Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Why, oh why? Why would our Mayor Tony Herbert sit out in Liebig St on Tuesday night (7/4) with three other people, drinking a beer, breaking the Covid-19 laws now in place?

And why would he do so on the very same day that he recorded a video to the WCC Facebook page urging people to stay at home and “up” their efforts to stop the spread of the virus?

Why, oh why?

This photo was taken last Tuesday night around 9pm and that, by the way, is the official mayoral car parked facing the wrong way, but we will leave that to one side, because the bigger issue here is a complete lack of judgment and, I hate to say it, a sense that what rules apply to some, don’t apply to others.

I didn’t want to ruin our Mayor’s Easter – I had plans for a quiet day today – but our civic leaders need to be accountable.

So I asked Cr Herbert why he was out drinking a beer on what I initially thought was a Wednesday night, after the WCC emergency meeting. He said he wasn’t out, but went home straight after the meeting, feeling unwell.

I then learned the photo was from Tues night, not Wed. I contacted the Mayor again. This time Cr Herbert agreed that yes, he was out, and below is his reply in full. I read it, digested it, and could only come back around to the same conclusion: this is so wrong.

Other leaders both in Australia (NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin resigned 5 minutes ago) and internationally have fallen on their swords for failing to follow the Covid-19 laws.

I have no idea what, if anything, will happen to Cr Herbert but boy, I am still staggered by his thinking that this was okay. It is not okay.

Cr Herbert’s reply in full:

“On Tuesday night, I left home to buy some items at the supermarket.

On the way, I drove along Liebig Street to see how businesses still open in the southern block, the dining precinct, were faring.

There, I had a chance, unplanned encounter with two business owners.

We had an emotional and refreshingly optimistic conversation. We stood metres apart from each other with the exception of a brief moment when one of the business owners passed me a beer. After a short time I left for the supermarket.

The job of being mayor doesn’t ever stop. I considered it part of my role to see for myself how our city is faring in difficult times. This is something I do regularly.

The decision to drive along Liebig Street I viewed as mayoral duty, so too the conversations I had with the business owners.

I can’t rely on social media alone for insights into how our city is travelling. It is important for any mayor, where reasonable and safe to do so, to find out first-hand about the state of the city.

Of course with the threat of COVID-19 ever-present, we need to be vigilant as we go about our work and my work has changed accordingly.

But, we also need to be mindful that our focus on safe behaviour does not morph into an ugly vigilantism.

In our conversations and online commentary I believe we need to be encouraging and supportive, not vindictive or constantly seeking to blame and shame.

After my purchase at the supermarket, I returned home to continue a board game with my family.

If you wish, I can provide a bank statement of the supermarket purchase.

Regards, Tony. “

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Three interesting things and a question:

Titibit #1: If you were wondering why a series of red bars have suddenly started popping up on intersections around the CBD, here’s the answer: the introduction of a 30kph speed limit.

The new, slower speed limit was one of the many things bundled into the now $18 million upgrade of Liebig St but, as far as I can see, it hasn’t been mentioned or discussed widely since it was first raised as an idea for Liebig St in 2014.

From what I have found, Warrnambool is the only place in Victoria outside certain parts of Melbourne to introduce a 30kph zone and the idea, of course, is to slow the traffic down to make life safer for pedestrians. 

There is nothing wrong with that concept, but given the amount of traffic controls now in place in Liebig St – with more zebra crossings, roundabouts and speed humps than you can count – is it really necessary?

And is it necessary to extend it from Liebig St to other parts of the CBD where the limit is 50kph?

I haven’t seen any statistics on the number of pedestrian injuries around Kepler St/Raglan Pde, for example, or Banyan/Timor St, which are just two of the intersections now getting the red stripe treatment.

Driving at 30kph really is snail’s pace – it’s 10kph slower than for school zones – and I can’t see people sticking to it outside of the main street where the speed is already restricted by design.

Titbit #2: The draft Warrnambool City Council budget/s and its submission to the Essential Services Commission to ask for a 4.5% rate rise contains so many gems, I am not sure where to start, but I will list a few during this week, starting from today.

First, according to the ESC submission, Flagstaff Hill – my old hobby horse – and the Visitor Centre ran at a loss of $1.79 million in 2016-17 and $859,061 last financial year.

It is expected to run at a loss of around $750,000 each year for the next three years, which is $100k more than anticipated and getting close to double the losses of around 10 years ago.

This is eye watering.

By the way, it is worth mentioning that Colac Shire Council is raising its rates by a mere .5% this year. They were thinking of going for 2%, the same as last year, but that was knocked back by a majority of councillors. It is also worth mentioning, again, that out of 79 councils in Victoria, only two are applying to break the rate cap and we are one of them.

Titbit #3: Enormous public pressure and several thousand signatures on a petition saw council staff recommend recently that the two 115-year-old Moreton Bay figs at the corner of Banyan St and Raglan Parade be saved.

Yay! Sanity prevails.

But wait…

No, they are not saved, yet, because the councillors deferred making a decision so they could – once again with feeling – look at the whole Banyan St streetscape and – once again – try to find out how much it would cost to plant coastal banksias down the southern end because Infrastructure head Scott Cavanagh had no real idea.

Good grief, the people of southern Banyan St have been waiting for five years to get this sorted. Five years.

Worryingly, as part of the debate Cr David Owen – he who loves trees – described the two Moreton Bay figs as “freaks” because of their bad pruning and said should be removed.

Why, as has been said elsewhere, do councillors ignore most petitions unless they give them the answer they wanted in the first place?

And a question….

Speaking of petitions, how ironic that the WCC is part of a petition for better roads in our area.

Judging by the years of neglect in road funding so far, the council might find its own petition efforts are also ignored.

Unless…unless…we will actually make Wannon a marginal seat at the federal election on May 18.

Are we brave enough?

Over to you….

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

There was no doubt that Warrnambool’s grotty, rundown old Liebig St needed a serious makeover, but is the $18 million upgrade being stuffed up by a lack of free parking?

Almost 3000 people who physically signed a petition for the return of central, 90-minute free parking say it is.

The 2833 signature petition – no small number – was tabled at the Warrnambool City Council meeting last Monday but barely raised a mention because of the much bigger news story that night – racehorse training on Levy’s beach.

The petition is pushing for permanent, 90-minute free parking in Parker’s Carpark (behind the Commonwealth Bank) and the Ozone carpark (behind the new post office) and was gathered by long-term CBD trader Max Taylor, from Taylor’s clothing and surf store, which has been trading in Liebig St for decades.

Max pulls no punches in the three page-document (see images at end of story) he added to the petition.

“Potential shoppers have left the CBD in their multitudes”, he says, because of damaging combination of expensive parking, confusing meters and lack of meters (only 10 in the whole street) that leave people worried they will be fined $68 for overstaying.

Some traders around Parker’s carpark, he says, have experienced a 20-30% loss in trade compared to when the 90-minute free carparking was in place during the street works.

And there are still 24 empty shops between Raglan Parade and Timor St (we won’t go into how many others sit empty along Lava and Timor).

Max also accuses the council Director City Infrastructure, Scott Cavanagh, of making misleading claims to the local newspaper about the number of shoppers parking in the CBD. The 5000-6000 people who parked every day included a lot of city workers, Max claims, thereby “grossly overestimating the number of shoppers”.

He also points out that local traders around the Parker and Ozone carparks paid a special levied back in 1984 to build the new FREE off-street carparks in Parker Arcade and the Ozone. Meters were added in 2004.

A lot has changed since 2004. Online shopping arrived. More shopping centres have been built on the fringe of Warrnambool, offering more than 2000 free car parking spaces.

And then there are the new, pedestrian friendly crossings in and around Liebig St which are so pedestrian friendly that drivers potentially have to brake before they get to the roundabout, in the roundabout, and leaving the roundabout.

My personal favourite is driving from Liebig St down Lava St, past the Centrelink, where you give way to pedestrians coming into and leaving the roundabout, then cross an ugly road hump, give way to buses leaving the bus zone and roll up to another pedestrian crossing – all within 50 metres.

I am all for slower traffic, but that really is ridiculous…and messy.

Maybe we just need more time to get used to it. Maybe we can all download the app and pay for parking that way.

Or maybe, as Max fears, people will avoid Liebig St unless it is absolutely necessary and shop somewhere else. For our long-suffering, high rent paying traders, that would be the worst scenario.

It is worth mentioning, as Max does, Port Fairy has no parking meters and seven-day trading. The little town won yet another award for being the most popular among tourists.

They just might be on to something over there.

Max’s petition, as per standard council procedure, sits on the table for 30 days and will be discussed at the next council meeting.

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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?

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