Category: General News

GOODE Beach resident Charles Pierce was so nervous before meeting the Queen earlier this month, he was suited up and ready to leave for Buckingham Palace five hours early.

His visit to the palace was no ordinary tourist trip – he flew halfway across the world to receive a medal from Queen Elizabeth II and be granted the title of ‘MBE’ at The Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List ceremony on May 4.

Mr Pierce was recognised for four decades of education services to Vanuatu, the country he called home for more than half his life.

The 77-year-old Englishman said after travelling throughout Asia in his younger days, he discovered the Baha’i faith, and it was through this faith he began his journey of teaching abroad.

He now calls Albany home and has done so for the past five years, in-between trips to Vanuatu.

“I’m a teacher by trade, and I heard through my Baha’i faith that people were needed in the Pacific, to help develop and grow the Baha’i people in the community,” he said.

“So I lived and worked for a year in Vanuatu, married my wife in Australia a year later in 1968, then in 1971 went back to Vanuatu and stayed there for 42 years.”

Mr Pierce said his work in Vanuatu focused on promoting unity and education within the Baha’i faith, building greater community cohesion and empowering people.

“One of the two questions the Queen asked me was what kind of education I was involved in,” Mr Pierce said.

“I told her I was principal of a secondary and tertiary school, was involved in training teachers, taught a Baha’i moral education program, and was involved in developing, producing and delivering a course in climate change.

“She thought it was wonderful.”

The other question the Queen asked Mr Pierce during the MBE ceremony was whether he lived in Vanuatu.

“I told her that I did, and that I remembered her visiting years ago, and that she wore a yellow dress,” Mr Pierce said.

“I think she was quite moved when I said that, she was smiling.”

Despite speaking with relative ease during his few moments with the Queen, Mr Pierce was a bundle of nerves in the hours leading up to his royal encounter.

He said he took an hour to carefully put on his suit, a piece of attire he hadn’t donned in 50 years.

“I was terrified,” he laughed.

“The night before the ceremony, I didn’t get to bed until after midnight and I was up at 4am.

“I just could not sleep.

“We had to be there at 9.45am but I was ready by 5am!”

After keeping it a secret from his family for two months, and finally receiving his medallion, Mr Pierce said the reality of being awarded MBE finally sunk in.

“It wasn’t real until I got the medal,” he said.

“I feel very privileged and honoured.

“But it’s not about the medal, it’s about what you have done to receive it.”

 

Photo: British Ceremonial Arts

GREAT Southern Police Superintendent Dom Wood will return to Perth where he is set to become the state’s top traffic cop.

“I’ve done my tenure, so I’m off in July, August,” he told The Weekender.

He said that, come July, he will have been in Albany for three years.

“It’s gone very quickly,” he said.

“I love the region, I love the people.”

Mr Wood said Superintendent Ian Clarke, who currently works in the police professional standards unit in Perth, would fill his shoes.

“He’s a really nice fella, a good bloke,” he said.

“He’s got a good background, in traffic for a while as a superintendent, and done some crime work, and worked country as well.

“He was an OIC up in Kununurra, and also in Dunsborough, and has some detective background as well.”

After a handover to Mr Clarke in July, Mr Wood will become Superintendent, State Traffic.

“You can, if all the stars line up, try to push [your tenure] out to maybe four [years], which I was kind of thinking, maybe [until] Christmas, but they said ‘no’, they want me to take over and do the State traffic role up at Midland,” he said.

Immediately before coming to Albany from Perth, Superintendent Wood was the police force’s Manager, Media and Communications.

“We’ve got a couple of older kids back up in Perth, and we always knew I was never going to retire down here,” he said.

“I’m too young to retire, so I always knew this was about a three-year tenure.

“I’ll still get the chance to come back down here with a booze bus, maybe.”

He said he’d miss Albany’s bush walks and coffee shops.

“My wife and I were out on the boat on the weekend, the Vancouver Street Festival became a bit hot, and I said: ‘C’mon, let’s get the boat out’,” he said.

“We went out with a couple of friends of ours, and we were followed by dolphins in the harbour.

“So, I’ll miss the town, and the community is a very good community, a very friendly community.”

In other policing news, Mr Wood said a drug detection police dog was on the cards for the Great Southern (Drug dog for GS police, p.5 of today’s Weekender).

Mr Wood said one priority he would pass on to Mr Clarke would be to “keep pushing” for a canine to join the ranks of the local constabulary.

AN ALBANY woman confronted by another who admitted she was “completely and utterly paralytic” after consuming “four litres of goon” has pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful wounding.

On May 3, police prosecutor Mike Russell told Albany Magistrates Court that Elicitor May Roberts, then 49, was intoxicated when between 8.35am and 9.48am on November 14 another woman approached her in her Orana home.

Sergeant Russell said Roberts slashed the visitor in the left forearm and upper arm with a 30cm carving knife, before cutting the woman’s forehead, leaving a two-centimetre-long gash.

The visitor fell to the ground, Roberts left her house with the knife, and police later found her walking along South Coast Highway.

Defence lawyer Richard Hickson said the stabbed visitor later admitted she had “consumed four litres of goon” and was “completely and utterly paralytic”.

He said the woman had been “completely obnoxious” and Roberts “felt threatened by her”.

Magistrate Raelene Johnston told Roberts she was “very lucky that something more serious did not happen”, as picking up the knife created “potential for greater injury or death”.

Roberts told Magistrate Johnston she was no longer drinking.

“Good,” the Magistrate said.

“Continue on that path.”

Roberts was ordered to report to community corrections staff for the next 12 months and not to reoffend during that time lest she breach the order.

A KOJONUP worker has had his car seized and received a second date with a Katanning magistrate after allegedly driving to Kojonup police station on Tuesday to check an initial court date after he was charged with drink driving and served with a disqualification notice.

New officer in charge at Kojonup cop shop Rik Lok told The Weekender that, like him, the man was new to town but working in Kojonup.

Sgt Lok said the man allegedly parked across the road from the police station behind some buildings.

Asked how the man was nabbed, Sgt Lok said “our public is very helpful”.

He advised anyone else thinking of driving while disqualified to think again.

“It gets expensive, because you lose your car,” he said.

“It gets seized, so he’s lost his car for a period of time.

“It’s gonna cost him money and all those flow-on things for a moment of stupidity.”

On Monday, Sgt Lok took over from Sgt Phil Cartledge, who is the new officer in charge of Rottnest Island.

Sgt Lok has come across from Augusta.

“I’ve looked for the ocean around Kojonup but I can’t find it,” he quipped.

SOME drongo has vandalised a sign erected by an octogenarian to commemorate the recently heritage listed spot where his long-gone relative Major Edmund Lockyer raised a flag to claim Frederickstown, later known as Albany, as part of the British Empire.

Colin Lockyer, 81, is three generations removed from his well-known relative, who has a well-known Albany suburb and a well-known Albany avenue named after him.

“I got a call on Sunday morning from the householders of the home here to tell me the plaque that I’d put up has been pulled out, thrown on on the footpath and smashed,” Mr Lockyer said at Parade Street on Monday.

“I came ‘round and saw them and ended up having a lovely cup of coffee with them.

“They are very friendly, and very nice people.”

The framed commemorative information the vandals had so brazenly smashed had only been in place for four months.

The Weekender recently revealed that the site where the flag was raised has now been added to the City of Albany’s heritage list (Heritage list swells by 48, April 12).

“I think that the people of Albany really need to know that this relative of mine, three generations before me, gave the whole western part of Australia to King George IV,” Mr Lockyer said.

“He proclaimed Frederickstown for King and Crown.

“And we’re so proud of that.”

Mr Lockyer said that until his sign went up, a green lectern erected some time before by the city was “in a very poor state”.

“Those two screws, we had to put in because this had fallen off,” he said.

He said the hole where Major Lockyer raised a flagpole still existed, beneath a yellow cap on the road beside the lectern.

“This is a very valuable tourist site and people come here and find something that can’t explain what went on,” he said.

“I’ve done, in layman’s terms, the best I can do to make it a bit more understanding, then we find out that some vandals have come along and ripped this out and smashed it.

“It’s just a bit devastating.”

But heritage buffs never say die.

“I’ll go down to Red Dot and get another A3 frame and cut out another picture, and put it back into place, and screw it up and try to replace this flag that’s gone,” Mr Lockyer said.

A REPORT commissioned by the City of Albany on whether local Noongar people support water skiing on Lake Mullocullup east of Albany reveals the “root of discord” between some Noongars and the City over the matter is their lack of a say early in the decision-making process.

In his 27-page report, anthropologist Myles Mitchell advises that “feelings of humiliation and anger” resulted, leading to “a less constructive conversation”.

“Whatever the final decision, some Noongar community members who are passionate about this place feel that they had to agitate for their position to be heard, rather than being engaged in a constructive dialogue from an early stage,” Dr Mitchell reported.

“It should be noted that not all Noongar community members shared these concerns.

“Nonetheless, consideration for improved processes in future is provided here.”

The report notes that at a recent meeting with Noongar people at the lake, chief City engineer Matthew Thomson conceded the City did not do well on its initial consultation.

Asked by The Weekender how his organisation intended to right things, City CEO Andrew Sharpe said Dr Mitchell’s report had “given us valuable feedback”, and would help the council decide whether to recommend that the Department of Transport approve water skiing at the lake.

“We respect the cultural significance of Lake Mullocullup to the local Noongar people and, learning from our experiences, are striving to not only improve our consultation with them regarding the lake, but also to employ better practice into the future,” Mr Sharpe said.

“The independent consultant’s report is part of a more rigorous process council has resolved to undertake to consult the Noongar community about the recreational use of Lake Mullocullup.

“We are now waiting on the outcome of an assessment by the Department of Land and Heritage in relation to the registration of Aboriginal sites at the lake before preparing a further report for council.”

Carol Pettersen, a former Albany city councillor whose Noongar mother was born beside the lake in 1917, told The Weekender she had lodged papers with the State to have the lake listed as an Aboriginal heritage site.

Mrs Pettersen anticipates the listing process will take about three months.

Image: Carol Pettersen has lodged papers to have the lake listed as an Aboriginal heritage site. Photo: Chris Thomson

AMIDST national critique of NAPLAN testing, a handful of Great Southern schools have jumped on board with the assessment’s latest development of adapting to an online format.

NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) is completed annually by grade three, five, seven and nine students across Australia and is composed of reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy assessments.

The test has been presented in paper booklet form but is now moving toward using online software.

Great Southern Grammar and Spencer Park Primary School were two of many Western Australian schools selected to participate in an online trial run.

Spencer Park Primary principal Jeremy Hadlow told The Weekender he was excited his school would use the new technology again this year.

“We were one of the trial schools in 2017 and, since then, we have given the kids lots of opportunity to practice using the site,” he said.

“We have the technology and have had the kids learn to log in and manoeuvre around the site without issues, which is very important.

“We want to ensure their experience is a good one, and we are very happy with the students’ progress.”

Mr Hadlow said one benefit of the NAPLAN online format was its adaptability, with the difficulty level of questions presented to students during the test determined by their answers to previous questions.

“You can see where their abilities actually lie, which is a real positive,” he said.

“We can also pause the test if we need to address ICT issues, and the timeframe for results should hopefully be shorter, so I’m excited for our school to participate as a way of stepping into the future.”

Great Southern Grammar principal Mark Sawle said the online NAPLAN format could create faster results and be a more sustainable way of creating test papers.

But he questioned the validity of scrapping pen and paper testing.

Mr Sawle confirmed Great Southern Grammar students would not use the online NAPLAN format this year.

“It is critical to ensure that online testing does not reduce the validity of the knowledge and understandings that are being tested,” he said.

“For example, in year three writing, do students have the typing skills to undertake the test? Are we testing the students’ capacity to type, rather than their capacity to create a narrative, for example?”

Mr Sawle also suggested schools more remote than Great Southern Grammar had issues with internet bandwidth and therefore there was an issue with equity.

“It has been suggested that in some schools, year 11 and 12 classes cannot use the internet on the NAPLAN testing days due to issues with insufficient bandwidth,” he said.

“Also, access to computer labs and one-to-one devices is variable across schools.”

WA Education Minister Sue Ellery confirmed $7.5 million had been provided for infrastructure upgrades and additional devices to help public schools prepare for NAPLAN Online, an amount she says will total $10 million by 2020.

Ms Ellery told The Weekender NAPLAN testing would be reviewed next month.
The online rollout comes amid recent statements by New South Wales Education Minister Rob Stokes that NAPLAN should be scrapped.

“The broader issue of NAPLAN is regularly discussed at Education Council meetings,” Ms Ellery said.

“It was decided at the last meeting, three weeks ago, to consider terms of reference for a review of NAPLAN, including reporting of NAPLAN results, at the next meeting in June.

“The feedback I receive in WA is that parents want to see published data about how their students, and how their schools, are achieving literacy and numeracy, and they want the information presented in a way that is easy to understand.”

NAPLAN will be conducted next week from May 15. Mr Hadlow said schools participating online would have a 10-day window to complete the testing, to “spread the load” on schools’ internet capabilities.

According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority – the organisation responsible for developing NAPLAN and reporting the results – schools across Australia will start to move to NAPLAN Online from this year on an opt-in basis.

The Authority’s website confirms state and territory education authorities are responsible for determining when their jurisdictions move to NAPLAN Online.

The WA Department of Education website states that all schools will complete NAPLAN Online in 2019.