Comment – Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]here is a great line floating around about the South West Coast by-election this Saturday (Oct 31) – don’t keep voting the same way and expect things to be different!

Yet so many south-west Victorians do just that: keep voting the same party back in year after year and then complain that things don’t change.

You only need to look around our beautiful corner of the world to see the hazards of living in a super safe seat and when it comes to the condition of our roads they are, quite literally, hazardous.

The roads are dreadful and the train service is old and inadequate.

The local job market – especially for young people – is shrinking as traditional industries close down or dry up, with few adequate replacements.

Portland should have, by now, been sitting at the forefront of the state’s renewable energy industry, but has been hamstrung by the poor policies of the conservative parties at both a state and federal level.

Our key tertiary institutions, South West TAFE and Deakin University, are struggling to either get back on their feet (as in the case of TAFE which was gutted under the Napthine Government) or to keep upright, as in the case of Deakin-Warrnambool.

Warrnambool used to be a humming university town: it is no longer, as bit by bit tertiary courses are shut down, relocated, or moved online.

Mainstreet is struggling, shops sit empty and fibs are told – such as the fib about the number of jobs that would come from a largely automated powdered milk factory and cold store in Merrivale – to make it look like change is happening.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]he people living in the south-west are not suckers, yet every election that comes along, be it state or federal, I believe we act that way.

We forget all that has gone before and fall for the glossy, big-faced posters that are strung up on fences, even if, in the case of Michael Neoh, they only joined their party (the Nationals) minutes after it became clear they were not wanted by their first party (the Liberals).

Or we are bombarded by advertising from deep-pocketed parties like the Liberals, who have long treated this seat like a personal fiefdom.

And, sure enough, the same party wins each time, and nothing actually changes.

So the roads get lumpier and bumpier, the old train with its old carriages still runs late, and more young people slip into a zone where they leave school, jobs are harder to find and things like “ice” become a way out of reality.

This Saturday, things can be different.

We can make a change – a real change – by voting for an independent, and that independent is Warrnambool legal aid lawyer Roy Reekie.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] B [/dropcap]luestone is backing Roy for this election because we believe he has the experience, commitment and creative thinking needed to put the south-west back on the electoral map.

We want to live in an electorate that is no longer taken for granted, and attracts as much attention from Spring St as the other marginal seats around Victoria. As an independent, Roy can make a lot of noise and he can make it now – not stuck on the Opposition benches.

Roy has a range of creative and interesting ideas (you can read more on his by-election Facebook page and his open letter to voters) and, above all, he has shown a unbendable commitment to representing this corner of the world – even at his own expense.

Why else would anyone run five times against formidable odds?

The odds are still formidable – former Liberal Premier Denis Napthine pushed the seat out to an 11 per cent margin – but we are hoping that, this time, the south-west is ready to back a different runner in Roy Reekie and come home a real winner.

[box]A forum featuring all candidates will be held at the Lighthouse Theatre, W’bool, tomorrow (Monday Oct 26) at 7pm. The candidates are: Roy Reekie (independent), Thomas Campbell (The Greens), Roma Britnell (Liberal), Michael Neoh (Nationals), Michael McCluskey (independent), Swampy Marsh (independent), Pete Smith (independent), Jim Doukas (Country Party), Rodney Van De Hoef (independent), Jennifer Gamble (Animal Justice Party), Lillian Len (Australian Christians).[/box]

 You might enjoy these related stories…

Michael McCluskey on education

Roy Reekie on rail

McCluskey endorses marriage equality

By-election: Are we on a road to nowhere?

Analysis  – Carol Altmann

The figures for the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival are in, and it’s a case of good news and bad news for the Warrnambool City Council and, by default, its ratepayers.

The good news is that it didn’t blow the bank.

In other words, it kept within the $450,000 budget that was set aside last October and avoided anything like the $150,000 blow-out of last year. Phew.

The bad news, however, is that the festival is attracting less people and therefore, you can assume, generating less economic and tourism benefits to Warrnambool but still costing $450,000 to run.

While there is still no official report on the results, the council released some figures to Bluestone today which said about 15,000 tickets were sold for the seven day event.

Last year, when the event ran over eight days, it attracted 19,758 people.

Of the 15,000 tickets sold this year, 24% were from metropolitan Melbourne – the highest percentage ever – which sounds like great news, until you work out that equates to only 3600 people compared to 3965 in 2015 and 5590 in 2013.

When you are coming off a smaller base, the percentages start to get wobbly.

It is extremely difficult to run a critical eye over a children’s festival – after all, it is aimed at children for god’s sake – but someone also needs to be the kid in the crowd as the Emperor marches by and point out that he is wearing no clothes.

So Bluestone, at risk of being deemed “too negative”, is prepared to say that the Fun4Kids Festival is getting precariously close to being bare-butt naked.

The reason is that the festival is no longer what it was designed to be, which was a major tourism attraction for Warrnambool.

Indeed in its heyday, the festival was pulling crowds of more than 32,000 people: double what it now achieves.

It was also costing less – far less – and at one point it was thought the council may not need to subsidise it at all because it would cover all of its own expenses. Such a notion now seems fanciful.

Here is the critical stat: in 2005, not long after the festival first began, it cost the council $156,354 and attracted 32,112 people.

This year, it cost up to $450,000 and attracted 15,000 people.

These are the cold, hard facts and why council staff last October recommended that the festival be discontinued because it had seemingly had its day.

But the decision to kill Peppa Pig, as it were, proved too emotional for the majority of the councillors and they agreed to press on in 2015 – turning the festival into more of a grassroots, simple-kids-fun kind of event with an extra heavy reliance on volunteers.

According to council spokesman Nick Higgins, this formula is set to be repeated in 2016.

“Council will shortly call for expressions of interest from local people keen to be part of the festival’s community consultation panel,” he said via email.

“The panel worked well this year and generated plenty of ideas and enthusiasm for the festival.”

It is wonderful to see such ideas and enthusiasm and I am sure most of the 15,000 people who turned up this year had a terrific time, but is this the best use of $450,000 each year to generate more visitors to Warrnambool?

Cr Kylie Gaston asked a question this week of Cr Brian Kelson, when he successfully pushed for free CBD parking over December and January, as to where the $70,000 in lost car parking revenue could be cut from within the budget.

I can think of at least one area….

For my money, I think free off-street parking over the busy summer period will do more for local traders than seven days of Fun4Kids where most of the action is confined to a plastic palace on the Civic Green.

If we want to continue to run a kid’s festival for, mostly, local and regional kids to enjoy, then let’s embrace that idea and stop pretending that Fun4Kids is a major tourism magnet.

It was once, but it is no longer, and there still needs to be a full and frank conversation about its long-term future.

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]he headline for a Trip Advisor review about The Stag restaurant in Port Fairy says it all: Ryan Sessions is back!

For chef Ryan and partner Kirstyn, the decision to take over The Stag (1847) in March this year meant a return to the town where it all began, and where they enjoyed their greatest success.

The pair was widely known for their transformation of the Merrijig Inn, Port Fairy, which they took over in 2006 and raised to a level that saw the restaurant awarded one hat in its first year and two in its second. It was also named the best restaurant in country Victoria.

It was an extraordinary achievement for a young couple who grew up and trained in south-west Victoria, with Kirstyn having been born in Koroit and Ryan moving to Warrnambool from New Zealand as a child.

The pair met when Ryan started working as a young chef at Clovelly Restaurant, in Warrnambool, having finished his apprenticeship with the now-defunct Mahogony Ship Restaurant at Flagstaff Hill.

“It was really there (at Clovelly), that we started to really understand and appreciate food and wine and how they could work together,” Ryan explains.

Prior to that, he confesses, he wasn’t particularly passionate about cooking.

“At school, I was much better in the arts subjects, but I wanted a job where I could go surfing in the morning,” Ryan recalls with a laugh.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] R[/dropcap]yan’s flair with food saw him picked up by the celebrated Portofino’s in Port Fairy, at that time run by Andrew and Shane Clancey and considered the top restaurant in the area.

But it was only a matter of time, of course, until the Sessions wanted to run a restaurant of their own – and the Merrijig Inn beckoned.

“It was fabulous, but it was also exhausting,” says Kirstyn. “Seven days a week, working at that level, it takes its toll.”

In 2011, the pair offered the business to top chef Tanya Connellan and partner Liz Foreman who, wait for it, had previously run The Stag.

[slideshow_deploy id=’15795′]

“The idea was for us to get out of hospitality altogether, because we felt it had all got too much,” Ryan says.

The hospitality industry, however, had other ideas.

After starting “a 12-month break” that was to last only eight months, Ryan was offered head chef with the exclusive The Argus Dining Room, at Hepburn Springs.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite go to plan and he resigned after just four months in what he says was an “amicable” departure.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]he Sessions returned to the south-west and, as Kirstyn explains, did a “whole lot of different things” including her working for Oscar’s Waterfront Boutique hotel in Port Fairy and Ryan helping out in the kitchen at various pubs.

“Did the patrons have any idea who was cooking their schnitzel?” I ask.

“No,” he laughs.

Patrons of The Stag, however, certainly know who is in charge and word has spread rapidly about the dynamic, bush-food based menu and all-Australian wine list.

Indeed, despite being open for only six months, the revamped restaurant was last month awarded one hat by The Age Good Food Guide.

And here Kirstyn tells me something I didn’t know: hats are awarded not just for the food, but “for the whole experience from the minute you walk in the door to the moment you leave”.

This means food, wine list, ambience, front-of-house (Kirstyn’s domain) and even the quality of glassware and cutlery.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I[/dropcap]t is The Stag menu, however, that has gastronomes gasping.

Ryan sources all of his ingredients from within Australia and as close to home as possible, which includes foraging along the Port Fairy coast and using small-quantity producers such as Shaw River Buffalo Cheese (Yambuk), South Seas Abalone (Portland) and Great Ocean Ducks (Port Campbell).

“We also have a strong emphasis on using indigenous ingredients – plants, fruits and berries – and taking food back to what it was,” Ryan says.

And with that Kirstyn offers me a sample of ice plant – it is succulent and salty, and grown at Kingston, South Australia. While I will leave a full food review to those far more experienced than me, this one taste is enough to make me want to try the whole menu.

“Australia has a definite cuisine, but we are still discovering it,” Ryan says.

“There are 20,000 edible plants, for example, so we are really just touching the tip of the iceberg.”

[box]The Stag, 22 Sackville St, Port Fairy, is open for dinner only Tuesday- Saturday. Bookings: (03) 55 68 3229[/box]

You might also enjoy…

Finding the ‘sauce’ of good food at Merrijig Inn

Making food music at Piccolo

Buffalo cheese a Shaw thing

The great free-range egg hunt

Words and photos by Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] L [/dropcap]ong before online shopping and well before Target and K-Mart, there were places like Reicha’s in Terang, a clothing and haberdashery store that sold a bit of everything.

That “everything” includes things like buttons, bras and balls of wool; shoes, zippers, sunglasses and hats; hankies, dressing gowns, school uniforms and reels of cotton in every conceivable colour.

It is the sort of shop where customers can still run up an account and the wooden front counter has been polished smooth by the hundreds of hands with which it has made contact over the past 55 years.

But now Reicha’s, like so many stores of its kind that have already disappeared, is hanging on by a thread.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] O [/dropcap]wner Michael Reicha, who has worked in the family business for 26 years, is now 56 years old and while he has children of his own, he is a realist and knows their future will not be in the shop.

“We are losing the generations from our shops. They are no longer being passed on like they were because everything has changed with how we shop and where we shop, and so much of it is now online,” he says.

Reicha’s survives on the back of a base of loyal customers and providing, as Michael describes it, “the sort of personal service that you can’t get online, where people can see, feel and try something on and bring it back if they are not happy with it”.

The day of Bluestone’s visit, one of those regular customers was buying a rose pink dressing gown for her elderly mother, while another was browsing the lines of women’s tops. It might not be described as “jumping”, but it was steady.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] M [/dropcap]ichael’s co-worker Linda Kenna, who grew up in Terang, remembers when the two-storey shop had separate counters for men’s and women’s clothing, and the place was bustling with people buying balls of wool and lengths of fabric to make their own clothes.

“One whole wall was packed just with balls of wool,” Michael adds, laughing, “which is hard to imagine now”.

The story behind Reicha’s is one of tenacity and tragedy.

The business was started by Michael’s father, Les Reicha, a Lebanese migrant who originally settled in Geelong and – like Sir Fletcher Jones before him – bought a hawker’s van and travelled around the western district in the 1940s and 50s, selling his wares.

“He used to come down and sell clothing to the farmers and spend the night at the Noorat Hotel,” Michael says.

“Dad loved this area, loved the people, and so eventually he moved here and started in a shop across the road before buying this shop.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]ragedy struck, however, in 1973 when Les drowned at Peterborough while fishing. He left behind his wife, Elaine, and four children, including Michael who was aged just 13.

Elaine, who is still living, continued on with the business in Terang and a smaller shop in Cobden, while also raising her young family.

“I don’t know how she did it on her own, but Mum kept the shop going even with four kids,” Michael says.

And while Michael expects “Reicha’s” will come to a close when he eventually retires, he is pragmatic rather than nostalgic.

“It is coming to an end…and while it is a battle sometimes, it is still a good battle,” he says, smiling.

[box]Reicha’s Drapery is at 74 High St, Terang, in the 1916 Kelly Building’s which are set to be freshened up as part of a Corangamite Council owner incentive program. Reicha’s also have a store at 16 Curdie St, Cobden. No website and no Facebook page but drop in to either shop to see retail as it used to be.[/box]

You might also enjoy…

Sign of the times for Mortlake icon: Golsworthy’s

Turning in to the Turn In Motel

Deep into the cellars of KM Lynch

Little old shoe leads to a humble war hero

Oh Biba, look at you now!

Comment – Carol Altmann

WE all know the ever-vigilant Maremma dogs have saved the population of little penguins on Warrnambool’s Middle Island, but it’s doubtful they can save the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village.

The 40-year-old tourist village made itself Maremma headquarters ahead of the national release of the movie Oddball, which gives a largely fictionalised version of the Maremma-penguin story and was filmed partly in Warrnambool.

Indeed visitors to Flagstaff Hill can, if they are there at the right time, meet the dogs and buy a made-in-Indonesia stuffed toy to help continue the Maremma program.

Flagstaff Hill manager and head of tourism for the Warrnambool City Council Peter Abbott has also been particularly active – and successful – in trying to generate media coverage for Oddball and its links to our city. (How we stop enthusiastic tourists from wading across to Middle Island itself is another matter).

But behind the scenes, Flagstaff Hill has just recorded its worst visitor numbers in a decade and it’s a long climb back to prosperity.

According to the council, Flagstaff Hill had 54,469 visitors in 2014-15 (excluding functions).

This compares to 60,000 in the previous year and continues the downward slide from the 81,000 that was recorded in 2003-04.

As council CEO Bruce Anson has said before, 80,000 is a break-even position.

This means at least another 25,000 people need to come through the front doors of Flagstaff Hill each year – not to show growth, but to catch up to where it was a decade ago and stop it bleeding around half a million dollars a year.

The “meet the canine stars of Oddball” is part of that plan. The other, even more significant part, involves another movie, if not quite as Hollywood as Oddball.

This is the $2 million being spent on updating the very-dated Shipwrecked sound and light show as part of a $3 million upgrade of the village.

What this new sound and light show will focus on has not been revealed, despite initial hopes to have the project up and running by now.

When Bluestone recently checked with the council, the project was still at the “expressions of interest” stage, which suggests it has not been easy to find the right people for the job, or perhaps $2 million is not enough to deliver what was hoped for.

In the meantime, the council is ploughing ahead with reconfiguring the front entrance (from memory, this is the third renovation of the entrance since the village opened) to blend the visitor information centre into the complex and improve access to Pippies restaurant.

The difficult truth, however, is that window-dressing the entrance and banking on movies to draw more people does not change the fact that the village itself will remain largely static.

This remains it’s biggest failing and the most common complaint from those who pay their entrance fee to find there is not much happening at all inside the cute buildings.

At best, Oddball will provide a visitor spike to Flagstaff Hill while the movie is fresh, and the new $2 million sound and light show may draw another 17,000 people a year until it, too, becomes dated.

The short use-by date of these attractions is why I would rather see the millions that are being spent on Flagstaff Hill plunged into our unique, permanent attractions that don’t date.

I am talking about our incredible natural environment and rich indigenous heritage.

We live on one of the most accessible and spectacular coastlines in the world with a rich indigenous history that is only now beginning to be taken seriously by tourism authorities, although there is still a long way to go.

Imagine what Tower Hill could do with $2 million of state funds? A fabulous bush foods cafe/restaurant might be a start.

Imagine how far $3 million would go in developing and promoting a trail linking Point Richie/Moyjil, to Tower Hill and on to the Budj Bim landscape around Lake Condah, Mt Eccles and Tyrendarra? The Budj Bim area is considered so special, it is on the verge of gaining World Heritage status and we should be ready.

If Warrnambool wants to pull tourists further along the Great Ocean Road, then this is how to do it: by becoming the jumping off point to an enduring and unique landscape and culture that fascinates people from around the world.

Tie this culture and landscape to quality accommodation, food and wine trails, biking and hiking and you have an attraction that is much more dynamic and organic than a static village.

This is the sort of long-term thinking required if we really want to see cameras and action, rather than a “spike” that lasts about as long as the popcorn.