Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Once Budj Bim is declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, as is expected in July, how on earth will we justify large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach?

What will we tell visitors from around the world who will travel – and believe me, they will come – to see our wild coastline and its incredible indigenous history, about racehorse training in a coastal reserve, as is due to happen from November?

“Oh,” they will ask quizzically, “so the traditional owners are okay with it?”

Actually, no, the traditional owners are not okay with it. They have never been okay with it, but we went ahead with it anyway.

 

Actually, we shall have to add, the Gunditjmara people said from day one that they did not want large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach and Aboriginal elders are still fighting with all their might against it, but their voices were not enough.

In fact, we shall have to confess, the traditional owners were told they will just have to move their artefacts out of the way, as if they were a neat stack of objects lying on the surface like grandma’s best china.

“Oh, but what about the spiritual and cultural connections that indigenous people have to this stretch of coast?” the curious will ask.

Well, we shall explain, they have been told to “share”, because the beach “belongs to everyone” and “sharing” has always worked so well for indigenous people in the past…

Honestly, how will we justify it? I can already feel the shame.

I am astonished that the resistance of the traditional owners to having up to 160 racehorses a day at Levy’s beach, five days a week, from this November was not enough to stop this plan dead in its tracks.

 

It is particularly astonishing given the Warrnambool City Council has embraced the significance of Moyjil/Point Richie, and is acutely aware of including indigenous stories in the future management of Lake Pertobe/Pirtup Killingk.

All fabulous stuff.

The WCC is also involved in developing a masterplan for the future of Tower Hill, which is yet another jewel in the rich indigenous history of our southern coastline that stretches from Moyjil, to Levy’s, to the Crags, to Deen Maar, around to Portland and the battlefields of the Eumerella wars, up to Budj Bim and Lake Condah.

We are sitting on a tourism mecca.

Make no mistake, indigenous and environmental tourism is the way of the future.

The UNESCO listing of Budj Bim/Mt Eccles will be a gamechanger and the State Government knows it, having allocated $5 million toward the next step before the listing is even final.

When it is confirmed, it will put Budj Bim up there with Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru.

And next month, coincidentally, globally celebrated indigenous opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham will premiere a new work around the resistance wars that happened right here.

It will be Australia’s first indigenous requiem and it has been inspired by the terrible and tragic events during the colonial settlement of south-west Victoria that we are only now coming to understand.

All of this is unfolding around us in Warrnambool and yet, in Warrnambool, we are about to plonk large-scale racehorse training right in the middle, just a few miles from a beautifully kitted out racecourse and, of course, Lady Bay beach, where racehorses are already allowed.

 

Why?

Jobs? Really?

If that is the only justification (leaving aside the argument about the mental health benefits to the racehorses which, to me, must be the ultimate insult to traditional owners), then it is ridiculously short-sighted.

You can see racehorses and racetracks in dozens of countries around the world, but there is only one Tarerer coastline, one Levy’s, one Crags, one Deen Maar, one Moyjil.

These places are precious and irreplaceable and we are so fortunate to have them right here. They are a part of our future and what a wonderful future it could be.

The good news is that it is not too late to turn things around.

We can still ask our civic leaders to step back from making what will be a terrible mistake.

 

There is still time for our council, the State Government, and those in the racing industry who are pushing hard for access to Levy’s to respect the wishes of the traditional owners, to acknowledge that racehorse training can happen elsewhere, and to all work toward protecting this precious piece of coastline from further harm.

We can then hold our heads high as a part of the Budj Bim to Moyjil story – a story that goes back tens of thousands of years and is of global significance – rather than fumble for answers when we are asked to justify the unjustifiable.

So which path will we choose? Pride or shame? I know which path I want to be on.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Within the calm surrounds of Lake Pertobe, there is a mass killing underway and not enough is being done to stop it.

More than 100 birds have been wiped out since an outbreak of avian botulism began to claim the birds of Lake Pertobe five weeks ago – among them ducks, cygnets, moorhens, Eurasian coots, cormorants, swans, seagulls and a crane – and the death toll is still climbing.

Most visitors to Lake Pertobe are blissfully unaware that just metres from where they are enjoying the open spaces, there are native birds unable to hold their necks up from the creeping paralysis of the botulism toxin.

These birds will most certainly drown. (Warning: the video below may be distressing).

 

Wildlife rescue volunteer Alexis Creed-Sycopoulis has been walking the accessible parts of the lake shore most days, and often twice a day, to collect the carcasses and the stricken, paralysed birds which she takes to the vet to be euthanised.

It is a heartbreaking job, but a critical one, as the science shows that every dead bird left in the water contaminates it only further. The threat is even greater if the carcass has become flyblown.

I joined Alexis on one of her morning pick ups, during which she found four carcasses within half an hour. Another two would be found when she returned later that night. Last Sunday, the grim count included several birds covered in maggots.

“I shouldn’t have to be doing this. I really shouldn’t have to be out here doing the work of the council to make sure these birds are not left in the water,” Alexis says.

The Warrnambool City Council parks and gardens team at Lake Pertobe also collects the dead and dying birds, but there are just not enough workers allocated to the job.

This was proven last weekend, when Alexis left a bag of dead ducks she had collected on Sunday morning at the small council depot at Lake Pertobe, thinking they would be disposed of by staff when they arrived later that day.

The bag was still there when Alexis returned on Monday morning. So were the flyblown carcasses, still in the water. There had been no council check of Lake Pertobe on Sunday, even after the two-day heatwave.

And this morning, Tuesday, Alexis found a dead duck floating in the lake at 10am, hours after the morning pick-up should have started. Meanwhile, up in town, four parks and garden staff were tending to a roundabout.

The council’s small Lake Pertobe team is no doubt trying its best, but they have many tasks, and retrieving dead birds is just one of them. Alexis is also trying her best, but she is a volunteer, with a job and kids.

Meanwhile, the avian botulism continues its deadly march in the warm, soupy conditions of Lake Pertobe that follow days of little rain, hot weather and a build-up of rich nutrients in the water.

While nature controls the first two conditions – heat and no rain – we can reduce the nutrients.

It is for this reason that Alexis is also pushing for an immediate council ban on feeding ducks bread within Lake Pertobe and elsewhere, as has been done by other councils.

Bread can be easily replaced by other duck-friendly foods, but so far the council is reluctant to issue such a ban, saying there is no proof that bread kills ducks.

Well, no, bread doesn’t kill ducks – although I am not sure how good processed bread is for them either – but it also doesn’t help Lake Pertobe to get healthy and adds to the conditions that cause avian botulism.

I suspect if the 100 dead birds found so far were all laid out on the Civic Green, we would all be justifiably horrified and asking the council to throw everything it can at the disaster.

For now, however, that burden sits largely on the shoulders of one or two people and the mortality rate grows higher.

(In the time it took me to write this story today, another nine birds were found by Alexis, including four that needed to be euthanised. The total is now 105 110.)

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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.