PULLING up at a foreshore car park and walking across the beach to the water’s edge is as natural as putting up a beach umbrella and spreading out a towel. But try enjoying those simple pleasures if you are in a wheelchair. Suddenly the beach becomes and obstacle rather than a pleasure. Saturday 12 November is likely to become known among wheelchair-bound residents on the Mornington Peninsula as the day they were first able to cross Mt Martha beach. They were able to confidently make their way to the water on plastic matting provided by Mornington Peninsula Shire in conjunction…
Author: Keith Platt
AFTER eight years of studying their behaviours, diets, relationships as well as photographing their every visible move, Sue Mason gives the impression there are still more unknowns than knowns when it comes to a “community” of dolphins living in Port Phillip between Frankston and Dromana. “There are always questions to be answered.” Ms Mason’s interest in cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) dates back to when she and her husband John, spent three weeks each year for eight years – their Christmas holidays – as volunteer whale watchers in Hawaii for Earthwatch. Like any good carer, Ms Mason is now checking…
INFRASTRUCTURE Victoria is holding a “community workshop” at Hastings as part of its investigations into the need for a second container port for Melbourne. Previous state governments – Liberal and Labor – have backed Hastings as a site for a new container port, but the current government changed tack and nominated Bay West in Port Phillip as its preferred location. The first report by Infrastructure Victoria into the best site for Victoria’s second container port is scheduled to go to the Victorian Special Minister of State, Gavin Jennings, in May 2017. The workshop in Hastings on Wednesday 23 November follows…
IT’S not that unusual to develop a cough after spending weeks either in air conditioned rooms and cars or outside on 40 degree days. On his first back in England after three weeks in the Middle East Alan Cane woke up wrapped in clammy sheets. He coughed and there was blood in his handkerchief. A visit to the doctor led to blood tests and an x-ray. Two days later he was admitted to a sanatorium with tuberculosis, TB. This all happened in the mid-1970s and such a diagnosis, even then, was commonly regarded as a death sentence. Antibiotics meant this…
TUTANEKAI “Tui” Wordley should be an inspiration to every surfer. Not because of the size of the waves he rides or the latest overseas trip he’s made, but because, at 80, he’s still out there, catching swells that bend towards the shore, steepen up and then crash down, peeling off to the right or left. He’s at home on Western Port’s reefs and points and the beach breaks at Gunnamatta or Phillip Island with visits to the west coast, from Torquay to Lorne, when the surf is on. A New Zealander by birth with a mixed Scottish, English and Maori…