Point of view from Bass Coast

Iain Ritchie was the steady rock and guiding hand for
so much good stuff that happened in our community.

By Pat Atkinson

IAIN Ritchie had been manager of Mitchell House for four years when he died suddenly last week at the age of 61. Friends and colleagues are mourning a man who helped some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and did it with a rare grace, humility and humour.

So what is there to say about Iain? He was at the helm of our Wonthaggi Neighbourhood Centre, which covers Mitchell House and the Harvest Centre, for over four years. The over-arching theme was that he was a kind, considerate and compassionate person, dedicated to the whole precept of what community centres are all about.

“Iain lived and breathed his passion for social justice,” Bass Coast Deputy Mayor Leticia Laing said at this week’s council meeting. “Whether someone was new to the country, needed support to get the next meal, or just to fill out a form, Iain was on the front line of supporting the most vulnerable members of our community.”

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Riding the Mega Tropis

30/6/2022

By Max Richter

IN 2009-10 my partner Tina and I volunteered with Australian Volunteers International in the gargantuan city of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and the world’s second-largest urban conglomerate after Tokyo. Citizens and foreigners alike have long lamented Jakarta’s crazy traffic jams, heavy smog and polluted waterways, flash floods, social inequalities and corruption. And yet, with so many interesting people and its diverse and sometimes bizarre offerings, a certain fondness for Jakarta also tends to pervade.

In mid-2010 I returned to Australia to work at Monash Uni with a plan to write a book on these “love and loathe” experiences. Mega Tropis: Life, Music and Work as a Jakarta Volunteer is now finally published. Last week I met up with the editor and owner of the publishing house in Healesville and picked up the hundred copies in four neat cardboard boxes.

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Where is the vision?

30/6/2022

By Trevor Forge

WHEN it comes to urban planning and design, most people understand there are numerous acts, regulations and local laws that affect the way subdivisions, building developments and town plans are conceived and constructed.

In Inverloch, there is also a policy statement and a design framework to guide the implementation of every development in town, backed up by the Inverloch Strategic Framework Plan and the Town Centre Restructure Plan.

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Locked out

17/6/2022

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Save Western Port Woodlands members greeted sand miners and Bass MP Jordan Crugnale when they arrived at the Grantville Hall for a meeting of the secretive Grantville Environmental Review Committee.

By Neil Rankine

INTERNET searches for the Grantville Environmental Review Committee (ERC) draw a blank. There is no contact number for queries or complaints, no agenda or minutes are published and meetings are closed to the public. It’s even difficult to find out where and when the ERC is meeting.

This committee is supposedly the community’s conduit to raise matters of concern with the local sand mining industry and the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, but it operates more like a secret society.

Save Western Port Woodlands (SWPW) has been requesting the ERC’s terms of reference for over a year. We were informed that it was under review. We asked for the current ones in the interim but there is still no response. The ERC includes three community representatives but the selection process remains a mystery.

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The boundary wars

16/6/2022

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By Cheryl Padgett

IF YOU live in or visit Cape Paterson, you might have recently encountered some hardy residents braving the cold seeking signatures on a letter to Dan Andrews, and you might also have noticed some new corflutes on fences around the village.

The locals asking for your support are from the Save Cape Paterson from Overdevelopment Group. The group formed in April after the long-awaited draft State Planning Policy (SPP) was found to include the Cape Paterson boundary that had been expanded by the former State Government in 2011. While there was online consultation on the draft SPP, many found it quite difficult to respond.

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The numbers game

5/5/2022

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Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak

By Ali Wastie

WE KNOW the game. Politicians promise to govern for all Australians, but the reality is they care a lot more about you if you are lucky enough to live in one of the marginal seats which are their path to power.

They know it - and it has now become so obvious I reckon we all know it.

Now this is not a whinge about one particular party versus the other. It plays out across Australia in every election and is prosecuted by parties of every colour.

They’re all up to it.

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Ring the changes

23/3/2022

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Sexual harassment derailed Ali Wastie’s first career. The CEO of Bass Coast Council is determined it won’t happen to anyone else on her watch.

By Ali Wastie

GENDER equality should be the norm. But as many women reading this will know it often takes an incident to give us that extra bit of motivation we need to set us on the path to fighting for true fairness.

For me, it was an experience with sexual harassment early in my working life that has shaped my leadership more than two decades later.

I was in my early 20s when another teacher sexually harassed me. It was significant enough for me to lodge a formal complaint to the principal of the school. The principal encouraged me to drop the complaint, reminded me that I was on contract (code for did not have to be renewed) and recommended I be more circumspect in what I wore.

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Turning points

11/3/2022

Rebecca Slavin, Sally Conning and Emma Grabham describe the moments when everything changed.

Three women with very different stories … each of them recalls a moment when their lives pivoted. Rebecca Slavin, Emma Grabham and Sally Conning were on a panel chaired by Bass Coast's Deputy Mayor, Leticia Laing at the Bass Coast celebration of International Women’s Day.

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Too close to home

10/3/2022

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The State Government Big Housing Build allocated $25 million to build affordable housing in Bass Coast but no projects have been confirmed.

By Helen Searle

A FAMILY in the Wonthaggi area was recently told they couldn’t renew their rental lease. They don’t yet have enough money to buy a home and they have not been able to find another rental property. Both parents are working and the children are settled in school. Soon they will be forced out of their community with the possibility of also having to give up their jobs.

Another Wonthaggi tenant, a woman in her 50s on a disability pension, has recently been given notice after many years because the owners are selling. She cannot find a place to rent and sees no other option than to couch surf with family until something turns up.

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A taste of paradise

9/3/2022

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A world away: Rory Marshall wrestles a 27kg jackfruit in
far north Queensland.

By Rory Marshall

IN MAY 2021, I fled my home town on Phillip Island. This was the year I had planned to travel to South and Central America on my post-university graduation adventure.

I finished my bachelor’s degree in public health and health promotion in October 2020. With no sign of international travel commencing soon I bought a van and spent eight months designing and building it into my house on wheels. The COVID19 mandates meant tourism, the primary income for the island, was non-existent. Victoria suffered some of the harshest lockdown laws in the world and our community felt it. Work hours were scarce. Depression was at an all-time high, businesses closed daily and our island could see no light at the end of the tunnel.

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Cowes reimagined

10/2/2022

Another summer, another year of traffic chaos. Photo: Marie Aberle

By Christine Grayden

ANOTHER year of stressful Cowes traffic chaos – can things be done differently?

In a recent discussion on the traffic and parking chaos and general stress that occurs every busy season in Cowes, one person quoted an expert on the subject: “Cars don’t shop. People shop.”

What we are doing now, and have done for decades, is no longer sustainable. Various plans have been mooted to fix the Cowes CBD’s problems, but they tend to be piecemeal – covering up the symptoms rather than dealing with the cause of the disease. So what is to be done? After canvassing various friends for their ideas, I invite you to picture this vision of Cowes reimagined.

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‘We shouldn't have to live like this’

27/1/2022

Photo: Janice Hughes

By Jan Fleming

YESTERDAY I did something I never thought I would do: I had a real estate agent come round to give me an estimate on my house.

My partner John and I have had some very happy years here in Batman Street. Surf Beach is just down the road. We walk there every day with our greyhound Cash. We have good neighbours. There is a real sense of community. I thought this was my forever house.

Everything changed just before Christmas when the council removed the dust suppressant from our street.

It was always a busy street because it leads straight to Surfies Point. There is heavy traffic most of the time because the tradies can pull up at the car park and check out the surf without even getting out of their utes. It’s a narrow road, with ditches either side, and they drive too fast, but we could live with it. Until now.

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23 signs you have it

27/1/2022

By Christine Grayden

IT’S 2022 and although many forms of historic craziness still abound, the Covid pandemic has brought on its own forms of crazy. Here are some sure-fire signs I’ve detected to look for pandemic craziness in yourself and others:

1. The first thing you do in the morning is check the news for the Covid figures even though you know perfectly well nobody has a clue what they really are. No-one. Anywhere. In. The. World. Knows.
2. You are entering an enclosed space other than your home without wearing an effective mask.
3. You are so convinced that current vaccinations actually work for all Covid at all times that no precautions are necessary. (See 2. Above)

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A guardian of Phillip Island history

16/12/2021

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Gaye Cleeland: 1949-2021

By Pam Rothfield

I READ somewhere that friends are the antidote to the burdens of daily life. Gaye Cleeland was my friend. She was also my second cousin. She was a beautiful soul, highly intelligent with a gentle demeanour, yet fiercely independent.

We shared a passion, which was researching the stories and history of our ancestors and the local history of Phillip Island.

Gaye was born Gabrielle Patricia Cleeland in the Warley Bush Nursing Hospital in Cowes on St Patrick’s Day, 17th March 1949. This was rather a fitting day for Gaye – as she was proud of her Irish ancestry, being Cleeland.

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‘Welcome to Bass Coast’

15/12/2021

Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House hosts a women’s multicultural group,
one of many activities to welcome refugees to Bass Coast.

By Gemma Sou

HOW does the Bass Coast community welcome people from refugee backgrounds? That’s the question I’m currently investigating as part of my Vice Chancellor Fellowship based at the RMIT University.

Why this topic? Across Australia, people from refugee backgrounds are increasingly moving to small regional towns, rather than bigger cities such as Melbourne or Sydney. Many people in Australia assume that regional towns are dominated by xenophobic and discriminatory attitudes to people from refugee backgrounds. However, this is only one part of the story.

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Life on the spectrum

3/12/2021

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Part 3: New adventures

Kate Harmon, pictured with her mother and two brothers. Life was
difficult for a kid who was very different from those around her.

By Kate Harmon

I WAS a very hyperactive child whose battery never stopped. I would just go, go and go. There was never any downtime or a stop button. How my Mum coped I will never know.

One of my childhood memories was when we lived in Caloundra in Queensland opposite a cemetery. We had a big tree in the front yard so my brothers and I moved our trampoline under the tree and we climbed up the tree to the highest branch, jumped out of the tree onto the trampoline then bounced back up the tree with Mum in the kitchen yelling “Stop doing that or you will break a bone or your necks and I will NOT be happy”.

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Too close to home

16/11/2021

Wonthaggi's housing crisis has only worsened since the closure of the Miners Rest Caravan Park.

By Helen Searle

Over the years many individuals and families stayed in the Wonthaggi Miners Rest Caravan Park because they had nowhere else to go. The local housing agency also relied on it when emergency houses were full.

For many years there were rumours about the park closing and eventually in 2019 it was really happening. The Wonthaggi Branch of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union took an active role in the lead up to the closure advocating for the residents who were to be evicted from the caravan park. Some members of the union lived in the caravan park and were faced with the challenge of where to find a home. Although officially everyone was rehoused we understand that not all the options were sustainable.

In February 2020 a public meeting drew 50 community members to hear speakers from Melbourne-based Defend and Extend Public Housing advocacy group and to discuss the housing issues in the Bass Coast Shire brought to a head by the caravan park closure.

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The Bass Coast Afghans: the next steps

22/10/2021

The local community has rallied to the cause of two
Afghan men, including Zamin, who want to settle in
Bass Coast and bring their families.

By Harry Freeman

A few weeks ago, just after the Taliban had once again overrun Afghnistan, I reported on the situation of four Afghans who have built up a connection with this area through their participation in English language training classes at the Bass Coast Adult Learning Centre (BCAL) in Wonthaggi. (Our Afghan connection, Bass Coast Post, August 26, 2021).

So strong is this connection, in fact, that two of them, Zamin and Reza, want to move to live and work here themselves, as well as bring their families to join them from overseas.

As a result of that article and other publicity there was a heartwarming response from the local community; over $10 000 was quickly raised by two groups supporting the Afghan students.

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Get on board!

22/10/2021

By Robert Hayward

WE ARE seeking a weekend bus service from Cape Paterson to Wonthaggi and an extension of the service to the Cape eco village.

Curently Cape Paterson’s young people are isolated from Wonthaggi at the weekends and Wonthaggi’s young people are isolated from the beach at Cape Paterson.

But a weekend bus service is not just for young people. There are more retired folk at Cape Paterson not driving any more who are also isolated from friends and services in Wonthaggi.

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‘I’m no ratbag’

8/10/2021

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In a video broadcast entitled Overcoming Fear, Russell Broadbent explains why he won’t be getting the COVID vaccine any time soon.

By Russell Broadbent

IT SEEMS of late that if you question the status quo around vaccines you are deemed to be part of the radical fringe of society. Australians DO question things, especially authority. Always have, always will.

You know of my questions regarding vaccines, vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations. If you don’t, this is where I stand.

1. I’m uncomfortable with mass vaccination of the population with a vaccine that is, according to Minister Hunt, being trialled across the world. We have no knowledge of the side effects until they present themselves and of course no idea about the long-term ramifications.

The producers of the vaccines obviously share my discomfort because they are indemnified, that is no one can sue them for unforeseen outcomes.

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On Bass Coast's COVID front line

7/10/2021