Save the kindy
I AM disappointed to hear of the shire’s decision not to renew the lease for the Margaret River Community Kindergarten. This kindy was created by the community back in the 1940s and has been managed and maintained by the community ever since.
Parent volunteers, staff, local businesses and tradespeople have donated their time, money and effort year after year to provide the children of this community with a nurturing, fully-resourced and established learning environment. I am one of many who attended this kindy.
This kindy is a historically unique resource for the young children of our community and it is very sad that this current shire is going to extinguish its existence. Yes, the Education Department are going to build and run a new kindergarten on the primary school site, and yes - the shire have allowed the community kindy a peppercorn lease from its early days - as well as promises of a lease to last as long as it is wanted and for the land to always be available for the children of this community. However, now the shire apparently sees only dollar signs and is preparing to sell off this wonderful asset.
A recent report by the Commissioner for Children and Young People who visited Margaret River in March, noted that the number of 0-4 year olds in Margaret River increased by nearly 20 per cent in the last seven years and highlighted the need for an integrated approach to services that support children and their families in the early years of a child’s life - www.ccyp.wa.gov.
How is it that our town is going to have SuperTown status when our Child Health Service has been confined to a room in the hospital, the Immunisation Clinic to a tiny space at the resource centre, the Toy Library - a cupboard at the play group building, no therapy/specialist rooms or facilities for Playconnect for children with disabilities, not to mention the discontinued Child Health Service in Augusta, and now the closure of the community kindy. The only way the community kindy can continue is if it can miraculously find an affordable and suitable site to lease and relocate.
To the Augusta-Margaret River Shire, please remember and respect what the past, present and future children of this community hold dear. Please keep the Community Kindy or at least keep the land or money from its sale and invest it right back into educating and supporting the young children and their families. It would be detrimental for the community as a whole if this were not to happen! Please do the right thing for our children; they are your children too.
- Jake Bond, Cowaramup
Smoked out
POOR form by person/persons who decided to burn off piles of raked leaves and twigs in the Chardonnay and Semillion Ave area on Saturday afternoon.
Apart from the environmental and carbon impact, what about all those who are asthma suffers or even those just trying to dry their weekend washing. A crisp, clear afternoon became a smoke haze. Thanks!
- Disappointed neighbour, Margaret River
Logging off
WHY do we log forests? Utilisation of the forest resource concerns the harvesting and subsequent treatment of the forest to provide a marketable material. Forest supplying timber for local and expert equipments is one of the oldest aspects of the state’s economy.
Timber exploration began with the arrival of the first setters in 1829. In 1836 the first exports of timber were recorded. The first sawmills appeared in the 1850s. In 1973 about 163 mills were operating and more then 4500 men were employed in the industry. The peak years of production were 1913, 1926 and 1927 and following World War II, 1956 and 1966. In 1970 1.3 million cubic metres of logs were obtained from our forest, 86 percent from state forest and crown lands and the remainder from private property.
The capacity of our hard wood forest to produce the durable, reddish, mahogany-like timber later to be known as jarrah, was an early realisation in colonial days, and its subsequent exploitation did much to aid the initial development of the state. The major forest product used to be sawn hardwood timber obtained from mature trees of jarrah, karri, wandoo, marri and WA blackbutt.
Now many pine plantations provide suitable sawlogs. Apart from sawlogs there are many other forest products such as poles, piles, fence post, particle board, charcoal, honey and beeswax, boronia and wildflower blossoms for the cut flower trade.
Timber milling is concerned with the conversion of the logs into sawn products suitable for marketing. Mills, in general, fall into two classes - general purpose mills cutting scantling, railway sleepers, crossings, flooring and joinery stock etc ... or special mills, usually small. These include the railway sleeper mill, the hardwood case mill and the pine mill.
Laws exist to enforce the efficient control of cutting and to restrict it to the actual productive capacity of the forest. Wood is an indispensable part of the material structure on which our civilisation is based. From the cradle to the coffin we are dependent on wood. The future and stability of the sawmilling industry and the associated benefit to the state are intimately bound up with a sound forest policy, maximum utilisation by the saw miller and minimum wastage by the user.
During the course of time the word "forest", originally applied in feudal times to areas of land over which the king claimed exclusive rights of the chase, now refers to a wooded area or a collection of wood of large extent.
To be precise, the food and agriculture organisation (FAO) published the following definition of forests: "Lands bearing vegetative associations dominated by trees of any size capable of producing timber or other forest products or of exercising or influence on the climate or on the water regime".
I have tried to avoid the controversy of certain aspects of forest logging, and instead have attempted to answer the question of why Western Australian forest have been logged. I would like to thank Mr B.J Beggs for the July, 1971, publication of Forestry in Western Australia, when he was conservator of forests, from which I have extracted information for this letter.
- Mike Williams, beeman, Margaret River
Leave houses alone
TO the lady who thumbed down the new buildings on Ashton last week, as the owner of one of those homes I found your comment quite hurtful. Since its publication I have been stopped in the street by various people saying "your house is in the paper - it got the thumbs down".
The houses you seem upset about are all individual designs, built by owners who have poured their ideas, energy, time and savings into them with the intention to live there, enjoy and honour the beautiful surrounds and contribute to a good neighbourhood.
You may not like the look, the contemporary styles or even the fact that there are houses being built there at all, but if you cannot find tolerance in your heart, can I suggest that instead of publically bagging other people’s pride and joy, you just take your walks somewhere else.
- Britta Sorensen, Margaret River
