[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he end of the school year for Year 12 students has, unfortunately, become associated with some fairly high-level drinking and partying as part of the traditional “Schoolies” week, but a reader has told us about one Portland school that has turned this tradition on its head.
Bayview College, which overlooks the stunning Portland Bay, will this week run its Schoolies with a Cause program, where Year 12 students will celebrate the end of their secondary schooling not by heading to the closest beach, but by helping out at a secondary school in Vietnam.
Eighteen students have volunteered to spend 10 days in a disadvantaged community and will work on a number of projects including improving playground areas.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] I [/dropcap]t is the third year Schoolies with a Cause has been held by Bayview College, and each year more students are signing up to be a part of a life-changing experience. The trip is subsidised by fundraising held during the year and enthusiastic Year 11 students have already started raising money for their trip in 2014.
There are always a lot of people behind such a successful program, but the two names that kept coming up when we investigated the project were Nicole Reefman, who works as the Public Relations officer at Bayview, and Portland financial adviser Rodney Stone, who has a deep connection with Vietnam through his volunteering stints in the country over the last five years.
We would like to acknowledge the hard work of Nicole and Rodney, in particular, and Bayview College, more broadly, for putting together such a great alternative to “Schoolies”: they are our very worthy Quiet Heroes for the week.
[box] Our Quiet Heroes will each receive a coffee and cake voucher from The Pickled Pelican, 137 Percy St, Portland. Thankyou so much for your support, Pickled Pelican.[/box]
Made by hand: Kate Bouman first explored art as a child, but has only recently returned to her love of making and creating things by hand.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate Bouman has taken the long way round, but she has finally come back to creating the delicate art she first began to explore as a child.
Growing up in Pomonal, a speck of a town between Halls Gap and Ararat, Kate loved to draw realistic pictures of the people and things around her and, at the age of 12, displayed her paintings in the Pomonal art show.
There were no major prizes to be won, but the high praise she received for her work encouraged Kate to keep going and, after finishing secondary school, she applied to study art in Bendigo and Ballarat.
Unbelievably, an administrative mistake meant that Kate was assessed as a Year 11, rather than a Year 12 student, and was rejected by both universities, so she applied to study childcare at TAFE instead.
“Childcare wasn’t really for me, so I ended up getting into horticulture (her parents owned a nursery in Pomonal)…by this stage I had come to believe that to make it as an artist you had to be either completely mad or dead, so horticulture seemed like the best option,” she said with a laugh.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate, 25, is now an orchid grower with Warrnambool Orchids, but this year she has also returned to her first love of creating beautiful things by hand and, in September, started a market stall as Pip & Lily Boutique crafts.
The care, patience and precision required for growing orchids is reflected in Kate’s creative work, which includes hand-drawn and painted cards, hand-painted jewellery, hand-made dolls, felt work and hand-drawn designs on clothing.
“I wanted my main point of difference to be the hand-made element, in that everything I do is hand drawn or designed,” she said.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate’s collection of hand-drawn cards, including a range designed for Christmas, pay homage to classic children’s books such as the Beatrix Potter collection, Noddy and Winnie the Pooh, and she is unashamed to admit that she owns more children’s books than adult books.
“I love the characters, the little animals, and the incredible illustrations,” she said.
A love of small animals also explains, in part, the choice of name: Pip & Lily.
“When I was a kid, I always wanted two zebra finches that I was going to call Pip & Lily, but then I came to realise that keeping birds in cages was not such a good thing, so I have kept the names, but I never got the birds,” Kate explained, laughing.
“And I also tried about 10 other names, but they were all taken, so Pip & Lily it is.”
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] A [/dropcap]lthough Kate has only been selling at local markets since September, she has been delighted with how well her work has been received.
“I make things for the love of it and as a creative outlet, rather than as a money making thing, but it has actually gone a lot better than I expected, which is wonderful.”
[box type=”bio”] Pip & Lily Boutique craftswill be at the Made by Me Market, Saturday November 30, 9am-4pm, Pavilion function room, Warrnambool breakwater. You can find also Pip & Lily on Facebook. [/box]
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] W [/dropcap]e have something a bit different for our Bookmarks this week that we hope will resonate with our readers who, like us, love words.
Instead of profiling one book, Bluestone Magazine is supporting a campaign by Warrnambool Books to encourage people to buy a book that they think a child might enjoy for Christmas and then donate that book to a very good cause: Bethany.
Michaelie Clark, from Warrnambool Books, explains how it will work:
“At Warrnambool Books we really love two things: Warrnambool, and books. We believe in contributing to our local community and we believe in the power of literature. That’s why we’re holding a book pledge this Christmas to benefit disadvantaged children in the Barwon South West region.
Our Book Angels campaign will run from Monday, 18 November until Monday, 16 December. During this time, customers can buy any children’s book from the store at a discount of 25% to donate to our collection, which will be presented to Bethany in the week before Christmas.
Bethany is a long-standing organisation with a base in Warrnambool, which will arrange distribution of the books to children in need.
There’s no better gift to give a child than a book. Opening books can open minds and doors in the future, so we hope lots of Book Angels will open their hearts to a worthy cause this Christmas.”
[box] Find inspiration for book donations from Warrnambool Books on their Facebook page.[/box]
Hawkesdale artist Helen Bunyon has always experimented with putting found objects together in new ways and her latest work uses this approach with old time pieces.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I[/dropcap]n the dexterous hands of Hawkesdale artist Helen Bunyon, a broken clock, a wrecked watch or a discarded fuse can be transformed into wearable works of beauty.
Helen, who is well-known for her long support of the the local arts scene through The F Project and Customs House Gallery, is also an established artist in her own right and her latest work builds on her interest in putting together discarded objects to create something new.
“I like to assemble things. When I trained as an art teacher, I trained in ceramics and that has a 3D aspect to it, a sculptural aspect, and this is an extension of sculpture, except on a smaller scale,” she said.
A discarded watch is paired with other pieces of recycled jewellery to become wearable art.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] H[/dropcap]elen scours the junk shops and op shops for discarded watches, jewellery and other bits and bobs that have usually been dumped out of a drawer, into a shopping bag and dropped into a charity bin.
From this tangled collection, she creates a range of beautiful, one-off jewellery, including brooches, necklaces and ear-rings, using the reassembled parts.
Called the ‘Time Flies’ series, the works are delicate and stylish, yet retain a sense of the industrial.
“It is wearable art with a hint of steampunk,” she explained with a laugh.
[Steampunk pays homage to the Victorian industrial era – I only just learnt this, Carol].
You will never look at a discarded fuse the same way again!
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]he industrial theme of her work extends to the use of blown fuses to create funky brooches that resemble miniature robots. This really must be the ultimate in recycling.
“I really like putting things together in different ways to give them a new life and a new beauty,” Helen said.
“The mechanisms of old watches, in particular, are really very beautiful, although they are becoming harder to find these days, with many new watches containing only a battery and not much else.”
For Helen, the “upcycling” of former junk also contains a certain romance.
“I find myself wondering what the story is behind something: who owned that piece? How did it get there? All that sort of thing,” she said.
Jewellery with a hint of steampunk that pays homage to the industrial era.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]hose with a keen eye will find that Helen uses other discarded items as part of her market stall. The price tags, for example, are pieces of a jigsaw that was once a silver-coloured map of the world. And her display table is draped in old pianola rolls. Even the tissue paper used in the jewellery boxes is recycled from old dress patterns.
“We live in such a throw-away society, where if something doesn’t work anymore, we get rid of it, but it often has so many more uses if you just look at it differently,” Helen said.
[box] Helen’s work is available through The Artery market, 224 Timor St, Warrnambool. The next market is scheduled for December 15. [/box]
How to improve the CBD: offer financial incentives for property owners to paint the glorious shop tops along Timor St.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hat is this inertia that appears to be holding Warrnambool in an iron-like grip and preventing this beautiful city from reaching its full potential?
It was with a heavy heart that I read respected lawyer Roy Reekie’s recent letter to the local paper, lamenting that he had returned to Warrnambool after five years to find the Warrnambool City Council locked in a petty, schoolyard stand-off and he pondered if he had made a mistake in coming home.
A mistake! What an indictment: intelligent, energetic people like Roy should feel delighted to be back, not disappointed.
How to improve the CBD: paint a mural on the hideous Koroit St toilet block and, later, close it down. Relocate the bus transit to the old Post Office area.
I don’t regret coming home after more than 20 years, but I, too, have been astounded by how the city appears to have lost its way. There is endless talk – usually accompanied by endless reports – about what could and should be done to revive the CBD, but there is no over-arching vision or leadership to actually make it happen.
Instead, our new-old Mayor wants us to be excited by new housing developments – projects that extend out into the country and make it even more critical to retain a vibrant city centre, or we will end up like the ‘doughnut’ regional cities of the US, where everybody lives in the ‘burbs and shops in malls and the city heart is left for dead.
It is my fear that Warrnambool is at a critical juncture where, unless it gets its act together, we are at risk of that happening. We will have a city centre full of “services”, but no heart.
How to improve the CBD: offer up high-profile but ugly walls, like this eyesore, to public art.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I [/dropcap] recently lived near a city like that: Morwell, in Gippsland. It was once a vibrant ‘SEC town’, but once the power companies were privatised, the jobs went and so did the families who shopped, ate and socialised in the town. It now relies on being a “service” centre, full of bland state and federal government offices providing health, welfare and social support services.
Morwell’s main street is full of empty, dusty shops that were once restaurants, clothing stores, jewellers, butchers, bakers and newsagencies, some of which have moved out to the MidValley Shopping Centre – halfway between Morwell and Traralgon – because that’s where people now linger. Does this sound familiar?
Warrnambool, however, has a huge advantage over a place like Morwell and that is tourism. People flock to see the whales, and the beaches, and even good old Flagstaff Hill, but the CBD is letting us down, badly.
We have some of the most gorgeous and historic buildings in Victoria, but you wouldn’t know it. We have an incredible, vibrant arts scene, but – judging by the lack of public art – you wouldn’t know it. We have a deep and important indigenous history right around this area, but you wouldn’t know it.
I walked around the entire CBD last week and did not see one bit of indigenous public art and only a handful of public art. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places.
How to improve the CBD: stop patching and start paving. Especially on high-profile corners like this one.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hat I did see were many empty, dusty shops; dirty and stained bitumen pavements that had been patched and repatched to the point of being unsafe; a dark toilet block and a noisy bus transit zone dominating the hub of Liebig and Koroit streets; and, as always, pedestrians trying to skip between cars at intersections and being grateful when somebody stopped to let them pass.
And it appears that when some people DO try and make a difference, they are blocked at every turn. Take, for example, the artist who tried to open a pop-up market in an empty shop but was unable to find anyone (among the 20 or so people who apparently, between them, own the CBD) who would take it on. They would rather leave their shop empty. (What a contrast to Revive Newcastle, where property owners actively encourage such ideas.)
And so the inertia continues…and more reports are written (another Liebig St revival plan is next) and older reports gather dust (remember the 2010 report on revitalising the Warrnambool Railway Station precinct?) and everybody sighs and says, “that’s just how it is here”, while cities and towns like Bendigo, Castlemaine, Daylesford, Ballarat, Kyneton and even Birregurra, power ahead.
We deserve better leadership and this is Mayor Neoh’s greatest challenge: to unite the council and business community around a common purpose and to actually get things done.
How to improve the CBD: free (timed) parking, bike lanes and a 40 kph speed limit between Lava and Timor Streets.
What CAN be done: for more examples of creative street art click here.
[learn_more caption=”Ten ideas to improve the CBD, in some cases, almost instantly – click the arrow”]
1. All outdoor eating in Liebig St must use quality furniture – not cheap, plastic tables and chairs.
2. Paint a mural on the ugliest toilet block known to feature on a major intersection anywhere in Victoria…until you can close it down.
3. Relocate the bus transit area from Koroit St to outside the former Post Office Building in Timor St.
4. Provide financial support for all of the historic shop tops along Timor St to be repainted.
5. Repave all of the footpaths along Liebig St.
6. Free parking in the entire CBD, but with time restrictions enforced by local laws.
7. At least half a dozen bare and ugly walls around the CBD to be offered up for public art.
8. Ban all exposed skip bins.
9. Add bike lanes along Liebig St and reduce traffic speeds to 40 kph between Lava and Timor streets.
10. Cars entering roundabouts must give way to pedestrians.
