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1 AUGUST 2026 | VOL .53 NO.31
Maths kids face Enigma By JACK MADDERN
Maths wins wars was the lesson for Presbyterians Ladies College students on Tuesday when they got their hands on a replica of the Enigma machine used by the Germans to encode messages in World War II.
Scotch College student Daniel Weustink shows sisters Ida, left, Alice and Lotte Beccard the Enigma machine design that helped their great-great-aunt crack World War II German codes. Photo: Jack Maddern
In a presentation about maths in the real world the girls were shown how mathematicians at the British codebreaking headquarters, Bletchley Park, discovered how to crack the Enigma code. And the experience was especially powerful for three students who are descendants of one of the women who worked at Bletchley Park – and was herself a PLC student who returned to teach there after the war. The girls are great-great-nieces of Roma Craze, one of the first five women sent to Bletchley Park to help crack the Nazi code. Roma put her mastery of English, French, German, and Latin to good use by listening to intercepted enemy communications in search of hidden codes. The codes revealed top secret information about the Germans’ battle plans. The work of mathematicians and decoders at Bletchley Park is believed to have hastened the Allied victory by a couple of years. Roma returned to Perth after the war and taught generations of PLC students. Her war efforts were kept classified for decades under the Official Secrets Act until in 2014 when a PLC classmate unearthed her feats, 19 years after her death. Alice Beccard, who is in Year 5, her sisters Lotte, who is in Year 6, and Ida Year 9, on Tuesday heard all about their great-great-aunt’s wartime work and got their hands on a replica of the Enigma coding machine she had worked to counteract. “We didn’t know we were related until the Enigma • Please turn to page 69
Circles of doom swallow our heritage streets By JACK MADDERN
A house in Windsor Street Swanbourne, in the high-rise “core” precinct near Swanbourne Station, one of many that could be overtaken by flats, as in other states.
Newly-approved plans have set the boundaries for three train station precincts around Swanbourne, Cottesloe and Mosman Park, which in some cases have been extended to the ocean.
Land within the “improvement” precincts, to encourage high density near train stations, covers roughly two-thirds of Cottesloe, a third of Mosman Park, half of Peppermint Grove and a third of Claremont. Planning for these areas, slated for high density, will no longer be subject to council control. Mosman Park mayor Paul Shaw likened the improvement plans to copying a student’s homework, given that plans had already been drawn up for the area. “While I’d normally be pleased with this outcome, it’s been less palatable when it’s accompanied by sharp criticism from the government that council plans were inad-
equate,” he said. “At least back in school, when someone copied your homework, they didn’t complain that you only got the answers 99% correct.” Councils are bracing for land zonings to go up to a baseline R30 and for their planning policies, such as tree retention, to be disregarded. They are also in the dark about the fate of many streets of heritage houses captured, the future traffic and movement along Stirling Highway and Curtin Avenue, capacity and safety at railway crossings, and the abil-
ity of local infrastructure and services to support additional population growth. Planning Minister John Carey announced the approval last Friday, several days before saying that he would further cut planning red tape and strengthen WA Planning Commission powers. He said later that the precincts would “respond to the surrounding heritage context.” Cottesloe mayor Melissa Harkins was alarmed that the development precinct has been arbitrarily extended from the • Please turn to page 69
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