Southern Peninsula
Features inside: FOOD & ENTERTAINMENT PAGES 26 – 29 SOUTHERN PENINSULA SCOREBOARD PAGE 30
CLASSIFIEDS PAGE 31
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5 April – 18 April 2011
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Striving for best in Rosebud West ROSEBUD West Community Renewal will be pressed to repeat the successes of March. The project’s Dreamhouse Theatre Company staged its first play, The Wetlands Project One Last Chance; more than 600 people attended the second Neighbour Day, twice the number of last year; and praise has been coming from all quarters, including Mornington Peninsula Shire council. The project’s manager Kathy Heffernan reported to the council at its meeting in Tootgarook Hall on Monday 28 March. Councillors were unanimous in their support of the project and its local action plan for the three years 2010-13. The project, formed by the state government to improve the lives of residents in disadvantaged areas, received an extra three years of funding last year. Continued Page 6 Best team: Jack Hollister-Clarke, left, Jacquie Fleming, Susan Beveridge, Kathy Heffernan, Norm McKinlay and Juanita Aitken at Tootgarook last week.
Beach loss ‘not dredging’ By Mike Hast THE state government’s Office of the Environmental Monitor continues to deny the catastrophic loss of Portsea beach has been caused by dredging at the entrance of Port Phillip. The office was set up by the government to monitor the deepening of Port Phillip shipping channels in 2008 and 2009 and any after-effects. Its director, Don Hough, fronted concerned Portsea residents and peninsula environmentalists last Wednesday and spent more than an hour explaining why dredging is not to blame. He used a series of charts, computer modelling and historic
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photos of the beach on Weeroona Bay. He has also released a report by Dr Eric Bird, the 80-year-old international expert in coastal geomorphology who lives in a Melbourne bayside suburb and has been studying Port Phillip for many years. Unprecedented swell has been sweeping away the beach since July 2009. Deepening of The Heads ended in September 2008. The waves have: • Damaged where the pier is joined to the land, its access road, parking area and paths. • Removed all the sand from more than 150 metres of beach.
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• Swept away foreshore behind the beach. • Undermined and toppled trees, and removed shrubs and grasses. The Department of Sustainability and Environment says it has spent $2.2 million importing 10,000 cubic metres of sand from Gippsland quarries, trucking in rocks and building a 150-metre long revetment (seawall) using huge geotextile sandbags stacked 10 deep with three below the surface resting on the underlying sandstone. Mornington Peninsula Shire has spent $150,000 repairing paths, the
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pier access road, parking area and on landscaping. Despite Don Hough’s best efforts, few people at the meeting in Portsea were convinced dredging was not to blame for the beach loss. Mr Hough said the beach had sustained “significant loss between late 2009 and April 2010” after five metres plus had been removed from The Plateau, an area in The Heads that was 12 metres below the surface before dredging. Len Salter of Dive Victoria later claimed eight metres had been removed from The Plateau. Last August, at the first Portsea
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erosion meeting, Port of Melbourne Corporation chief executive Stephen Bradford said: “We’ve taken off no more than three metres.” Mr Bradford or a port representatives was not at last week’s important meeting despite saying last year that he or his deputy “attend most of these community meetings”. Mr Hough pointed to a cross-section chart of The Heads showing the area removed was a small percentage of the overall entrance to Port Phillip between Point Lonsdale in the west and Point Nepean in the east. Continued Page 4
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