WCC breaks its new coastal plan to allow racehorse training
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Why are so many people determined to save Levy’s Beach?
Well, this one page from the W’bool City Council’s 2013 Coastal Management Plan says it all.
It is only five years old, this plan, but already the council has trashed it.
It took many months and no doubt a lot of money to prepare, but it is worthless because it has failed its first real test.
This page, page 20, sets out all that things we cared about and valued at Levy’s, which is part of our wild coast precinct.
It also sets out the challenges and what we need to do to repair it and preserve it for the future.
Despite this, the council has agreed to allow up to 800 racehorses a week to train on the beach, including a large dune, and to come in and out on a track across the dunes (it is the only way they can get in). Dune instability is one of the issues listed in the plan.
Our council has let us down. Our trust in them to protect our wild coast has been betrayed.
But when you are betrayed in this way the only thing you can do is fight back, to restore what was supposed to happen in the first place. So on we go.
Original painting, oil on canvas, Graeme Altmann. (Altmann Studios, Highett, Melbourne.)
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
On days like this, we need hope.
On days like today, when we see laws passed that allow even greater damage to our wild coast than what we have already inflicted, it would be so easy to just give up, because the battle is exhausting.
But on days like today, when I need to draw deep on hope, I think of my late uncle Alf Altmann.
In March 1970, almost 50 years ago, Alf attempted to become the first person to row solo across Bass Strait, from Tasmania to Victoria, in a home-built kayak.
He built that kayak piece-by-piece in his garage under his home on Riverview Tce, here in Warrnambool.
To train for this epic journey of more than 200km, he would row out to Deen Maar, (Lady Julia Percy Island) and, once or twice, he carried native saplings in his boat to plant on the barren island.
The saplings never survived. Neither did my uncle. His attempt to cross Bass Strait ended just 1.5 miles from the Victorian coast. So near. So close.
And when I think of his story, I think of an anecdote that stays with me each day as I do my bit to try and turn around decisions that hurt our local environment more than protect it.
“Why do you bother taking those saplings with you?” someone asked Alf. “Nobody will see them out there.”
“I see them,” Alf replied. “I know they are there, and that is all that matters.”
This painting is how my artist brother, Graeme Altmann, often captures the essence of Alf’s journey: a boat, suspended above the turbulent sea, with the proud thylacine pointing toward an unknown future.
We can’t change the mistakes of the past. Alf never came home. The thylacine is gone. But I keep trying to do what I can, whatever I can, to turn other mistakes around.
Because we know. And we see. And that is what matters.
W’bool City Council sells out to might of racing industry
Levy’s Beach and the surrounding area is in a coastal reserve, but that has not stopped the W’bool City Council from agreeing to industrial racehorse training there.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
6/1. That was the final vote by the Warrnambool City Council to allow industrial-scale racehorse training in a coastal reserve near Warrnambool.
This overwhelming vote sends one strong message and it is heartbreaking: stuff the environment, because horse racing is “the cornerstone of Warrnambool”. Did you know that?
Apparently our entire economic future rests not on a green, pristine, sensational coastline, but on a tiny leather saddle and a whip, because tonight (21/12/18) the Warrnambool City Council gifted the racing industry one of our wild beaches at Levy’s.
This beautiful and biodiverse area has been raped and pillaged for years by illegal activities, but instead of committing to heal these weeping wounds, the council has decided to hurt it some more.
And it is all because of money. It is that dirty and that cheap.
[You can hear the whole sorry affair for yourself via the audio link below]
It is also the oldest trick in the book, used by every industry from forestry to oil to coal to poker machines – just offer to pay for the roads, the fences, the gates, the bollards, the carparks, and the government will toss you the keys. Please lock the gates when you leave.
Whether you like horse racing or not is beside the point, our wild beaches and reserves should not be for sale: to anyone or anything.
Tonight, they were sold and the council sold out.
Bring on the WCC elections in 2020 where, I hope, we can finally drag our city into a future beyond platitudes and meaningless statements and where this precious planet actually runs FIRST – it actually WINS the race – rather than being placed last. Dead last.
[This is a modified version of a Facebook post that ran after the meeting.]
Urgent WCC meeting to endorse racehorses at Levy’s Beach
Such is the might and power of the racing industry, the W’bool City Council will hold an urgent meeting this Friday to endorse plans to get racehorse training at Levy’s within weeks. Image: horsestock
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
An urgent meeting will be held by the W’bool City Council this Friday (21/12) to allow large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach, starting almost immediately.
Planning Minister Richard Wynne, as predicted, has intervened and asked for interim changes to the local planning laws – the same laws that found racehorse training was illegal in this section of the Belfast Coastal Reserve.
The council is now classing the matter as so “urgent and extraordinary” that a special meeting will be held on the last day before the holiday break to endorse this decision.
Not a word of this was raised in public last night (17/12), when the council held a meeting to talk about waste management and new signs at the entrance to the city.
Once that meeting finished, however, the real fireworks began with councillors called to a confidential “briefing” where they were given details of Mr Wynne’s intervention.
All of this in the last week before Christmas, when everybody is distracted and busy. But, of course, that is precisely the point.
Governments of all persuasions know the best time to bury controversial decisions is around the biggest holidays of the year.
What a gift to the racing industry. What a slap – again – to our precious environment.
Those councillors who vote for this on Friday night and call themselves environmentalists are a bit like self-declared vegetarians who eat meat once a week.
You can’t, pardon the pun, have a bet each way.
You either stand for the environment, and the endangered species and fragile dune system at Levy’s Beach, or you don’t.
To pretend this is some sort of “compromise” is simply a cop-out. Parks Victoria don’t want this. The majority of people who responded to the management report for the reserve don’t want this. Racing people who love the environment don’t want this (Clare Lindop, I am looking at you x)
The only people who want this are a handful of wealthy, well-connected, well-resourced trainers who stand to make a lot of money from brutalising our beach.
I am going to be there on Friday night, just to witness the capitulation, because that is exactly what it will be.
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