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Putting last touches to lifesavers’ home DROMANA Bay Life Saving Club’s longawaited new home is nearing completion. It is hoped the $1 million building on the foreshore near the scout hall will be ready for the club’s 15th birthday celebrations on 16 June. The club will go from boiled lollies to chocolates after spending recent years operating out of two shipping containers. Club treasurer Megan Goldsworthy said members were rapt with their headquarters and there was no shortage of people to complete the project, which involved painting inside and out with landscaping work to follow. Money for the two-storey clubhouse came from Mornington Peninsula Shire ($260,000), the state government’s Community Safety Emergency Support Program and Sports and Recreation Victoria ($700,000) and the club’s coffers ($40,000).
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About $70,000 from other sources, including the shire, had been spent in recent years on planning, architects, engineers, an Aboriginal heritage study and legal fees when the site of the clubhouse was challenged in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Ms Goldsworthy said 90-95 per cent of money spent on the building stayed on the peninsula. A lift from a Melbourne company cost about $45,000. She said the building did not have a commercial kitchen and scotched suggestions there would be a public restaurant or cafe on the first floor, as had been rumoured. The clubhouse is likely to be officially opened in November during Water Safety Week. Dromana Bay is known for its Dromana Bay Pier Swim in February. Mike Hast
Biosphere’s $2.2m for habitat
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THE Western Port Biosphere Foundation has won federal government funding of $2.26 million over six years to connect and improve habitat corridors. The money comes from the Biodiversity Fund, whose citation stated: “Western Port Biosphere (a UNESCO-designated reserve) includes two large Ramsar wetlands and hundreds of small but key biodiversity reserves in a fragmented urban, peri-urban and rural coastal region of southeast Australia threatened by climate change and human population growth. “Its vegetation types are under-represented in reserves nationally. It has many threatened vegetative communities and species protected by international, national, and state legislation.
“A multi-stakeholder steering committee will develop a new regional biodiversity action plan, enhance key reserves, revegetate landscape gaps to establish habitat links, improve low-cost integrated pest control, and provide and audit carbon storage with new enabling systems.” The Biosphere Foundation receives funding from Frankston, Mornington Peninsula, Casey, Cardinia and Bass Coast councils as well as Melbourne Water, Parks Victoria, and Port Phillip and Westernport Catchment Management Authority. Gillian Collins, the Frankston Round Table director of the biosphere foundation, said she was “very excited about what the grant will enable us to do for our natural environment in the region”.
“Protecting the Peninsula”
Martin Dixon MP J
State Member for Nepean McCrae Plaza, Corner Point Nepean Road and Lonsdale Street, McCrae Ph: 5986 6661 martin.dixon@parliament.vic.gov.au www.martindixon.org
J M LANDSCAPE H SERVICES
Phone John on: 0408 143 055
or: 5986 8708 jhmhenry@bigpond.com www.jmhs.com.au
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Southern Peninsula News 15 May 2012
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