Plans for Point Henry

Plans for Point Henry. - article from Addie, map from Addie, my sketch, and a photo by Sandra J.

TWO thousand residents would call Point Henry home, under a plan that forecasts water-based tourism, environmental conservation and industry for the new urban suburb.

New hotels and resorts, major tourism attractions, a working pier, boating marinas and foreshore paths to Eastern Gardens and the Bellarine Rail Trail are encouraged under the 30-year vision.

In a win for conservation and birdlife groups, the prominent wetlands and former saltworks precinct will be protected and backed by nature-based tourism and commercial facilities.

Released today by the State Government, the draft Moolap plan details the variety of uses allowed across four designated precincts across the sprawling 1200 hectares of coastal land.

Bellarine MP Lisa Neville said the area was almost three times the size of Fishermans Bend in Melbourne, which is currently Australia’s largest urban renewal project.

She said the planned development of the Point Henry region, which has long been owned by Alcoa, would attract residents, tourists, recreation users and businesses.

“To really open up that area to community access will really change Geelong in a positive way,” she told the Geelong Advertiser.

There are four distinct precincts.
“It will change the nature of how we see ourselves and the nature of ... how visitors see us as well.”

The plan signals that the Point Henry urban area will be unique in the Geelong region, offering:

— Medium to high density coastal living for more than 2000 people;

— New connections to the water, including continuous coastal access and boating facilities such as a pier and marina;

— Boardwalks linking the pier to other parts of the foreshore; and

— Cultural, arts and recreational activities and spaces, including innovative re-use of existing buildings.

Further investigations will be done to see if the Point Henry Pier could be used to dock commercial and tourism vessels, such as cruise ships.

Ms Neville said there were a lot of similarities with Alcoa’s plan for its 575-hectare block, although the Government’s vision calls for greater protection of key industrial land.

“I think (Alcoa) would have liked to have see some of the south-east land develop more quickly, but our concern with that was the future of Dow Chemical and Winchester,” she said, citing the combined 450 jobs at the two companies.

“You need a good buffer to protect those.”

The draft plan has been released for further public feedback, before it is adopted and planning scheme changes are introduced from September.

City of Greater Geelong chief administrator Kathy Alexander described the project as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the prime land.

She lauded the plan’s strong focus on conservation, stating that it was a key public priority.

“I think one of the things that has come out of the Our Future strategy, with the 11,000 people that have participated, is that the environment is really, really high on this community’s mind

“This will differentiate Geelong — with the clean air, the clean water, the beautiful things to see. I think so far it is a good outcome.”

To view the plan visit: https://engage.vic.gov.au/moolap

THE FOUR PRECINCTS
1: POINT HENRY

120 hectares, surrounded by Crown coastal foreshore

Major use: Tourism and Residential

Land use could include:

• major and minor tourist attractions

• entertainment facilities, cultural events and recreational activities

• retail, restaurants and bars

• hotels, resorts and other forms of tourism accommodation

• boating facilities and low impact marine industry

• medium to high density residential development

• community facilities and public open space

• retarding basins and wetlands

2: SOUTH-EAST PRECINCT

300 hectares of rural land

Major use: Residential

Land use could include:

• Standard and medium density housing, social housing and aged care

• retail and commercial businesses

• interface treatments to Clifton Avenue and Portarlington Road

• community facilities and public open space

3: SALTWORKS AND WETLANDS

465 hectares of former saltworks land, plus marine and freshwater wetlands

Major use: Environmental with complementary tourism

Land use could include:

• the management and conservation of environment and heritage assets

• wetland habitats

• low impact water, heritage and nature-based tourism and commercial facilities

• recreation areas and public access

• interpretative information facilities and viewing paths and platforms

4: INDUSTRY PRECINCT

60 hectare industrial estate to the south of Portarlington Road;

More than 45 businesses along Point Henry Road and Buckley Grove.

Major use: Industry

Land use could include:

• continued operation and potential expansion of existing businesses

• new connections to the broader transport network

• infill development with new and innovative industrial operators.

Want to buy a gaol?

The Geelong Gaol which is heritage listed is probably up for sale. The present tenants such as the Geelong Rotary Club do a good job in organizing tours and other charitable groups use some of the building but the Geelong Council are now considering selling it. Should it be pulled down, turned into a peace garden, or what else could it be used for?

Sand whisperers in Torquay

Sand Whisperers creating amazing artworks on Torquay’s beaches

Harrison Tippet, Geelong Advertiser

April 16, 2017 4:13pm

The murals typically take two hours to create.

One of the Sand Whisperers' favourite murals.

STELLA Tassone and Ondrei Aiello refer to their vast murals in the sands of Torquay as “love letters”.

The couple — aka the Sand Whisperers — have been taking to the sands of Torquay’s beaches, armed only with rakes, and scratching giant patterned artworks into the sand canvas.

The childhood friends, who describe themselves as “twin flames”, first began making artworks in the sand about five years ago after “reconnecting”.

“After we kind of reconnected ourselves, we started hearing a different language, and we heard nature speak to us,” Ondrei said.

“The only way we could express ourselves and return the language was through our love for one another and the love we have for nature … and this was our way of communicating back.

“You’ve got your shoes off and you’re putting your feet embedded into Mother Earth, and you feel the heartbeat of the earth when you’re actually doing it.

“It’s a way of expressing our love.

“We call them love letters”

The artworks, which have been up to 100 metres long, typically take the pair about two hours, Stella said.

“It’s a form of meditation and it’s a form of art therapy,” Stella said.

Keeping up your language

Embracing Fiji-Hindi

Shayal Devi
Monday, April 17, 2017 (from the Fiji Times)

MORE needs to be done to maintain and embrace Fiji Hindi as a part of the hybrid identity of Fijians of Indian descent.

This is according to Auckland, New Zealand, resident Quishile Charan.

The University of Auckland student, who has links to Fiji, was one of the participants during an academic conference in Saweni last month, which focused on the abolishment of the indentured system 100 years ago.

"For me, as a person who lost their mother tongue because of the move to a Western country and the resulting racism incurred, relearning Fijian Hindi as a young adult has been vital to my cultural heritage," she said.

"There is a notion of Fijian Hindi being a lesser or broken language and as a community, we need to embrace and maintain the unique language as it is a gift from our ancestors and pivotal to our hybrid identity."

According to Ms Charan, younger Fijians of Indian descent needed to understand how the language was brought about in order to appreciate it fully.

"One of the ways we can grow the passion for our language in the younger generations would be to help the next generation understand how our language was made, that it was formed in times of survival and played a key role in the formation of our current community.

"Fijian Hindi is not dormant in the past, it plays a key role to our cultural identity in contemporary times and it is specific to us as a people.

"To hegemonise a unique language to a dominant one would only harm us and our continual growth as Fijians of Indian descent.

"Fijian Hindi is a reflection of us, of our history, of our relationship to Viti and our ancestral roots in India. Erasing that is erasing parts of ourselves."

Similar sentiments were echoed by University of the South Pacific academic Professor Vijay Naidu, who said the descendants of indentured labourers who arrived in Fiji more than 100 years ago had undergone many changes.

He said the most significant changes occurred in the areas of culture, language and social class.

"The indentured system basically demolished the caste system," Prof Naidu said.

"In Fiji, from the 1920s right through to the 1940s, there were talks of an Indian Government because there was a diverse group of people from India who had their own language and even culture and the obvious caste systems.

"But over time, the Fiji-Indian identity in particular became more significant."

Identity wise, Prof Naidu said the Indo-Fijian identity became more prominent during the post-indenture period.

"What developed was a more distinct Fiji-Indian or Indo-Fijian identity. The origin of the word Indo-Fijian was born in the 1950s.

"Being an Indian in Fiji separated you from the rest and the sense of being an Indian in Fiji became stronger when people moved overseas.

"A group of Indo-Fijians attended a university in India and they were called Fijians. That was a national-based identity.

"There was a loss of language especially to the more distinct ones like Tamil and Gujarati, south or north India but with a loss in language there is also a gain in language and we have now Fiji-Hindi."

He also added today's Fijians of Indian descent were more likely to be fluent in an iTaukei language or dialect depending on where they lived.

"Especially in areas like Vanua Levu. You have Indo-Fijians who go as far as speaking the dialect," Prof Naidu said.

"Likewise for the iTaukei. In the Ba Province and in Nadroga there are those who are very fluent in the Fiji-Hindi language."

A hard day's night

A hard day’s night – or Some Days are like Tuesday this week.
• After fasting for eight hours (and getting up and down for hot water bottle etc. for the lower back pain) I go to pathology for about seven blood tests (six-monthly sugar tests mainly) – 7.30 a.m. and it’s a quick process as few people there. My eldest son is my chauffeur for the day.
• 8.30 a.m. Hungry so we buy muffins and very creamy coffee at Hungry Jacks – drive through - and the lad serving forgets to give us the hash browns but we don’t go back.
• Feed the guinea pigs vegetables and tidy their playpen.
• Check world news, Fiji news, email and facebook.
• At 10 go to the Wintergarden Cafe to meet three writers, have cappuccino and lamington, and edit a hand-written diary about a trip to Fiji for a wedding, ready to type up.
• Lunch is fruit.
• Feed guinea pigs fresh grass from the front garden.
• At 1.40 go to the eye specialist for the six-monthly check up and results are quite good 98% and 97% for the peripheral vision test where you click on a gadget when you see stars. Still reading, playing music, and using computer without glasses. Talk with doc about the concert we’d been to recently.
3 p.m.Watch TV – two episodes of the police in the 60s English drama ‘Heartbeat’.
• Make a simple meal of eggs and kale.
• Look up on google the name of a new pill prescribed a couple of days ago by doc but not yet bought. Astonished to see it’s an opiate and can cause you to stop breathing and many other possible side-effects. I just won’t take doc’s orders over this one.
• At 6.30 go to the church for the Holy Week service and eight of us perform the ‘House in Bethany’ play I wrote a couple of weeks ago for the women’s meeting. Different actors this time and they used my dress-ups. Some Taize music, study of a psalm, one hymn, and the play goes well. About 18 people there so we just read the hymn text from Victor’s laptop.
• Feed guinea pigs last meal of the day, bed them down with their cardboard house and blankets.
• Coffee has run out so drink green tea.
• Watch ‘Midsummer Murders’ but give up early as rather tired.
• Sort-of sleep with a little bit of help from Panadol Osteo pills but still need Deep Heat and a hot-water bottle.

But then another day I will just sit and sit – in the sunshine if possible, and write poems and stories.

Are you a collector?

I lost my precious little vintage doll when the girls cleaned up the lounge room in December 2015 to repaint the walls, and put everything on top of the piano into a bag and out (and it went to the tip). I'd picked up the vintage doll for $4 in an Op Shop thinking she might be valuable. I discovered a key, wound her up, and to a kind of bizarre mandolin music, she moved her head and shoulders. Lucky I'd taken a photo of her. However this leads me to a story about visiting a doll museum in a private house not far from Colac. Flo had collected ten thousand dolls and many looked like new-born babies so I wasn't cheered up at all by them. Well, some people are collectors of owls, spoons, etc. so this was a passion by one woman and tourist buses occasionally called in. Are you a collector? I wouldn't count music or books because they are 'necessary'.