Point of view

We’re in this together

28/5/2020

National Reconciliation Week, smoking ceremony, Cowes cultural centre, 2018. This year’s gatherings are all virtual, but there’s still plenty happening

By Marg Lynn

HOW amazing that the theme for National Reconciliation Week is In This Together, the same term that has been bouncing around the COVID narrative as an expression of our shared humanity.

“In this together” is a hopeful message that sings with the positivity of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, declared three years ago to define a pathway for Black and White Australians to walk together towards a better future. They asked for constitutional recognition, enabling a Voice to Parliament to provide an Aboriginal perspective, but not a vote, on legislation that impacts on their communities.

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A work in progress

28/5/2020

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CompNow founder and director Pamela Rothfield in her home office at Rhyll, where she has worked remotely for many years.

By Pamela Rothfield

THE news bulletin sent shockwaves through my body. Our nation was waking up on the edge of a global financial collapse to rival that of the 1920s. We were facing an economic shutdown that included the cessation of international travel and the resulting decimation of the tertiary education sector. I’d never felt such a wave of panic before.

Could my business, which is heavily invested in the supply of IT goods and services to enterprise and tertiary sectors in all states of Australia, survive this shutdown?

The sense of responsibility for my 250-plus full time staff and their families was almost overwhelming. COVID-19 had certainly thrown us a curveball. How would my life change if my business collapsed?

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The new world of work

28/5/2020

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By Ajanta Judd

AS WE readjust to the easing of Victoria’s COVID-19 restrictions, we are being prompted to step tentatively out from our social isolation into a very changed working environment.

Within the comfort zone of our own homes, we’ve had the opportunity, if we were inclined, to pause and reflect upon our personal circumstances – to get in touch with what we really want, what matters the most to us – and perhaps restructure our way of being in the world. Hopefully, that’s been the most commonplace experience: an externally imposed ‘recalibration’ (thanks, Coronavirus, for the opportunity!). But for some, especially many parents home-schooling, or those who have not been well supported, it has been a struggle and one fraught with anxiety.

Coming out of this lockdown, many people will be trepidatious whilst others might embrace their new found liberty as though they’ve just been released from prison. (I see this in supermarkets where I’ve observed a distinct lack of social distancing, as though we are scot-free of coronavirus).

Ajanta Judd is an experienced tutor and mentor in community development, counselling & therapy plus small business operations. She runs Island Small Business Services and the free online Women Connect Tech Club at PICAL every Tuesday from 10am to 1pm, assisting and problem solving with a diverse range of device and computer issues.

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Grebe $m defeats community 0

14/5/2020

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Grebe Investments development site off Reed Crescent

By Peter McKenzie

AFTER several years of fighting the development of 83 new house blocks next to a wetland reserve in Reed Crescent, Wonthaggi, we finally have a result. The developers have won.

The thousands of hours and dollars put in by numerous objectors – individuals and the South Gippsland Conservation Society – came to nought. Not a total surprise because we were fighting in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), the jurisdiction orchestrated from the start by the developer Grebe Investments Pty Litd.

The reason we were there was that the developer lodged a claim that Bass Coast Shire Council had taken longer than the prescribed 60 days to decide on the development application. Damn the council, you might think.

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Brave new world

13/5/2020

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Stargazer, by Frank Schooneveldt

By Frank Schooneveldt

THE Big Bang occurred around 13.8 billion years ago.

Homo sapiens (wise man) evolved only 200,000 years ago.

There are now around 7.8 billion members of Homo sapiens living on planet earth (2020). Is this sustainable?

There is not much of planet earth that Homo sapiens has not touched, altered, changed or destroyed.

Homo sapiens is still evolving and like all the other Homo species will die out and be replaced by a new species, either of the Homo genus or something entirely different.

Some people think Homo sapiens are special. Some people think Homo sapiens are the rulers of the earth.

Some people think Homo sapiens are immortal.

Some people have a view that they do not fear death because they were created by a god. And therefore they will go to a god. They believe they are immortal.

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Too close to home

2/5/2020

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“THESE are angry little morsels.,” Jennifer wrote when she sent this piece in response to a request from the Post to keep a diary of her week of working at home and home schooling. "I thought about prettying them up, but why? If you can’t be honest in a diary format, then what is the point of writing?”

While some of us are thriving in these crazy times, Jennifer’s brutally honest account reminds us that, others are buckling under the increased demands and loss of personal space.

* Jennifer asked that the diary be anonymous so names have been changed.

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Just dropped in

17/4/2020

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By Maddy Harford

THAT familiar, irritating sound – not unlike fingernails across a blackboard – pierces the waves of emerging consciousness – again!

It’s been every morning for more than a week now. The noise persists for differing lengths of times; always getting louder and louder until it stops with a muffled thump.

I lie quietly, hoping he will get up and deal with it. No movement from the other side of the bed. Perhaps it hasn’t yet pierced his waves of emerging consciousness. How could it not?! I will say at the outset, though, that we share this task fairly equitably, depending on how well each has slept that night.

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Crises I have known

15/4/2020

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An outdoor school session for children affected by infant paralysis (polio), Frankston Children's Hospital, Jackson's Road, Mt. Eliza, 1936.
Up to 40,000 Australians, mostly children, developed paralytic polio.
Photo: State Library of Victoria.

Esteemed local elder Eulalie Brewster looks back on some of the turning points of history she has experienced in her 93 years.

By Eulalie Brewster

The polio epidemic

In 1937, when I was in grade five, the polio epidemic meant that for eight weeks we couldn’t go to school and school lessons came through the post. It must have been spring – October and November – and it felt like a holiday. We spent the time building huts, climbing large tea trees in back garden, reading, helping with chores. We had a big garden for play. A friend sometimes came to play. Her older sister had a crippled leg from a polio infection some 10 years earlier.

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Holden's last hurrah

18/3/2020

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The Holden proving ground is the perfect
parting gift to Australia for GM.

By Tim O’Brien

THE Lang Lang Holden Proving Ground is 877 hectares, slightly more than 2000 acres, most of it preserved bush. In a region which, once densely forested, has now just remnant pockets, the site is a unique parcel of West Gippsland coastal forest.

It is ideal for preservation for the environment and as habitat for endangered flora and the wildlife which once ranged this region. With the right government support, it might also be purposed for wildlife tourism, for indigenous culture and education, for complementary leisure activities, and as a research centre and breeding ground for wildlife affected by bushfire. This region is a centre for nature research and internationally famous for its wildlife tourism.

Given the loss of habitat in the West Gippsland region generally, and the recent vast losses of wildlife and habitat along the length (and inland) of the east coast, the 2000 acres of coastal forest covering this site makes it too valuable an asset to lose “to the property market” – too valuable to the local and broader environment and too important to the threatened species of the Westernport region.

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Poles apart

Shopping centres might be privately owned enterprises but they should also be civic spaces where people gather to discuss the issues of the day, argues Felicia Di Stefano

Refugee advocates outside the Wonthaggi Plaza in happier times.
Photo: Geoff Ellis

By Felicia Di Stefano

WE WERE kicked out of the Wonthaggi Plaza last month. For over two years a local refugee support group, South Gippsland Rural Australians for Refugees, had been meeting outside the plaza for an hour on the first Saturday of each month.

We distribute information about refugees, explaining why they need to flee their birthland, to inform people about the current treatment of refugees, films we are screening, and to have various petitions and letters signed.

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This working life

28/9/2019

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Illustration Ralph Ammer

Low pay, irregular hours, no job security … welcome to the precarious world of work for an increasing number of Australians.

By Kaz

I HAVE been in the workforce for 32 years, longer if you include the babysitting and cleaning jobs I did as a high school student. Despite two university degrees in education and the arts, most of my professional working life has been shaped by short term contracts, casual employment and small gigs such as running workshops as a sole trader.

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Here, for the long run

27/9/2019

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September 15, 2019. More than a thousand trail runners came together in races from 2km to 50km in the inaugural Phillip Island Festival of running. Photos Roland Pick, Phillip Island Nature Parks

From the relief of finishing to the joy of winning, three local runners describe their experience of the inaugural Phillip Island Festival of Running.

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It’s our future

14/9/2019

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Not happy: students and supporters at Wonthaggi's climate strike

Wonthaggi student Jessie Harrison explains why she’ll be joining next week’s global climate strike.

Post: How much do you worry about climate change?

Jessie: I worry quite often. Every day there are more reports on the news: the hottest day on record. The other day I heard a report that we have only 18 months to act to reverse climate change and become carbon neutral or else there’s no return.
Our generation will be hit the worst with climate change, with hotter summers and colder winters, bigger floods and melting ice signifying just the beginning. I want to be able to live to an old age without experiencing the worst impacts of climate change.

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Hard times

12/9/2019

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Ian Simmons describes the shock of trying to survive on
the Newstart allowance.

By Ian Simmons

WE ARRIVED in Melbourne from the UK in 1988. Within three days I was in a full-time management role and I continued in various management roles until 2016.

In 2011, with the children having finished school, we were ready for a lifestyle change. My wife left her job to supervise the completion of our new house in South Gippsland. I was working as Gippsland territory manager and my salary could support our lifestyle.

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Reflections on the nature of a climate emergency

31/8/2019

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Uncle Rob Bundle and Tucker Hayes on the Cowes jetty. Photo: Nicki Johnson

If we’re not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge, we must come together as a community, to listen to the environment and to one another.

Dr Laura Brearley

ACCORDING to the Climate Emergency website, 800 local councils around the globe have declared climate emergencies, 43 of them in Australia. Last week, Bass Coast Shire Council became one of them.

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