GEOFF VIVIAN
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Denmark Shire in Western Australia sacked its engineer after he made a complaint to the Minister for Local Government.
However the sacking was supposed to be for an unrelated matter that had allegedly occurred some months beforehand.
[From The Weekender, June 11, 2015 p4]
WORDS AND PICTURE BY GEOFF VIVIAN
DENMARK Shire ratepayers say they are unwilling to spend $12 million on a new acquatic centre.
However 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]
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.
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“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.
A SUB-SPECIES of a small shorebird spends much of the northern winter feeding at Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach in the Kimberley.
The red knot sub-species (Calidris canutus piersmai) breeds in the Siberian Arctic tundra, and travels to and from the Kimberley via China’s Yellow Sea—a round trip of at least 20,000km.
PhD student Ying Chi Chan is one of a group of Netherlands-based scientists conducting detailed longitudinal studies of shorebirds’ flight paths and foraging ecology.
“Habitat destruction is happening in a lot of places but the rate is particularly fast in China,” she says.
“The main thing I want to know is how the bird adapts to this change in environments.”
When I wrote this piece I was unaware of the Wilson Inlet (Denmark WA)’s importance to this intrepid little traveller.
Science Network WA [read this story]
Last months story about Wilson Inlet (Denmark, WA) shorebirds has prompted me to post this story from two years ago.
From the Broome Advertiser, March 13, 2014. Click on this image to read the story.
The Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research is the world centre for shorebird ecology.
Dutch biologists Tanya Compton and Marc Lavaleye have been to Broome a couple of times to sample and assess the marine life that migrating shorebirds feed on during their annual stay.
They say the relative population of bivalves, worms and crabs has changed every time they have been there.
Science Network WA [read this story]
The Broome Advertiser republished this story.
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.
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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.
An archaeologist told me of some interesting evidence for climate change before the Christian era.
Photo: Carly Monks
It seems shellfish were easy enough to gather in Australia’s mid-west to make it worth throwing a seaside shellfish party.
Stormier weather set in around 3,000 years ago, making shellfish less plentiful.
Science Network WA [read this story]
PICTURE AND TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN
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.
Stewart Scambler likes to talk about the quality of a rock in the landscape.
Photo via Stewart Scambler
“There’s a rightness about its presence there, a quality of stillness that exists and a quality of discovering something new and previously unseen when you lift that rock,” he says.
This is my latest artist profile for Artsource newsletter, about potter Stewart Scambler. Please note it is now an entirely online publication.
From Artsource [read this story]
PICTURE AND TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN
Back story: Albany is short of housing for its most vulnerable citizens, including the elderly.
From the Great Southern Weekender May 14 2015, p3.
The state government demolished an old block of flats on this site about a decade ago, while Labor was in power, and apparently it took some time for the City to publish its new precinct plan for the area.
I was concerned I was giving the local member a free kick til I double checked, and realised Council adopted that precinct plan 18 months ago.
The present government gave him the free kick, I just did the reporting.
Meanwhile the region has more than 120 people on the emergency housing waiting list, and the state government is yet to commit to building anything on this land, which it owns.
The new state budget includes $560 million to house vulnerable people this year.
From the Great Southern Weekender May 14 2015, p3.