A BLUESTONE EXCLUSIVE:

Words by Carol Altmann

The owner of the former Fletcher Jones factory in Warrnambool, Dean Montgomery, is expected to be announced shortly as the new owner of the former Glenormiston Agricultural College.

Bluestone Magazine has learned that Mr Montgomery is the frontrunner to take over the 300ha college site and historic Glenormiston Homestead, near Terang, which has been vacant for two years following the departure of TAFE.

The site has since been under caretaker control of the State Government, which earlier this year launched an Expression of Interest process to try and find a new owner.

Previous attempts by the former Coalition Government to secure a new tenant fell over in 2014 and it was also unable to find a buyer for the site.

The Andrews Labor Government, however, is expected to announce shortly that Mr Montgomery, who is based in China, is the successful buyer following an extensive negotiation process. Mr Montgomery could not be reached for comment.

Bluestone has been told that the sale is expected to include the multi-million dollar wooden staircase carved by colonial woodcarver and cabinet maker Robert Prenzel for the original owners of the homestead, the Black family, in 1909.

Wealthy pastoralist Niel Black built the five-bedroom mansion in 1847 and the Black family owned the property until 1949 when it sold it to the State Government for use as an agricultural college, although Glenormiston Agriculture College did not start until 22 years later.

The 35 Prenzel wooden panels along the staircase had been the subject of some dispute over just who owned them, having been removed by the Black family and donated to Melbourne University, which later returned them to the property and included them in the transfer to TAFE in 2005.

The homestead is considered of architectural and historical significance to Victoria because of its design, but also its reflection of how south-west Victoria was colonised.

Heritage Victoria makes the point that, prior to Niel Black arriving at the site, it was the scene of an aboriginal massacre and “as on many other Western District estates, violence towards aborigines was used to consolidate the property”.

“Glenormiston’s origins, thus, are intimately bound up with the violence that accompanied the early expansion of the Western District frontier in the 19th century,” its Victorian Heritage Database listing says.

The expected purchase of Glenormiston College is one of several prominent property purchases by Mr Montgomery in the recent years.

The Geelong-born businessman bought the former Fletcher Jones site in Warrnambool in 2014 with a view to establishing the Warrnambool Motor Museum that is now under construction. He has also purchased the T&G building in Geelong, the Leura Hotel in Camperdown and the historic Motang homestead on Hopkins Point Road, Warrnambool.

At this point we can’t confirm what the Glenormiston College site will be used for under Mr Montgomery’s ownership, although the State Government had stipulated in the EOI process that at least part of it continue to be used for education and training.

More good stuff:

Tightening the tap on council leaks

A $4 million Loch Ard peacock, but who has the key?

Fun4Kids costs $450k but provides no report

Trees, transparency and truth

The big shed schemozzle: we follow the money

Wilma Wright, FOI and more

Analysis – Carol Altmann

We heard it was coming and it has arrived – the clamping down of councillors being able to speak freely to the media and a whopping fine if they leak what a council considers confidential information.

Tomorrow night (July 4) the Warrnambool City Council will use a special meeting to vote on a new code of conduct that, among a raft of other things, demands that councillors tell the communications manager, Nick Higgins, if they talk to a journalist.

It also includes a provision to fine councillors $18,200.40 (!!) – or charge them with serious misconduct – if they leak confidential information to a journalist, or anybody else for that matter. This change is one that had been recommended for councils across Victoria under changes to the Local Government Act.

In another change under the Act, all councillors must sign the code of conduct if they wish to remain on council.

The changes to the Act make no secret, pardon the pun, that they are intended to improve accountability and “standards of behaviour” which is another way of saying that “rogue” councillors will be dragged further into line.

I am not in favour of councillors running amok, but this clamping down comes as more and more information is kept from the public, or carefully massaged by council media units before release, and will only make it even harder for journalists to tell you what is really going on.

In fact, at the time of writing, if you try and find the agenda for tomorrow night’s special meeting on the council’s website, it is not there. Nor is a copy of the draft Code of Conduct so that we can see what the councillors are being asked to consider.

More importantly, as we have already written, there has been a string of critical information that has been considered “confidential” by the council that surely should be in the public domain.

This includes:

• full details of the CEO’s salary package
• the full financial results of the Fun4Kids Festival
• the full financial results of Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village
• the purchase of Porter’s shed in Wangoom
• the cost of retiling the Aquazone changerooms
• the guest list for the council’s May Race marquee

…and on it goes.

All of the stories we have written about these issues have relied on sources, leaks and Freedom of Information applications – the bread and butter of any good journalism, but also becoming the only way to find out even the most basic of information (eg. how much is council CEO Bruce Anson actually paid?)

You may recall that the internal panic about leaks from Warrnambool City Council came to a head after the leaking of documents to The Age about the expansion of  Midfield Meats and the political connections of boss Colin McKenna.

That saga led to an investigation and public shaming of three councillors that, locally, generated more heat than the vastly more important story about links between Mr McKenna and then Premier Denis Napthine.

It also led to this latest move to stop councillors from saying anything to journalists without the council’s media adviser knowing about it.

You have to ask – who is this policy designed to benefit?

Only those who want to keep you, the ratepayer, in the dark about the potentially controversial, embarrassing or debatable decisions that are made behind closed doors.

As a wise person once said: “news is what somebody, somewhere doesn’t want you to know. The rest is advertising”.

And I, for one, believe we need far more news.

[printfriendly]

By Carol Altmann

Liebig St is one of those quirky Warrnambool things – a main street that nobody pronounces properly, named in honour of a guy that few locals have ever heard of.

Certainly Justus von Liebig is not a name that rolls off the tongue and, when it does, we locals insist on saying Lie-Big instead of the correct Lee-Bick or Lee-Bish, depending on just how German you like to go with your accent.

This battle with the pronunciation is not unexpected because Justus von Liebig was a German chemist and had absolutely nothing to do with Warrnambool, other than in the same way as someone like Microsoft founder Bill Gates or the late Steve Jobs from Apple.

Like Gates and Job, Liebig’s most famous works had a global, transformative impact.

Do you use fertiliser on your garden? You can thank Liebig for working out the benefits of nitrogen to soil.

Do you use beef stock or baking powder in your cooking? You can thank Liebig for “inventing” those too.

And if you have ever stepped inside a chemistry lab, with its test tubes, Bunsen burners and rows of students in white lab coats pouring this into that, you can also give a nod to Liebig for inventing the whole concept of a chemistry lab (but perhaps not the white coats, they were invented by diet guru Jenny Craig, I am sure of it).

So why is the main street in a city at the bottom of Australia, at the bottom of the world, thousands of miles from Europe, named for one of Germany’s great chemists?

RMIT Professor of Design Paul Carter has written an entire academic essay on his thinking behind why surveyor William Pickering, who laid out the grid of Warrnambool streets in 1843, chose two German scientists – the other was astronomer Johannes Kepler – among his selection of highly unusual street names.

As Prof Carter points out, most early street names were reserved for royalty, nobility or colonial officials and certainly not names like Kelp, Japan, Banyan, Lava and Timor (the latter of which, just like Liebig, has suffered from years of mispronunciation to become Tie-More rather than Tea-More).

According to Prof Carter, the choice of Liebig is inextricably linked to his work with improving soils.

“Two aspects of Liebig’s life had struck me as relevant to his commemoration in Warrnambool,” Prof Carter writes.

“Firstly, his invention of nitrogen-based fertilisers and, secondly, the assertion that his interest in securing agricultural production had been stimulated by the experience of living through the ‘year without a summer’ (that happened in 1816).”

In other words, the terrible weather conditions that inspired Liebig to pursue ways of improving farming by improving soils wasn’t lost on Pickering as he laid out a new town in blustery, blowy, unpredictable south-west Victoria.

Healthy soil meant Warrnambool’s early settlers had a better chance of surviving whatever nature threw at them and Pickering’s choice of Liebig was almost certainly a tribute to his contribution.

“….On this basis I had surmised that William Pickering, the government surveyor to whom we owe Warrnambool’s street names, had an agenda: soil improvement as a driver of economic growth,” Prof Carter writes.

Prof Carter also explores a theory that Pickering’s choice of Liebig was not in isolation, but part of a “cryptic crossword puzzle” where Warrnambool’s first street names inter-connected, with Liebig, Kepler, Lava and Kelp the science-and-soil cluster.

“A genius was not required to design this cryptic crossword puzzle, simply a well-informed, scientifically-inclined professional in the right place at the right time – with perhaps a certain determination to…shake off the expectations of family and government,” he writes.

As it happens, this digging into Warrnambool’s early street names was inspired by the Warrnambool City Council’s plan to revitalise Liebig St – now due to start next year – and provides the perfect opportunity to reflect not only the past but the future.

Just as Pickering’s street names reflected a vision of growth for Warrnambool, what is our vision now and can we dare to be anywhere as creative as Pickering was, for his time, in his thinking?

You might also enjoy…

End of the road for retro motel, Caravilla

Who is the ‘Granny’ behind Granny’s Grave?

Behold this bluestone beauty: Fennessy’s at Rosebrook

Secrets of an old shoe 

Turning in to the Turn In Motel

The Vault:

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]his little gem of an anecdote about losing the key to case holding the precious Loch Ard peacock at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village gives an insight into some of the problems that have beset the museum in the recent past.

The Minton porcelain peacock – valued at $4 million in 2010 and no doubt worth even more now – is considered the jewel of the crown in the Flagstaff Hill collection.

Despite this, finding the key to its case can be a problem, not to mention moving it, because it is quite heavy.

Here is the anecdote in full from Flagstaff Hill manager Peter Abbott’s report to the Warrnambool City Council for its March meeting:

“Peacock turntable:

The unit that the Loch Ard peacock sits on stopped rotating. Whilst we don’t open the Peacock cabinet regularly it is quite an operation to do so.

The first attempt found that the key we used was not the right one – 2nd attempt found the peacock weighed a great deal more than we expected so we didn’t move it off the turntable, the third attempt we successfully moved the Peacock with a trolley donated by Matko hire.

The turntable will be sent to Bendigo for renewal with the company that built it 13 years ago.”

Why does this reading this make me shiver? Matko trolleys? Lost keys?

On another note, Bluestone often wonders if all of the missing Loch Ard lead ingots that were believed to be in the water under the now demolished Rowitta ever showed up? To date, the FHMV has not released an update.

And regular readers will also remember the FHMV will spend $2 million in state and council funds on a new sound and light show.

According to Mr Abbott’s report to the council, the tender for this project had been awarded, but council spokesman Nick Higgins told us this was not the case and a final provider was yet to be chosen. (Update: a tender has been awarded and is the same group that developed the current Shipwrecked show at the village).

Either way, the project was expected to start in July last year. It is now expected to be completed by early 2017.

Other good stuff:

Fun4Kids costs $450k but provides no report

Trees, transparency and truth

The big shed schemozzle: we follow the money

Wilma Wright, FOI and more

[printfriendly]

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] W [/dropcap]hen you think of a farmer’s wife, what comes to mind?

A cliched ‘reality’ TV show? A woman in sensible shoes slaving over a wood stove to feed the shearers? Or a highly capable, multi-tasking soul who milks – sometimes literally – the best out of life on the land?

A rural women’s forum to be held in Dunkeld next month (May 13) called Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities, seeks to connect those women who are very much the latter, but who because of distance, or a shortage of time, may not know each other exists.

Among them will be women who are not only involved in the running of their farming property, but also running their own businesses, raising children, organising community events or working to improve farming practices – and sometimes all of the above.

“There are so many women right across this region who are doing amazing things,” says Marty Gent from the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Authority that is coordinating the day.

“This forum, which is a first for us, is aimed at bringing them together, sharing their experiences, building networks, providing support for each other and, hopefully, leading to other events down the track.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he sort of inspirational women Marty is talking about include Leila Sweeney, a 27-year-old fashion designer raised on a NSW farm who has since returned to farming life at Tatyoon, near Ararat.

Tatyoon has a population of 326 which drops to 323 when Leila, her husband Sean McDougall and four-month-old baby Vincent go travelling, but despite its size and rural location, Leila successfully negotiates running her fashion label, Leila Sweeney, from their 1620ha sheep, cattle and cropping property near the town.

“I grew up on a farm and even when I was living in Sydney (on a fashion design scholarship) I was a country girl in a big city,” Leila says.

“To be honest, I love designing fashion, but I am not a fashionable person at all,” she laughs.

Having a small child meant Leila missed being involved in Melbourne Fashion Week this year, but she still nipped down to Melbourne to “keep an eye on what’s happening”.

She is also working toward releasing her next collection of wool garments by September next year that will, she hopes, be produced entirely on Australian soil. At the moment Leila has her range knitted in Singapore where she is, oddly enough, guaranteed the use of 100% Australian wool.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] A [/dropcap]side from running her own business, Leila also teaches textiles at Monivae College, Hamilton, and runs the Live Rural charity with Sean (are you exhausted yet?) to support Australian farmers.

Yet Leila believes she is not as atypical as what she sounds.

“There are a lot of women out there on farms who are running their own small businesses and doing their own thing alongside the main farm production, such as things like raising boutique lamb,” she says.

Yet despite all the creativity, skills and innovative ways that women bring to farm life, they are still rarely first in line to inherit the farm from their parents, even if their brothers show no interest.

The Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities forum may also be another step toward changing this tradition that remains more stubborn.

Leila will be one of three guest speakers at the forum, alongside Lisa Dwyer –  Chair of WestVic Dairy and a non-executive Director with the Australian Livestock Export Corporation Limited – and Naomi Turner from the Tarrington Progress Association and one of the driving forces behind the Swamp Stomp and the Woolly West Fest.

The free forum will also include discussions on community leadership, confidence and change; sustainable farming and soil health; business management and marketing; and farmer and family health and safety.

[box]The Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities forum will be held from 10am-4pm on Friday, May 13 at the Dunkeld Community Centre, 14 Sterling St. Free but RSVP essential by May 9 to Marty Gent at: m.gent@ghcma.vic.gov.au We must also mention that this project is supported by Glenelg Hopkins CMA, through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.[/box]