Friday, 31 July, 2020
There’s only one
NOOSA 12453381-LB27-20
and only one ...
Student loss felt across the community
Plane crash pain still there 30 years on
Exploring bridge of sighs origins
32-page liftout Property Guide
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INSIDE
PR OP ER TY
School rocks with Katie Although Eumundi’s School of Rock students aren’t being taught by actor Jack Black, fourtime Aria award winning singer Katie Noonan takes the same approach to letting their souls shine through music. Katie founded the school five years ago with the aim to provide free quality music education for young people in the area. The students are usually taught by an array of talented Sunshine Coast musicians, but since Covid-19 put a halt to Katie’s tour plans, she has been able to teach the kids first hand. “It’s been amazing and particularly beautiful to watch children go through such significant a stage of their life,” she said. For the full story, turn to page 4.
Katie Noonan and music teacher Mark Moroney with students Layla, Beau, Isabella and Jonah. Photo: ROB MACCOLL
Driving us batty Noosa Heads neighbours being driven batty by bats came close to blows last week when tempers flared between residents attempting to disperse a bat colony and others wanting to protect them. A colony of grey-headed flying foxes that are listed vulnerable to extinction under the Threatened Species Conservation Act have made their camp in Pinaroo Park. A Toulambi Street resident who has lived beside the park for the past 45 years said neighbours didn’t want to harm the bat colony but they were making conditions for residents “unbearable“. “We have to keep all our windows and doors closed. Our back deck is covered in bat s**t every day. I have to scrub it. We have incense burning all the time,“ he said. He said bats began camping in Pinaroo
Park about 10 years ago. They arrive in May and leave in November, leaving behind a small colony that does not disturb residents. “In May they came back with a vengence. About a month ago another colony turned up,“ he said. “We are at our wits end. At night it’s a spectacle. The sky is black. You can almost taste it - the stench.“ “A few people get out there with pots and pans. We feel if the bats are disturbed enough
they will move.“ Last Thursday when residents were banging their pots and pans another resident approached them angered by their attempts to disturb the bats and a scuffle ensued. An Allambie Terrace resident said she didn’t know what council could do to move the bats “but surely they could do something for all the residents“. “The smell late afternoons when they take off and empty their bladders and early mornings when they come back and do the same is unbearable inside the houses,“ she said. Human wars on bats are not new in Noosa or across the country. As humans have taken over and destroyed their habitat bats have been forced to move into urban areas where they have been shot at, netted, electrocuted on powerlines and chased. When foremost bat expert Dr Les Hall visited Noosa in 2017 he described flying foxes
as smelly, noisy and offensive, but said it was hard not to admire their resilience, adaptability, intelligence and the role only they play in pollinating our native trees. “Flying foxes are quite often in the news. They’re quite good at making a nuisance of themselves,” said Dr Hall who spent a lifetime studying bats before he passed away in 2019. There are 26 species of bats living on the Sunshine Coast and 86 across Australia. There are three species of flying foxes on the Sunshine Coast, and each has a different breeding season. Their continual movement across large distances in search of food and their different breeding seasons, makes managing them in urban environments very difficult, he said. Flying foxes only stay in an area where there is food and have their babies where it is safe and there is food. Continued page 2
Every Sunday 6am to Midday It’s a way of life.
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By Margaret Maccoll