Category: General News

THE inaugural Kalgan Stampede shook up the Kalgan River Caravan Park on the weekend and attracted spectators from across the Great Southern and interstate.

The three-day spectacular drew its biggest crowd on Saturday night for the main rodeo event, which included bull riding, barrel racing, calf roping, steer wrestling and breakaway roping.

Tom Curtain and Annabel McLarty brought their Katherine Outback Experience to the party, and kept kids and adults entertained with their working dogs and horses under the blazing Saturday afternoon sun.

Pony rides, bouncing castles, mechanical bull rides and a range of food made the rodeo an enjoy- able event for the whole family.

Rave reviews on the event’s Facebook page suggest this event would be well supported by the community in 2019.

BRINGING Menang artefacts back to country and sharing indigenous culture with locals has allowed Albany’s Shona Coyne to take her newfound career as a curator to the next level.

The most recent development in her career, an offer to work at the prestigious National Museum of Australia in Canberra, came about from her award-winning efforts in the Yurlmun: Mokare Mia Boodja exhibition.

She sat down with The Weekender amidst packing boxes ahead of her big move interstate.

Ms Coyne’s journey with the Yurlmun exhibition began when Averil Dean and Harley Coyne were invited to Canberra to contribute to the Endeavours exhibition which featured Menang artefacts.

They encouraged the Canberra exhibitors to bring the Menang pieces back to Albany, and so the four-year Yurlmun project began.

The Yurlman exhibition focused on the relationship between Menang leader Mokare and Scottish botanist Dr Alexander Collie in the 1830s.

The objects found during this period have been held by the British Museum, with the Yurlmun exhibition marking the first time the objects were back on Country.

“The Albany Heritage Reference Group Aboriginal Corporation advertised for two Noongar people to be emerging curators, because they wanted to make sure the Yurlmun exhibition was delivered in a culturally sensitive way,” Ms Coyne said.

“As part of being an emerging curator, I visited the WA Museum and the National Museum of Australia.

“It was like I had a back-stage pass to the workings of the museum – something not a lot of people ever get the chance to see.

“It was awesome and definitely a highlight for me.

“I think they could see how hungry I was for more; I just couldn’t get enough.”

Ms Coyne’s enthusiasm and passion for Menang culture so attracted the attention of the National Museum of Australia that she was offered a curator position as a part of the Endeavour 250 project – an exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the HMB Endeavour sailing up the east coast of Australia, and highlighting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on the event.

“It’s an absolute privilege to be asked to be a part of this project,” Ms Coyne said of the 12-month position.

“I’ll get to explore what it was like for the indigenous people from the shores, instead of the common perspective of what it was like for Cap- tain James Cook.

“I’ll be able to bring my voice to the table; I feel really honoured.”

Despite her partner Ross’ excitement for the Canberra snow, and her apprehension of living away from the coastline, Ms Coyne knows where her roots truly lie.

“Here is my home,” she said of Albany.

“My heart is here.”

Ms Coyne will commence her post in Canberra next month, with the aim of opening the exhibition in late 2019.

CAMPAIGNERS against a proposed five-star holiday resort at Lot 660 La Perouse Court in Goode Beach have taken a new petition to the streets in an attempt to gauge a wider awareness and response from the Albany community.

An online petition dubbed ‘Save the Lake @ Goode Beach’ began last fortnight and has received more than 4000 signatures supporting the protection of Lake Vancouver and the surrounding wetlands, which would be cleared to make way for the proposed resort.

Lobbyists attended the Albany Farmers Market on Saturday with their paper petition and received more then 60 signatures within an hour of setting up camp.

Goode Beach resident Warren Flynn said campaigners had decided to begin a paper petition to give a broader range of people the opportunity to support their cause.

“We realised some people couldn’t access online, so we thought this would be a good way to raise more general awareness,” Mr Flynn said.

“I think a paper petition may have a bit more sway with the Albany council too.”

Albany local Brian Walters added his signature to the petition and said he saw both sides of the Goode Beach resort argument, but believed the resort would be eliminating one of the reasons Albany gains so many tourists during the holidays.

“People forget that tourists come here to get away from what’s in the city,” he said.

“[Tourists] come here to see these pristine locations, so by building a resort, they would be taking away one of the reasons they come here.”

Goode Beach campaigners are aiming to attend this Sunday’s Albany Boatshed Markets to gain more signatures in support of protecting Lake Vancouver.

THE insurance job that gutted the Premier Hotel was a fiasco that embroiled Albany’s police, media and business leaders in a web of deceit instigated, motivated and prolonged by licensee-cum-arsonist Graeme Roderick Cooper.

Yesterday, Cooper, 36, was sentenced to 10 years’ in prison after Supreme Court Justice Stephen Hall heard he was in tears in May 2016 when he called lifelong friend Scott Gay advising he was in financial difficulty and needed an “insurance job” done on the 1891-built hotel.

In sentencing remarks at Albany courthouse, Justice Hall said Cooper had “actively deceived” police and “very belatedly” accepted responsibility for the arson.

In the wake of the fire, Cooper had issued a media release and posed for newspaper photographs seeking public assistance to catch the culprits.

“Rather than do the honourable thing and cease the business and perhaps claim bankruptcy, … you were the instigator and motivator for what occurred,” Justice Hall told Cooper.

“You had the most to gain.”

Earlier, State Prosecutor David Davidson had said Gay recruited Christopher Lyndon Paterson, Karl Hutchinson and Aaron Mark Hasson, who on May 12 travelled from Mandurah to “do an arson job”.

After achieving a judge-only trial fearing previous media coverage would contaminate jury deliberations (Jury’s out in Premier Hotel case, The Weekender, September 14, 2017), Cooper reversed his original plea of not guilty the day before the start of the trial.

Mr Davidson said the hotel was not doing well, and Cooper’s life and business partner Rumeena Nizam stood to lose her house after using it to secure a $300,000 business loan and $50,000 overdraft.

The court was shown footage of two men, who Mr Davidson said “in a fake way [were] dragging Mr Cooper into the hotel room”.

Mr Davidson said that, from there, Cooper and Paterson “started to get the fire underway” using domestic gas-stove lighters and accelerant Cooper had provided.

Two of four residents of the hotel were asleep when the fire broke out.

After the blaze took hold in the front bar, games room and office, Paterson, Hutchison and Hasson fled in a Jeep they had parked out back.

A tyre of the Jeep blew out in Mount Barker, where the trio waited for a repair shop to open before paying for a new tyre from more than $10,000 cash Cooper had paid them at the hotel.

Only after the three had fled did Cooper alert the residents to the fire.

They escaped without injury, but the blaze caused $1.5 million damage assessors estimate will take $2.3 million to fix.

By the time fire fighters arrived at the hotel, flames were bursting from the back door through which Cooper had earlier been faux-frog marched.

In a victim impact statement, Albany businessman Barry Panizza said he and the hotel’s other co-owners had been subject to false public innuendo that they were implicated in the arson.

Outside court, Great Southern Detective Inspector Mark Twamley told The Weekender he was happy the case had been resolved and that his colleagues could now return to other important duties.

Cooper will be eligible for parole after eight years, backdated to his arrest on September 9, 2016.

He plans to undertake a university degree while in prison, and stay in touch with his two children.

 

 

Photo: ‘Nachoman-au’, Wikimedia Commons, under Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 unported licence

IT’S a common occurrence to hear someone complaining about their job, about where they live, or how they want to get away from their lives just for a week or two and go on a holiday.

Albany lad Leroy Savage decided to stop talking and start doing and took it all a bit further when he landed the idea of a bike ride through South America.

Planning for the ambitious 16-month trip began in 2016 when Leroy and his mate Jono (it’s just ‘Jono’) decided they were sick of what they were doing.

“We both needed a change,” Leroy said, when he sat down with The Weekender to re-tell his epic journey.

“I was sick of my FIFO job, where I was living, and wanted to escape a bad relationship.

“We both wanted to go to South America, so we looked at buying a Kombi but decided it was going to be too expensive and too hard to cross borders.”

Luckily the trip wasn’t completely lost when the idea was floated to cycle instead.

“Jono’s cousin had recently finished cycling from San Francisco down to Ushuaia in Argentina. He’d been thinking of doing it for a while. That bloke can sell ice to an Eskimo,” Leroy said.

A quick scour on Gumtree for a bike, and $100 later, Leroy had the 1996 Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike that would take him more than 14,000km through South America.

Leroy started his journey from Ushuaia, nicknamed ‘the end of the world’, as it is the southern-most city on the planet.

After spending some time winding through Argentina and Chile, Leroy pedalled through Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.

He said there were only a few moments when he questioned why he decided to tackle such a long ride.

“There was one moment when I was riding through San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, it was just these horrible gravelly-sandy roads and strong head winds,” he said.

“It was all desert with hardly any places from shelter out of the wind. It was getting so cold during the night that my water bottle with about 700ml in it was freezing solid.

“I was there for a week trying to ride through it. When I got to the other side I was a bit physically and mentally broken.

“The thought crossed my mind of going home.”

Despite the testing conditions Leroy continued his journey, cycling through mountain passes and jungles.

“The most disappointing part about riding through the jungle was that I didn’t see a puma,” he said.

“There weren’t even that many birds, just lots of weird insects and howler monkeys.

“I didn’t come across any live snakes, just ones on the side of the road that had been run over.

“I saw heaps of tarantulas though. I’d help them cross the road.”

Since returning to Albany in time for Christmas with his family, Leroy’s days have seemed almost slow in comparison to life on the road.

“I’ve been back for nearly a month and I’m starting to make bad habits again,” he said.

“Life at home just isn’t as free as it was on the road. All you need to worry about when you’re cycling is food, water and where you’ll camp for the night. The routine is super addictive.

“When you get home it’s all about the money, spending it and earning it.

“I don’t have a phone contract, or a license or car, and straight way I’ve started spending way less.”

Leroy continues to cycle around Albany waiting for inspiration for his next trip.

“It was the best thing I’ve done in my life so far,” he said.

“The only thing I could say to someone who is thinking of cycling for a holiday is ‘what are you waiting for?’.”

A STATE heritage-listed York Street landmark, vacant for the past 18 months, will be tenanted once more when Mark Blyth Fine Jewellery moves in at the end of January.

From letting agent Doug Pearson, Mark and Tamara Blyth recently received the key to Albany House, erected in 1884 on the corner of York Street and Stirling Terrace.

Mr Pearson said the Blyths would lease the 152sqm downstairs space for close to the asking price of $27,360 a year.

“It’ll be great, because they have a really good product and it’s been hidden where it is at the moment,” he said.

“They’re going to set it up nicely, with good interior layouts, designs and finishes.

“This will give them a lot more exposure.”

For the past nine years, the Blyths’ jewellery business has been located in a shopfront across York Street from Albany House, in the Empire Buildings, which are on Albany’s local heritage register.

That shop-front is now up for lease.

Ms Blyth said the business should start trading from its new premises on January 29, depending on whether the City of Albany approves an application to convert the space from commercial to office use by then.

“For the first time in Mark’s 20-plus years as a jeweller he’ll have windows in his workshop,” she said.

“He won’t be working in a little dungeon out the back.”

Mr Blyth said the white marble of an existing fireplace in Albany House would be mirrored in a white marble shop counter he’d commissioned from Perth that would come in at a cool $14,000.

“We baulked at it for a couple of weeks, then we decided we should just do it,” he confided.

He said the bespoke building would be consistent with the hand-crafted nature of much of his jewellery.

A massive London-built safe from the building’s original use as a bank will again store valuables for the jewellery shop and for members of the public wishing to safeguard personal treasures.

Albany House was added to the State Register of Heritage Places in 1999.

Notable for pre-dating the gold rush, the building housed a branch of the Union Bank and then of the ANZ Bank, from 1884 to 1973.

For many decades, its sprawling top floor was home to whoever was bank manager at the time.

Mr Pearson said the 136sqm top floor was still available – for $16,320 a year.

“It’s Central Area zoning, which allows some really good uses there,” he said.

“It goes from retail, to office, to restaurant subject to conformity with health regulations.

“It’s a very prominent position right in town, and you’re looking out over the harbour, of course.”

The building’s most recent long-term tenant was an engineering firm.

A vegan café occupied the downstairs space for a short while after the engineering firm vacated.

Image: Doug Pearson hands Mark Blyth the key. Photo: Chris Thomson

THE new Albany Arts Festival Season has received a helping hand from the State Government for its inaugural program that kicks off next month.

As revealed by The Weekender in December, the Albany Arts Festival will be held over three months and will incorporate local, national and international arts acts to fill the void left by the Perth International Arts Festival’s exit from the Great Southern.

On a quick visit to the Albany Entertainment Centre, Minister for Regional Development Alannah MacTiernan said a modest $15,000 would be granted to the festival via the Great Southern Development Commission, with the aim of driving economic development and local job creation.

“This is world-class stuff we have here,” Ms MacTiernan said of the festival line-up.

“The festival will have things we don’t normally see in Albany, and be an important part of economic and social stimulus, as a tourism attractor.

“It will add to Albany’s rich tapestry and make a fantastic addition to the Great Southern.”

Both Ms MacTiernan and member for Albany Peter Watson were enthusiastic about the arts festival, and urged the University of Western Australia, the founder of the Perth International Arts Festival, to reconsider their move to not be involved in the event.

“The State Government did support the new Wave Energy Research Centre [new UWA Albany campus resource] with a lot of funding, so we are pushing for UWA to revisit their decision,” Ms MacTiernan said.

The Albany Arts Festival will commence in February and run until April.

Tickets for the range of performances and a list of the acts are available online at albanyentertainment.com.au.

DRIVEN by the desire to earn bragging rights over older siblings and the chance to score a retro car, Albany year 12 graduates James Hearle, Scott Fielding, Danaleigh Victor and Nicholas Gillespie worked hard and achieved impressive Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks (ATAR), which were released a day earlier than expected in mid-December.

Great Southern Grammar pupil James received an ATAR of 96.55, which he hopes to use to get into engineering at Curtin University or aerospace engineering at the Australian National University.

“I wanted to get 97 because Dad would have bought me a Beetle if I had, but I was still pretty stoked with what I got,” James said.

“I’m hoping to do some travelling and work this year, and go to uni next year.”

Albany Senior High School (ASHS) student Scott knew the first person he had to reveal his 94.6 ATAR score to was his older sister, of whom he was incredibly driven to beat.

“I was a bit nervous about getting my score because I thought I didn’t do well in physics, and I was worried about the scaling, but I was really happy with how I went,” he said.

“I snapchatted my sister straight away and told her I was smarter than her, and then I told my parents.

“They were more excited than me; Mum was dancing around the house.”

Scott hopes to pursue a physiotherapy degree at Curtin University or a biomedical science degree at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

ASHS graduate Danaleigh found out the ATAR results had been posted early via a Facebook group chat, and felt relieved when she saw her 96.7 score.

“I think I nearly fainted!” she said.

“It was really nerve-wracking because I wanted to get into medicine at UWA, so hopefully, with the rural bonus points, I will have enough to get into it.”

She hopes to study at the UWA Albany campus full-time this year, and continue her studies in Perth in 2019.

ASHS student Nicholas Gillespie earned himself a whopping 97.5 ATAR score, and said he was happy with his efforts.

“I’m hoping to go to UWA and do a physics degree,” he said.

“I’m going to live on campus and study full-time and work a bit, which will be a good chance to meet new people.”

The final closing date for applying or re-arranging preferences for university acceptance on the Tertiary Institutions Service Centre (TISC) website is today at 11pm, with main round offers available online and via email on January 17.

From this day, applications and change of preferences re-open for second round university offers and the second final closing date will be January 22.