Category Archives: Rural reporting

Mapping to help preserve Broome’s rare ecology 11/11/2015

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While Broome is home to several unique and vulnerable ecosystems, two ecologists say builders and planners could take fairly simple steps to preserve them.

The Minyjuru tree within the restricted Broome PEC, provides a much coveted sweet fruit and traditional Yawuru Mayi (pictured).

The Minyjuru tree within the restricted Broome PEC, provides a much coveted sweet fruit and traditional Yawuru Mayi (pictured).

They have exhaustively mapped the four ecosystems so that making small zoning changes and planning new works and subdivisions around them would be a fairly simple matter most of the time.

Science Network WA [read this story]

Fines for strays 12/11/2015

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A southern WA shire is seeking the power to prosecute property owners who let their cattle stray on to roads.

Click on this image to read the story.

Click on this image to read the story.

Vehicles collide with straying stock fairly frequently on Australian country roads, sometimes with fatal results.

If successfull, this would allow Kononup Shire to police straying stock on its own roads, but not those owned by the Main Roads Department.

The Great Southern Weekender Thursday, November 12, 2015.

Early wine in Shire 15/10/2015

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A KATANNING local says although Frankland and Plantagenet vignerons have been celebrating “50 years of wine”, his family planted the Great Southern’s first vineyard a century ago.

Click on this image to read the story.

Click on this image to read the story.

Derrick Nalli said his grandfather established Roma Vineyard on a 440 acre block he took up in 1911 at Broomehill.

Nalli and Sons became known for their Muscat, Sherry, Marsala, Port and Hamburgh wines, which they continued to produce until the early 1950s.

“My grandfather came from Italy around about 1904,” Mr Nalli said.

“When Grandfather arrived in Fremantle with his one son they had seven and six in
their pocket which in the new money is 75c – so they had nothing.”

Mr Nalli senior lived in a tent and worked for another Italian immigrant, Mr Genoni, on his farm for several years, returning to Italy to pick up most of his eight children.

From The Great Southern Weekender, October 15, 2015.

 

Migrant woman remembered 13/8/2015

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Caterina Macri, who spoke no English, was pregnant and newly arrived on a boat from Europe when she started camping in the Australian bush with her husband and two young sons.

X13ALB_036-37PHer daughter Lena Elliott is getting ready to tell her story in a book “Bread on the Table”.

This is the first of several history pieces I will post about people starting new farming ventures in the Great Southern region where I now work.

The Great Southern Weekender, August 13, 2015

In her element October 2015

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Perhaps once in a generation we come across an artist whose practice is informed and inspired by a life in the forest environment, and a close observation of its elements.

Photo by Ebone Tippett

Photo by Ebony Tippett

Although she makes no attempt to copy his work, Monique Tippett is an artist that works within the genre started by Howard Taylor.

Monique lives in a part of the world where my earliest coherant memories come from: Dwellingup.

Artsource

Complaint follows Shire suspension 4/6/2015

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GEOFF VIVIAN

Click on this image to read the story.

Click on this image to read the story.

A senior manager at Demark shire has complained to WA’s Minister for Local Government after being put under virtual “house arrest” while under suspension.

As the shire’s engineer, he was suspended after he wrote a report to council recommending public money not be spent on a feasibility study for a development.

He said the shire had a culture of intimidation.

[From The Weekender, June 4, 2015 p3]

CEO defends boat ramp study 23/7/2015

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WORDS AND PICTURE BY GEOFF VIVIAN

DENMARK Shire ratepayers say they are unwilling to spend $12 million on a new acquatic centre.

X23ALB_022PHowever the Shire has just committed $26,000 in public funds to a feasibility study for a boat launching ramp near a favourite swimming beach.

A prominent coastal engineer tells me this would cost at least $38 million, and probably a lot more.

If he is correct, the shire is spending $26,000 to discover it can’t afford a boat ramp.

As both stories appeared on the same page I am posting them together.

[Great Southern Weekender, June 23, 2015, p22]

Bremer is a ‘Mecca’ for whale watchers 16/07/2015

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GEOFF VIVIAN

The Bremer Canyon has become a “mecca” for international whale watchers because it contains an important feeding ground for killer whales, or orcas.

Click on this image to read the story.

Click on this image to read the story.

“We’re getting international group bookings now where people are flying in from the States, from Europe, China, from wherever,” said film-maker and tour boat operator Dave Riggs.

[From The Great Southern Weekender, July 16, 2015, p7.]

The story goes on to talk about his new doco on Discovery Channel. 

In our interview he made an assertion about a scientific matter and, as neither he nor I are scientists, I ran it past a prominent cetacean researcher that I know. 

That is all a journlist needs to do when presented with a matter of “science” that is not in a reputable peer-reviewed journal – get an expert opinion.

 

Birds face high water threat 25/6/2015

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THE decision by the Department of Water (DoW) not to open the Sandbar at Wilson Inlet could be depriving endangered migrating shorebirds of valuable feeding grounds.

Click on this image to read the story

Click on this image to read the story

Local resident and member of Birdlife Australia, Jesz Fleming, said a report prepared by Denmark’s Green Skills noted the water levels in the inlet have remained at an unusually high level in recent years.

The report says this makes it impossible for shorebirds to feed on animals such as molluscs and worms that usually lie buried under the saturated sand.

Great Southern Weekender [go to website]

Writing science stories can be tricky when you have a report before you and you are not sure of its scientific validity.

The author had not trained as a scientist and, while he may have been following the accepted principles of ornithology and ecology, I was not personally able to make an assessment of this.

Luckily I was able to contact a shorebird ecologist I had previously interviewed, who agreed to read the report.

She told me it was a good report, and she added some useful comments of her own.

Booster plan for coverage 21/05/2015

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PICTURE AND TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

Click on this image to read the story.

Click here to read.

I love to do this type of “local hero” story from time to time.

There is nothing like a community-minded individual who, having solved his own problem, wants nothing more than to help his community.

Added to this he shows no political motive in doing so. 

It is this kind of community spirit that made Australian towns work in the first place.

What if nobody thought this way any more, and we all end up existing as fee-paying clients of our governing bodies?

Not a happy thought.

[From The Great Southern Weekender, May 21 2015.