our family in the Dandenongs, I have for the past couple of years been a proud Bass Coast resident. Bass Coasters were in the box seat for one of Nature’s exhilarating light shows and thousands of locals braved the cold to catch the aurora australis from vantage points along the coast.
It was reportedly the best viewing for many years, caused by a geomagnetic “space storm” on the sun. Thanks to Alia Sconberg, Kim Richardson, Kylie Steer, Kim Atkinson and Nici Cahill for sharing their beautiful photos. By Peter Ghys THE Bass Coast Refugee Sponsorship Group has been around for a number of years. We set ourselves up to help refugee families settle into Australia. This concept is associated with the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot, which has a relationship with the Department of Immigration. So far our small group of volunteers, working out of Mitchell House in Wonthaggi, has helped two Syrian families, the Alis and the Al Habras, to settle in to Wonthaggi. ![]() THE olives are ripening early this year, not surprising given our glorious late summer weather, and so the first pressing of the year for Wonthaggi’s community olive press has been brought forward. It will be on Saturday, April 20, at the Rescue Station Arts Centre in Wonthaggi. Wonny Olives is the brainchild of Liane Arno and Matt Stone – the 600kg Italian-made beast of a presser is their gift to the community. By Dan Drummond
Darkness found in every tunnel Yet lamp light finds its way there Splint coal shovel and pick Skip pony haulage Lizzy waits on orders Found wanting Mullock heaps played on by Truants wagging school McBride Billson Murray Miners' cottages kept neat Some in ruin Shop girl teacher plumber Postie peddles hard against the wind Farmer shops before evening milking Concrete curb and channel Town drain lamp posts bollards In the distance cypress trees of old Hang their sad branches down No more now going Under ground. With apologies to Dylan Thomas ![]() By Helen Zervopoulos THE recent community recovery meetings were an opportunity for council, emergency services and AusNet to understand how the devastating storm on February 13 affected the community in order to improve strategies to deal with natural disasters in the future. The meeting at the Grantville hall was extremely well attended by both residents and emergency service representatives, including the SES, CFA, Police, Ambulance and allied emergency service personnel, as well as AusNet. Western Port councillor Geoff Ellis introduced the agenda and praised the community and emergency response teams on the way everyone had worked together to find ways of community support and give help to those in need. ![]() Photo: Geoff Ellis IT IS hardly thinkable that your house could catch fire while you are out, at exactly the same time as power is returned after a three-day outage. Add further devastation to find that a clerical error has left you without the financial protection of home and contents insurance. Just writing it now makes me feel a bit sick. But it happened. And as I've found, it happens not infrequently to people in our society. (NB. If you are reading this and not sure if you have home and contents insurance in place, now might be a good time to check.) The words of my next door neighbour, Dave, still ring in my ears. He called me as I drove home from Kernot, where I work as a personal care attendant. I was about 15 minutes from home. The power had just come back on and I was daydreaming about life after our three-day power outage. I thought about the tiny speck of ice that remained in the chest freezer in the garage that was keeping my milk and dog food cool. The timing was perfect for me, as in three days was about the limit of comfort in my house without power. No lights, hot water, refrigeration, stove ... inconvenient. ![]() By Beryl Farr IT’S all very well to expand to the north of Wonthaggi (Wonthaggi set to double Jan 18, 2024) but what about the forgotten south? Less than 1.5km from the Bass Coast Shire Council offices, we have unmade dirt roads, streets with no footpaths, or uneven and overgrown footpaths. Add open mosquito-filled drains that overflow when it rains. All of it unhealthy for residents. Years ago we could speak to our ward councillor about such matters but not any more. Remember we also vote in the South. ![]() By Ron Kousal THE Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra, can be traced back to the mid-19th century when the following peculiar, unlikely and some untrue events transpired that eventually brought the fledgling enterprise to Rhyll. The malevolents, known here as La Causa Nostril, portray a sad tale of underground destruction and unconscious hidden malice. Mafia men are braggarts and laggards, men of “honour” who intimidate, kill and steal. Like other organised crime groups, they profit from conduct hidden behind closed doors, deeds done in dark. But this model of behaviour was actually one they learnt, by experiment, at their first unlikely Sicilian outpost in Rhyll. ![]() LAST week the State Government gave the green light for massive new estates that will more than double Wonthaggi’s population from the current 8500 to 20,000. Under the Wonthaggi North East Precinct Structure Plan, the paddocks to the north-east of the town will be turned into housing estates, parklands, a school, shops, a village hub and factories over the next 30 years. Our little country town is destined to become a major regional centre. Many of us will be long gone by the time it’s finished but we will see rapid growth in the next few years. In fact we’re seeing it already. Whoever dreamed we’d see gridlock in the Wonthaggi CBD most days? Who envisaged our million dollar houses, our display village, our car rental depot, our massive new hospital, our Bunnings megastore? ![]() By Selena Routley Being alone, homeless (I am currently living in a van) and a writer, I often seek spaces like cafés and pubs to be in an environment where people, especially families with children, are enjoying each other’s company. Most proprietors in Inverloch know me by sight and are lovely to me. Most people in the area likewise are wonderful. On New Year’s Eve, I was in a local hotel. I had been wonderfully uplifted and inspired by the gorgeous sunset and was busy writing and enjoying my wine when one of a heavily drinking group intruded on my space with a “Ow’s it goin, Luv?!”. ![]() By Ron Kousal THAT’S what it might have been if our guns hadn’t been handed in to John Howard 20 years ago. And we’re all better off for it now because only in my mind was I a crack shot. If I’d let a few bullets fly here at the homestead in McIlwraith Rd, a lot of unintended consequences might have ensued. It’s very unlikely that my quarry would have been hit; it would have just scarpered away and hidden. And learnt not to be around when I had that big loud thing in my hand. Those big loud sticks are pretty useless, anyway. Here at the RK Homestead, we’ve declared war on them, built fortifications to exclude, lock the gates every night and conduct scouting operations many mornings at 5am. And the whole plan works beautifully, except when it doesn’t, which has my scalp rent of remaining hair as I cry out and beat my chest – there it is, in the middle of the lawn, the rabbit. ![]() At dusk on November 27 – a full moon – the Inverloch jetty was transformed by a Buddhist ritual: Loy Krathong, or the Full Moon Ceremony. Local Thai people and Karen people from Myanmar, their families and friends gathered with hand-made wreaths decorated with flowers and candles. Ploen Panyo, who helped to organise the ceremony, said it was an important part of Buddhist culture for people from many countries. ![]() By Jillian Durance THE school children laid their poppies here yesterday, handcrafted from red paper pasted onto icy pole sticks. Poked into the hard ground in front of the memorial cairn, some have lost their purchase and lie flat; their fragile edges flutter in the southerly breeze; the halyards clank on the empty flagpole. This year the Remembrance Day services have been held elsewhere, but at least the children remembered: yesterday. Today, Saturday, the road through Kongwak is quiet. The trees fringing the northern side stand straight, trunks evenly spaced. All deciduous, they have sprouted a fresh green in the past few weeks; oaks and pinoaks, mainly, some have trunks broad enough to hide behind. European trees, planted over a hundred years now, by women it is said whose sons and brothers had left the district to go to war on the other side of the world. For ‘King and Country’. Jane Ross and Christine Grayden call for a brief pause to remember the harsh reality of war for so many service people and civilians. A century of Legacy ![]() with members Dianne Holtrop and Maureen Matthews in their Legacy Centenary Torch Relay tops. By Jane Ross Fear not that you have died for naught; The torch you threw to us we caught! Those evocative words from a poem called ‘The Answer’, written in response to Lieutenant Colonel John McRae’s equally emotive ‘In Flanders Fields’, encapsulates the impetus for the formation of Legacy. A uniquely Australian organisation, Legacy has been assisting war widows and their children for the past 100 years. The spirit of Legacy is service and the torch is its symbol. Legatees pause to reflect on Remembrance Day (November 11) but theirs is an enduring quest for homage to those who fought to preserve our freedom. ![]() By Belinda Henderson IN EARLY 2016, my partner & I bolted down the South Gippy highway, incurring a bit of “white line fever” (that’s where you stare at the road ahead, clocking the road signs and hopefully, the speed limits) before arriving at Wonthaggi. Late for our first appointment with a real estate agent, hereafter known as the REA, we apologised profusely before realising, slowly, that we needn’t have been sorry at all. We were there to view three properties, with a view to buy. Why Wonthaggi? A clumsy formula of low house prices + services - not middle of nowhere + I sort of knew the place + six months pregnant = Wonthaggi. ![]() As told to Matt Stone MY NAME is Harry Hyper Highpurr. Some people call me adorable – and I think I am with my fluffy coat and my bright blue eyes. But others call me a murderer. They say that I should be eradicated – well perhaps not straight away but over time. I can understand that people might get concerned about feral cats. After all they don’t have loving servants owners to feed and groom and cuddle them. They have to eat and so they do kill a lot where they roam. The trouble is that the professors who did their study try to make out that we domestic cats are a bigger threat. "Whilst each urban cat kills fewer animals on average than a feral cat in the bush, in urban areas the density of cats is much higher (over 60 cats per square kilometre). As a result, cats in urban areas kill many more animals per square kilometre each year than cats in the bush." Now – really – surely that is playing with statistics, isn’t it? It is like saying that my owner eats more when they sit at a large table with friends than if they eat alone. ![]() By Jen Riley GETTING older can be a lonely experience for some people. Seeing a friendly face and having a regular visitor can help change that. The Aged Care Volunteer Visitors Scheme (formerly known as the Community Visitors Scheme) matches volunteer visitors to residents living in an aged care facility or living in their own home. The program aims to help diminish the feelings of isolation and loneliness. I asked Antonietta, one of our wonderful visitors in the Bass Coast area, to explain what makes this program so special, for visitors as well as residents. By Ken Blackman
DECADES ago, you could camp in The Glade; the old stone shelter survives, but the sites that once stretched west for over a hundred metres are gone. All were moved to provide more and better camping – and to re-purpose focused public open space in a central location. The way the township has slowly grown since, in activity and amenity, has left its central coastal zone as a key environmental asset. The Glade, part of that, is the town’s natural outdoor-gathering area. Its reasonable preservation – from environmental degradation, from built penetration and oversight-pollution - is clearly of primary importance to the town. By Maddy Harford
REFUGEE Week in Bass Coast is a time for celebration. With a long history (about 15 years) of welcoming and supporting refugees from various corners of the globe, we can reflect on successful settlements and integration and the diversity these have contributed to our community. Our most recent arrivals are the Ali family who arrived in Wonthaggi from Syria, via Iraq, in November. Lukman and Khadija Ali and their four young children came to Australia under the new Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP to its friends), which engages groups of everyday Australians to wrap comprehensive support around the new arrivals. ![]() By Brett Tessari FOUR weeks ago more than 300 people turned up to the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club on a cold and wet night because they want to save the State Coal Mine. With underground tours suspended and the café closed, the State Coal Mine is doomed unless something changes – and fast. The passion in the room was obvious as person after person spoke about what the place meant to them and their families, not just as a historic precinct commemorating our coal mining history but as a gathering place for the community. ![]() By Catherine Watson MONASH Liberal MP Russell Broadbent believes Australia’s First Peoples have shown “deep mercy and a pure heart” in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in inviting Australians to walk with them into a better future for all. Mr Broadbent will not be actively campaigning in the lead-up to the referendum on a Voice to Parliament, but he has made his position clear over many years. He contributed to Statements from the Soul, a book of essays published in February which featured Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish and Hindu religious and cultural perspectives on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. |