Point of view from Bass Coast

Our Afghan connection

26/8/2021

Reza was the first Afghan student to study at Bass Coast
Adult Learning. Others soon followed.

By Harry Freeman

IT BEGAN one Monday morning three years ago when staff at the Bass Coast Adult Learning Centre (BCAL) in Wonthaggi arrived to find an unexpected visitor from Dandenong.

Reza, who originally came from Afghanistan, was eager to talk to the staff about joining the English Language class the centre offers. He wanted to improve his language skills and had also discovered that if he attended the class here, the closest regional language centre to his present place of residence, it would give him a better chance of extending his Safe Haven visa when it expired in five years’ time.

BCAL, being a friendly and welcoming place, was more than happy to accommodate Reza’s request. And so began an association which continues to the present day.

4 Comments

How we see it

13/8/2021

4 Comments

Forty people on a mission to nail a vision of Bass Coast in 2041. Here’s what they came up with. Photo: Linda Cuttriss

By Harry Freeman

IT’S JUST over 10 years now since my wife and I bought a property in the area. At the time one of the main reasons we chose Bass Coast to live was its proximity to Melbourne. We imagined we would spend most of the time we were down here getting our property into shape and then be going back up to the city regularly to spend time with our friends and getting a cultural fix.

And then we started meeting and interacting with the locals. It didn’t take long to realise we’d (rather unwittingly) struck gold and we haven’t looked back since. We’ve been blown away by the welcome we’ve received from the amazing and talented local community. So when we decided to downsize recently there was no thought of moving any further than the nearest town to see out the rest of our days here. (I’ve even picked out the spot where I’d like my ashes to be scattered.)

4 Comments

The ghost of Christmas past

28/7/2021

7 Comments

Joy Button recalls the highlights of Coronet Bay’s
Christmas lunch tradition – and explains why
organisers have decided to call it a day.

By Joy Button

CHRISTMAS Day is meant to be a joyous occasion but for some people it’s the loneliest and saddest day of the year. That’s why Rona and Laurie Black created the first Christmas lunch in Coronet Bay in 2007.

Some of us were fortunate to be a part of those early lunches and to help out on the day itself. Volunteers sat down and enjoyed the Christmas meal together with those attending, creating a sense of family and community over the years.

Seeing the fabulous goodwill that existed at this worthy event inspired the current team of Coronet Bay Christmas Lunch Inc. to take over in 2014 when Rona and Laurie moved to Wonthaggi.

We welcomed anyone who was on their own, be they young or old, a single person or a couple seeking companionship on Christmas Day.

7 Comments

Will your feet be the end of me?

16/7/2021

7 Comments

When it comes to walking tracks, it's not all about humans, writes Julie Thomas. We’ve taken more than our share already.

By Julie Thomas

THE push and pull of nature versus development is a recurring theme in our region. As Leticia Laing shows in her article on the proposed Yallock-Bulluk trail, Parks are for Everyone, the escalating impact by people is a continuing source of distress in the community.

A walk is good. The designers dream of an iconic walk like Cape to Cape and those at Wilsons Prom. But these are through huge tracts of bushland.

Bass Coast is not the Prom. If we are going to have thousands more walkers, it has to be done differently here. A look at the map in Leticia's article shows the desperately thin strip of land which remains for wildlife in this area. If they are disturbed here, where can they go? Nowhere.

7 Comments

Here to share

16/7/2021

1 Comment

Corinella food pantry volunteers Kylie Hakim, left, and
Janice Orchard. The service has just started stocking
dairy items again so the fridge looks a bit bare!

By Kerri Richie

BEING able to put food on the table for yourself and your family is a basic human right. It should not be a privilege or a challenge.

Corinella and District Community Centre (CDCC) has operated a food pantry/emergency food relief/foodbank service for over 10 years. This has helped hundreds of people over the years to meet this basic right and to relieve just a bit of the pressure in stressful times.

In 2019 our pantry assisted more than 355 people. During the lockdown year of 2020, when we only operated one day per week for most of the year, we still assisted over 225 local people.

Who uses our food pantry? Well, that changes from time to time.

1 Comment

Parks are for everyone

2/7/2021

7 Comments

Victoria’s newest park, the Yallock-Bulluk Marine and Coastal Park, was officially launched on Sunday at the Mouth of the Powlett.
From left, Bunurong Land Council chairman Uncle Mik Edwards,
Bass MP Jordan Crugnale, Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio and
Parks Victoria chairman John Pandazopoulos.

By Leticia Laing

LAST Sunday Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio officially launched the Yallock-Bulluk Marine and Coastal Park at the Mouth of the Powlett.

The goal of connecting 40km of walking and cycling trails from San Remo to Inverloch is a lofty one and in some ways unrealistic when viewed in the context of the fragility of the environment and the many hazardous elements to this coast.

7 Comments

Yes, I’m a Nimby

17/6/2021

21 Comments

Notre Dame Cathdral. Photo: Kriti Shankar

By David Arnault

WHEN my daughters were seven and nine, I took them to Paris and along the way visited Notre Dame. I remembered the cathedral from my youth as a place of worship, and a place which held free organ recitals every Sunday, a magnificent place of beauty and, for me, wonder. Of course, I loved the architecture and the rose windows and the grandeur of the pipe organ, but more than anything else I loved the reverence of those who took themselves to this sacred space, and I loved it that the centuries of that respect seemed to have been absorbed by the stones.

Two decades later, when I re-visited Notre Dame, this time with my children, the sacred place was packed with tourists, American, Japanese, and others less identifiable, and the atmosphere was competitive, with most trying to capture the altar or the rose windows with their cameras. I say it was competitive because grown-ups were pushing and shoving each other and even the children.

21 Comments

When words fail

20/5/2021

5 Comments

As a mural takes shape, Jeannie Haughton is reminded that
the arts can make a difference.

By Jeannie Haughton

IN DROUIN, a town in neighbouring Baw Baw Shire, a large wall mural of birds surrounded by ficifolia blossom has just been completed by Dan Wenn of 90 Degrees Art. It is a stunningly lovely insertion into a dreary, tatty, congested shopping area.

The public response has been extraordinarily positive. People have stopped by to watch the progress – chatted with each other and with Friends of Drouin’s Trees volunteers who have been distributing all sorts of materials and information. Tradies have bipped and thrust an upturned thumb at Dan as he has worked; selfie-lovers and serious photographers have propped close to, and far from, the mural to capture great shots. Facebook is full of positive comments. Believe it or not, new acquaintanceships and connections have formed in the last ten days.

5 Comments

Try again on trail: planning expert

5/5/2021

2 Comments

Is a track on the inland side of Bunurong Coast Road feasible?
Image: Google Earth

By Nicholas Low

AT LAST month’s public consultation in Inverloch for the Yallock-Bulluk walking and cycling trail, it appeared that Parks Victoria had already decided that a section of the trail between Cape Paterson and Inverloch had been ruled out.

This annoyed many residents of Cape Paterson and Inverloch who believed they were being consulted about options for this section of the trail.

I advocate an off-road section of bike-walking path following the line of the road but on the inland side, mostly using small slices of land now in private ownership.

2 Comments

Our day of days

4/5/2021

4 Comments

Tim O’Brien’s relative, Sgt Willam O'Brien, closest to camera, finds something to grin about, despite
the grim smoke of battle in the background. This photo was taken on August 8, 1918, the day before William was killed in the battle for Vauvillers, one of the last battles of WWI.

By Tim O’Brien

THE celebration of Anzac Day has changed. When I was growing up, while the giving of a minute’s silence and a brief period of reflection on bravery and loss was part of the school year – and was a welcome day off – many questioned what “this day of days” was all about.

4 Comments

United we stand

20/4/2021

10 Comments

Councillors and special guests at the opening of the new
Waterline Library in Grantville.

By Joy Button

The formal opening of the new Waterline library in Grantville early this month was a very exclusive event, attended only by Bass Coast councillors and library service bureaucrats, with no community participation or even prior awareness of the event.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t even held in the library but outside the Grantville Transaction Centre.

Cynics might say this was because the library was too small to accommodate even the dignitaries who attended that day, let alone members of the community.

10 Comments

Caution – slow ahead

8/4/2021

5 Comments

Michael Wright: We need more than a speed sign swap
to untangle Phillip Island’s traffic.

By Michael Wright

BEING a local business operator with 50 commercial passenger vehicles moving safely and efficiently around the area, roads matter to me. But I recognise the importance of our local environment and its link to our lifestyle and our ability to attract visitors. I am generally supportive of a speed limit review for Phillip Island and appreciate Bass Coast Shire Council’s influence in getting Regional Roads Victoria to consider such a project.

The review was born out of the Phillip Island Integrated Transport Study (PIITS) recommendation and long-term action RN9 to “improve main carriageway layouts along the arterial road network to generally be consistent with and achieve 80m/h speed limits throughout Phillip Island”.

5 Comments

It’s taken me years

8/4/2021

7 Comments

Cartoon: Natasha Williams-Novak

By Christine Grayden

I WAS extremely disturbed to read about the gay man at Wimbledon Heights who was verbally attacked and threatened by his neighbour simply for wanting to paint his house in rainbow colours.

In this day and age there would not be too many people who do not know of a member of the LGBQTI community and understand or at least are aware of the huge barriers they face.

My lyric reflects on the amount of wasted time and energy LGBQTI people have to spend in order to become themselves and be accepted for themselves.

7 Comments

Mining onslaught affects us all

26/3/2021

11 Comments

Sand mining occurs out of sight of the community, often just off the highway behind a thin strip of vegetation. Holcim sand mine adjacent to Adams Creek Nature Conservation Reserve, near Lang Lang, March 2021. Photo: Woodrow Wilson.

By Tim O’Brien

GRANTVILLE residents will be appalled at the scale of the open cut sand mine that is at risk of being approved right on their doorsteps.

Dandy Premix’s application to expand its Grantville mine drew 73 objections from local residents and others before it was called in by the Planning Minister, Richard Wynne. The Planning Panel hearing of the application, which will provide advice to the Minister, began last Monday and will continue into next week.

The maps we’ve seen as part of this panel process show the immensity of this pit, more than 1.2 kilometres across. Its potential impact on the amenity of this quiet coastal community is truly horrifying.

11 Comments

When Whitney replaced Julie

25/3/2021

0 Comments

Necessity forced Pamela Jacka to give up her car; she hasn't looked back – except to make a right hand turn.

By Pamela Jacka

IN 1998, to celebrate attaining my half century, I bought myself a brand new Honda CRV. The engine plate said she came off the assembly line in July, so she was henceforth known as "Julie".

On Monday, February 24, 2020, I received a letter from Honda saying that my 22-year-old car was in need of airbag replacement. However, because of her age, the parts were no longer available for that model airbag, so she was being recalled, never to return. I was offered market value, which coincided roughly with the insurance value, of $2700. I would not have been able to re-register the car in its current state and to have the airbag replaced would not have been economical. Julie left, with a full tank of petrol (rats!) the following Tuesday.

0 Comments

From Burma to Wonthaggi

25/3/2021

4 Comments

Mue Hsay, front centre, with husband Ah Klay, left, and her friend Mu Ha, right; back: her son April Htoo and the family’s sponsor, Sylvia Davey, at the Wonthaggi Library where Mue Hsay gave a talk for Harmony Week.

By Mue Hsay

I AM a Karen woman. I was born in Burma (Myanmar). My mum passed away when I was eight years old. After that, I worked for people. I was a babysitter, I grew rice and I looked after cows. I did whatever I could do to get things like clothes. I never went to school.

I married my husband, Ah Klay, in 1993. Our baby died after falling ill. We found it very hard to get medicine.

It was not safe in Burma. Our family lived in a small village, we had to keep leaving where we were living. The army would raid village after village. When the army came to a village, they would take food. Sometimes kill the animals. Sometimes, they took people with them to carry their things as they went on their way. We would run, and the army would come again. They burn down our hut. We had to keep moving.

4 Comments

The winds of change

25/3/2021

7 Comments

Photo: Catherine Watson

By Robyn Arianrhod

LIKE many Bass Coast residents I floated out of Gill Heal’s Looking for Wonthaggi feeling uplifted and a little teary, still humming “There’s a part of my heart in Wonthaggi”. What a history our town has! Gill and her cast and crew did it proud. And what natural treasures we have in Bass Coast – treasures brought lovingly to stage and screen in another recent showcase of local talent, the Coastal Connections concert.

Yet underneath the euphoria, the delight of publicly sharing in this feast of theatre and film about our precious part of the world, I felt uneasy. Another song was running amok in my mind: Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, with its haunting warning: “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got / Till it’s gone / They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot.” I couldn’t help wondering: do enough of us realise what we’ve got here?

7 Comments

The day my mother said ‘Enough!’

11/3/2021

2 Comments

Aunty Doseena Fergie recalls the day her mother
found the courage to call out racism. The theme of
the 2021 International Women’s Day was
“Choose to challenge”.

By Aunty Dr Doseena Fergie OAM

LET me share my story.

In the 1960s, the environment in which I was living was politically charged. Communism was on the rise, hence the Vietnam War; African American non-violent activist Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated. In Australia, the 1967 Referendum to allow Aboriginals to be counted in the Census and for the Federal Government to make laws for our Mob was successful. But still white men dominated the places of power in both decision-making and finances.

The majority of Australian women did not enjoy equal opportunities in education or employment. The gap in career opportunities between them and their male counterparts was huge. But the gap between white and black women was even greater.

2 Comments

‘Councillors must hold their nerve’

13/2/2021

5 Comments

The Dandy Premix site looking west-east from the highway. The company proposes to expand and deepen its current pit and open a new pit in the wooded area at the top of the map.
Photo: Google Earth

By Neil Rankine

BASS Coast Shire Council will be letting down its community if councillors accept a defeatist report on an application by Dandy Premix to massively expand its Grantville sand quarry.

The report by council officers does not reflect recent policies or resolutions adopted by the council or community concerns around sand mining.

Councillors will consider the report at next Wednesday’s council meeting before “adopting a position” which will become a submission on council’s behalf at a planning panel hearing into Dandy Premix’s application.

The application drew 73 objections from Grantville residents concerned about dust, noise and traffic and from others concerned about the loss of a vital biolink.

5 Comments

Shame on YOU!

10/2/2021

6 Comments

Watch Harriet Shing deliver her speech. Video: The Age

Gay and transgender people know all about shame, says MP Harriet Shing, as she turns an accusing finger to MPs who abstained from voting on a bill outlawing the attempted conversion of gays.

By Harriet Shing

IN RISING to speak to this bill today, I do so on a deeply personal basis, because I want to talk today of the impact of being different and of being other and of starting out in a world where you think that there is nothing wrong with you before discovering, firstly, that you are different, that you are other; and secondly, for too many of us, there comes a point at which it occurs to us that our difference is wrong, that we live in a world that is generally yet to come to the point where we are accepted for exactly who we are.

6 Comments

Our dearly departed

29/1/2021

1 Comment

Cartoon: New Yorker

By Jill Nicholas

THIS week I attended the funeral of a 88-year-old woman I didn’t know particularly well but her late husband of 50-plus years mowed my lawns for yonks. Every summer he kept me over-supplied with tomatoes, two decades ago he helped me buy a car that I still drive daily. My presence at his widow’s funeral was a token of respect for him, not so much her, sad as it was to learn she was no longer with us.

Bett’s departure was described as a “good death”. If there is such a thing hers was it. She played Scrabble with an equally elderly friend on Saturday night, said she felt tired, went to bed never to wake again.

1 Comment

Oz Day blues

28/1/2021

9 Comments

The majority rules, or should do, argues John Cobbledick.
Not fair, responds Marg Lynn. Aboriginal people have been adapting since 1788
and it’s time for white Australians to meet them half way.

'We are one nation'

By John Cobbledick

IT IS a shame that some people take exception to 26th of January, Australia day. It is a day for Aboriginal, Anglo Saxon, Greek, Chinese, Italian, German and all other Australians of different ancestry to celebrate.

We are, after all, one people, one nation, and we all believe in equality, although there are those that wish to divide us by objecting to a word in our Anthem, a date on a calendar, even a flag.

Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak

9 Comments

Megabits empower the people

28/1/2021

2 Comments

All the knobs and dials ... Tony Hancock in
'The Radio Ham'

By Neil Daly

IN 1984, a date synonymous with a novel about totalitarianism and technological surveillance, I ventured into the world of contemporary technology. The time had come to move on from aerogrammes and send a fax instead.

Back then I also had a friend who was a licensed ham radio operator. He introduced me to his “CQ friends” across the world. We freely discussed a range of topics and swapped ideas about the interests we shared.

It was not an easy or a cheap way of communicating, for you needed lots of equipment (much of it dependent on valves and transistors) and a rather large aerial in the backyard for transmission and reception. But it was fun and if you’d like to step back in time, you can find out if it’s “still raining in Tokyo”.

2 Comments

Reflections of a vintner

8/12/2020

4 Comments

Dick Wettenhall with Daniel Andrews after The Gurdies’ 2017 chardonnay won the Premier’s trophy for best Victorian wine. Despite the gale-force winds, cold wet summers, kangaroos and currawongs, the winery somehow produced many award-winning wines.

By Dick Wettenhall

I HAVE just passed an echidna and lace monitor (tree goanna!) meandering along the St Helier roadside, after visiting The Gurdies Nature Conservation Reserve in search of Flying Duck Orchids. At last I have the time for this now that I have sold The Gurdies Winery.

A decade of working in the vineyard and making wine in this spectacular location has provided much to reflect on. As one of Gippsland’s oldest, the vineyard was established by dairy farmer Frank Cutler in 1982. His pioneering efforts led the Western Port Council to engage consultants to formally investigate the potential for commercial viticulture in region in 1987. The availability of cleared land with favourable topography and low frost exposure was viewed as compelling and, in the ensuing three decades, Bass Coast has become the home of several of Gippsland’s most recognised wineries.

4 Comments

A few home truths

8/12/2020

4 Comments

Inverloch's Woodland Cottages, completed in 2007, is a great example of community housing where the community, council and State Government worked together to provide 19 units for older residents.

By Graeme Charles

THE recent announcement that Bass Coast Shire has been allocated $25 million toward providing more public and community housing has rightly been welcomed by Bass Coast Shire Council. And surely anyone living in Bass Coast, with even the smallest sense of social justice, would also welcome this announcement.

Such is the extent of the current social housing shortage in Australia that it has been suggested we would need to build 100 dwellings a day for 20 years to provide a home for people with the most urgent housing need.

4 Comments

<<Previous

Forward>>