CLOSED MARCH 17: Winners, Peter Smid, Phyllis Walsh, Janis Bennett, Lana Campbell, Karen McKenzie,
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] O [/dropcap]ur story about the spectacular gardens created out of an old quarry near Allansford really struck a chord with our readers and we are now giving members of the Bluestone Club a chance to win one of five double passes to the next open day.
Paul Ryan, the man whose vision and hard work has transformed the quarry over the past eight years, will open his garden to the public on Saturday March 22 and Sunday March 24 from 10am to 5pm. Entry is $10 per person. (The garden is on the corner of Hopkins Point and Tooram roads, Allansford – entry off Tooram Rd).
Paul has kindly donated five double passes to Bluestone Magazine and to be in the draw, you need to be a paid subscriber (why not join us and support Bluestone?) and simply email us your name and address by Monday March 17 to editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au
The winners will be announced Monday morning on our Facebook page and also in our weekly newsletter.
It should be a fabulous day and Paul is also promising a cup of tea and a biscuit!
Winners: Peter Smid; Phyllis Walsh; Lana Campbell; Janis Bennett; Karen McKenzie.
$100 voucher to the Pantry Door at Basalt
CLOSED MARCH 14: winner, Loretta Gurnett
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]e have a sensational prize for one of our lucky Bluestone Club members (our wonderful paid subscribers).
A very generous (and anonymous) donor has given us a $100 lunch voucher to The Pantry Door at Basalt, Killarney (wow!!).
To be in the draw, you need to be a paid subscriber – that’s easy, just click here – and then email us your name and address to editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au by Friday March 14.
We will announce the winner on our Facebook page that night (and contact you!).
Keep your eye peeled for more great competitions that are open to all of our Bluestone Club members.
Winner: Loretta Gurnett
Lost history finds loyal following
The Warrnambool Foreshore Caravan Park in the days before Winnebagos were invented. Image: Lost Warrnambool.
By Carol Altmann
Preserving and, just as importantly, sharing our history is no longer only the preserve of museums, academics and a few dedicated souls prepared to pore over faded documents.
Social media has created a new kid on the old block and that is the so-called “Lost” movement, where Facebook sites have been set up for a particular city or town and people are invited to share their photographs and memories.
The Lost Melbourne Facebook page, for example, has more than 41,000 followers who contribute and comment on photographs that capture a past life in Victoria’s capitol city.
Closer to home, we are fortunate to have a Lost Warrnambool Facebook page that has almost 3ooo followers who are united in their love of nostalgia.
Do you recognise this? The Warrnambool “Convent of Mercy”. Image: Lost Warrnambool.
The page is maintained, monitored and updated by a Warrnambool man whom we won’t name here, because he doesn’t name himself on the page, mainly because the page is not about him.
It is about us: where we come from, who we are, how we have grown, what has changed, what hasn’t.
It is a social forum, a fun forum, like a giant reunion where we share our bond to this city by the sea.
But it also involves a lot of hard work and Lost Warrnambool shares photographs that he has either purchased, been given, or been sent – and anyone who writes a blog or maintains a Facebook page knows that this all takes time.
Lost Warrnambool is creating and maintaining an important social record and opening up our history for us all to enjoy, so, for this, we consider Lost Warrnambool to be a Quiet Hero. Well done, Lost Warrnambool.
[box] The founder of Lost Warrnambool will receive a $20 voucher from Wyton Cellars, 127 Kepler St, Warrnambool: thankyou to Steve and Jo from Wyton Cellars for your support of our Quiet Heroes.[/box]
In the shadow of the silver ball: Clive Bray has been the owner operator of the Silver Ball Hair Design Salon in Warrnambool for almost 45 years.
If there is one thing Clive Bray has never had to worry about during his many years as a hairdresser, it is explaining how to find his salon: it sits right under the famous Fletcher Jones silver ball.
Indeed, Clive deliberately named his salon after the silver ball because of its landmark status in Warrnambool and the Silver Ball Hair Design salon, in Flaxman St, is almost as old as the ball itself.
“My salon was the first one outside of the CBD, so I needed to choose something memorable,” Clive explained.
“I also had Isobel Jones and Lady (Rena) Jones as clients, so I asked them if I could use the name and they were quite happy for me to do so.”
Silver Ball Hair Design was originally named the Silver Ball Beauty Salon and Hairdressing and will celebrate a remarkable 45 years of business in August this year.
As it happens, Clive, who grew up in Naringal, is among the hundreds of Warrnambool people with a personal link to the Fletcher Jones factory, as he worked there for two years “in the design and pleating department”.
Clive, however, took a leaf out of Sir Fletcher Jones’ book by deciding to break new ground and pursue his own business.
Being the 1960s, there were not a lot of men working as hairdressers in salons, as opposed to barber shops, and Clive could see an opportunity to cater for a growing market for personal grooming.
He spent four years training in Melbourne, followed by a year in Adelaide, before returning to Warrnambool and starting a mobile hairdressing service.
After building up a client base, Clive decided to set up his own salon and bought a weatherboard house at 46 Flaxman St, to which he added the salon that looks almost exactly the same today as it did when it first opened in 1969 – two years after the ball was erected.
The purple vinyl chairs, disco-silver wallpaper and egg-shaped hairdryers are the ultimate in retro cool, even if unintentional.
Clive inside his silver-wallpapered salon that has changed little since it first opened in 1969.
Clive’s loyal clients have proven to be equally as durable.
“I have had one lady coming here for 45 years, another two for 43 years and about six who have been clients for 35 years,” he said, smiling.
His co-worker, Pam Henderson, has been at the salon for 43 years.
“I like to think that we create a relaxed and easy-going atmosphere here,” Clive said.
“We treat our clients like personal friends.”
But Clive, who has two sons that work in other professions, knows that when he retires, his salon will go too.
“When I pull the plug, then this building comes down,” he said.
The view across the road from the Silver Ball salon is certainly not what it used to be, with the buildings falling into disrepair.
And what about the silver ball water tower? Should it come down too?
As a long-time observer of the silver ball, we asked Clive if he had an opinion on the campaign to save the icon from further neglect.
“Well there is no doubt it is an iconic landmark. The number of people who still stop outside our salon and take photographs of it is quite incredible,” he said.
“I would like to see it saved, but if it is saved, it needs to be maintained: it is no good just letting it sit there.”
[box] Bluestone Magazine supports the grassroots campaign to save the best of the Fletcher Jones site in Warrnambool from being lost through neglect. We support a sensitive development of the site that respects its social and physical history and preserves the gardens and silver ball for future generations.[/box]
What does the future hold for the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village that turns 40 later this month?
OPINION
It’s two years since the Warrnambool City Council announced a review into the future of the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village – which turns 40 later this month – but we are still none the wiser as to what its future holds.
The $90,000 masterplan, funded by the council and State Government, has resulted in a draft document that is yet to be released publicly and there is no indication as to when this will happen.
It is no secret that the colonial village and maritime museum is in trouble: it is struggling to find its place in a rapidly shifting world of tourism tastes that are vastly different to those of 1974 or even 1994.
The on-site accommodation at Flagstaff Hill has been popular, but overall visitor numbers have been falling and costing the council around $500,000 a year to meet the shortfall (a shortfall that would be much greater if it weren’t for volunteer staff).
Council CEO Bruce Anson recently told a media briefing that the village needs 80,000 visitors a year to break even, but is recording around 60,000: this is a lot of lost ground…and the competition is about to get a lot hotter.
One of the images from the Shipwreck Coast Masterplan depicting what might be possible at Port Campbell or Peterborough.
I have written previously how I believe Flagstaff Hill has had its day and recreated colonial villages are out of step with the boom in eco-tourism, ‘experience’ tourism, and ‘indulgence’ tourism based around food, wine and luxury accommodation.
This is exactly the sort of tourism that is being talked about – and mapped out – just down the road under the dynamic Shipwreck Coast Masterplan.
I say dynamic, because while the Flagstaff Hill draft masterplan remains under wraps, the Shipwreck Coast Masterplan hit the ground running last year and will release its draft plan for public feedback in April.
The detailed Shipwreck Coast Masterplan is being developed by Parks Victoria, Tourism Victoria, the Moyne Shire Council and the Corangamite Shire Council and, last year, held a number of packed community forums to thrash out priorities and ideas.
Remarkably, the “Shipwreck Coast” at the centre of all this energy and excitement does not include Warrnambool – it is barely mentioned outside of the plan’s maps – and the Warrnambool City Council is not a formal partner.
Instead, the focus is firmly on managing and enhancing a 28km stretch of coast from Peterborough to Port Campbell and Princetown and the hinterland around these three towns, including places like Timboon and Simpson.
The WCC told me that its tourism manager, Peter Abbott, had provided input to the plan and would be speaking with Parks Victoria in coming weeks and that, overall, it supported any moves to improve the Great Ocean Road that would help bring tourists our way.
Despite this optimism that we will pick up tourists almost by default, when the masterplan does cast its eyes further afield, like in its suggestion of a first-class golfing circuit, it leap-frogs right over Warrnambool and suggests golfers visit Peterborough, Port Fairy and…Robe.
The portion of the Shipwreck Coast that is at the centre of a draft masterplan to be released next month.
This passing over of Warrnambool – which often happens when talking about the Great Ocean Road – is even more frustrating because of the potential for Warrnambool to be a hub of fine food, wine, eco-tourism and ‘experience’ tourism.
But let’s stick with Flagstaff Hill for the moment.
Aside from the focus and energy around Peterborough and Port Campbell in the Shipwreck Coast Masterplan, a potential knock-out blow for Flagstaff Hill is a proposed $100-$150 million interpretive and education centre at Loch Ard Gorge.
Such a centre would locate the Loch Ard story and a significant chunk of the shipwreck coast story at Loch Ard Gorge – there would be even less incentive to travel further down the coast to Warrnambool to see it recreated, hence the WCC has started to talk about Flagstaff Hill “telling the story of the Great Southern Ocean”, whatever that entails.
The idea of a first-class visitor centre at Loch Ard Gorge has been bubbling away since it was flagged in 2010. The Victorian Tourism Council listed it as a priority in 2011 and, in 2012, the Great Ocean Road Destination Management Plan (funded by the State and Federal Governments) gave it number one billing in its list of eight ‘game changer’ projects.
Parks Victoria told me last week that the centre remains a “proposal”, and perhaps we will know more when the Shipwreck Coast masterplan draft is released in April, but there is no doubt that improving visitor facilities at Loch Ard Gorge and the nearby 12 Apostles is a top priority at the highest levels.
Given the importance of the Great Ocean Road to national tourism, I would suggest it is not a matter of if the Loch Ard Gorge centre will be built, but when.
Flagstaff Hill is not naïve: it is aware of the threat from this potential development as one of many challenges it faces in trying to chart its new course against stiff winds of change.
Despite this, and despite Flagstaff Hill occupying one of Warrnambool’s most prominent locations, there is still no sense of urgency or real excitement about its future or how the site might look and operate in five, 10 or 15 years time.
If we want to remain a relevant and appealing part of the “Shipwreck Coast”, we need to start moving on Flagstaff Hill now and generate some of the same energy, excitement and forward thinking that is happening between Peterborough and Princetown.
To do otherwise is to risk missing the boat and watch Flagstaff Hill slowly sink into obscurity.
[Until last year, Warrnambool was the base for Shipwreck Coast Tourism, but this body has been wound up as part of a new Great Ocean Road Tourism Board that will cover Geelong to the SA border.]
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