16 July Newsletter Friends of Eaglemont Village
Make a cuppa, get yourself comfortable and delve into some history, some nature, some current affairs.
Announcement expected soon on future of Eaglemont Dish
Mothers & Babies Network
Change of date, and change of time -
now Monday 17th July, from 10:30 a.m.
Still at the Eaglemont Dish.
A free coffee and cake courtesy of Australia Post's community grant to Friends of Eaglemont Village awaits you!
All welcome - grannies, papas, older children, males, females - give yourself some adult company.
The Gangs Gangs have Returned - twice
Our visiting family group of Gang Gangs have returned in force to feast on the Eucalyptus caesia fruits.
Well just one pair was observed Monday morning. I thought perhaps they dined so well earlier that only a snack for two was left.
Very pleasant surprise to see 6 Gang Gangs on Wednesday morning, quickly joined by another pair.
No photo of the 8 together, but the sighting was confirmed by neighbour Stephen C of Studley Road.
Close inspection of the photos reveals a juvenile male - just starting to develop his scarlet head feathering - 3 adult males and 4 females. I could not detect if any female was a juvenile.
Part of this small flock later headed to the railway station to "top up" on cotoneaster berries.
I observed 4 galahs previously eating cotoneaster berries there.
I am now conflicted about the cotoneaster removal program. Only a little conflicted though.
FofEV plantings along the rail corridor are including casuarinas in the hope they will be a food source for our yellow-tailed black cockatoos in years to come.
Village Premises Listed For Sale
Planet Ark reminder
On 28 July FofEV is hosting a schools planting event for the Year 4 class of Ivanhoe Girls Grammar School.
This will involve "infill" planting between the Substation and Ashby Grove underpass.
The trees and shrubs we put in originally are doing very well (what substation?) and now a bit of colour and foliage variety is needed around our feet.
When this event was first raised with the class they decided spontaneously to raise their own money to fund their plants!
FofEV will procure the plants for them from the Edendale Farm native nursery - a Nillumbik Council enterprise.
Long-term FofEV active member Liz D is starting to prepare planting holes in 5 zones to be allotted to teams of 5 or 6 students.
The ground conditions are dramatically better than when we started on that site, but hard digging still for youngsters.
Finances
Friends of Eaglemont Village has modest financial needs as an organisation.
We do not rent premises, we do not run vehicles, we do not pay salaries, no power bills, no phone bills.
As is the case in most micro-community organisations we rely on donated efforts, materials and services from our volunteers giving their time, their computer skills, their vehicles, their home offices etc gratis.
FofEV does have some outgoings - registrations, insurance costs and Village market fees chief among them. We do buy some gardening supplies for our plant nursery activity, we buy in some plants.
Mostly we regulate our major activities to utilising available grant funding, which is welcome and valued, but sporadic.
We have a generous sponsor in Bendigo Bank, we have grant funding through Banyule Council, we have received support via Federal MHR Kate Thwaites Jaga Jaga in the Federal community grants funds process.
Victrack corporate volunteers planted $2000 of plants VicTrack donated.
There are members who give donations in addition to our $10 annual family membership fee, particularly where they see they cannot contribute through labour at working bees.
Occaisionally we sell plants at our market stall as a fundraiser.
We ask that if you are reading this weekly Eaglemont community newsletter you chip in your $10 too.
That transfer of $10 to FofEV means more than $10 in the bank to us - it is a vote of confidence, it is validation of what we are doing.
$10. Annual. Family rate.
BSB is 633000
A/c is 177492964
(Please add (surname) (postcode) as Description to help our rudimentary accounting system.)
Rail station use refused
Banyule Council have tried hard to interest the rail authorities in leasing out the space in the Eaglemont Station for a community facility.
Intransigence reigns.
Rail property, and a rail focussed decision to keep the station reserved for very incidental use by very few rail staff - who could very easily do their Authorised Officer computer tasks at any other station on the Hurstbridge line.
Council - having recognised the case for a community facility in Eaglemont - will now return to the drawing board.
Eaglemont "improved walkability" discussions
A panel of FofEV worthies sat down in the Dish with Banyule Council's Alison Woods (Senior Transport Planner) to discuss how to improve the walkability of our neighbourhood.
A good natured talk for over an hour.
We will continue to develop proposals to make our home patch safer, more pleasant and easier to walk around.
Walking is good for socialising, for exercise, for getting from point A to point B.
Walking is more likely to occur if there are rest spots, shelter places, accessible public toilets, public lighting and some interest added to bland pathways.
All levels of government advocate the virtue of walking.
All levels of government seek to reduce or transfer costs - eg the cost of installing, or of maintaining, so-called "street furniture".
Public seating and bus shelters to you and me.
Public toilets? You know the offence against the public that's been going on - public transport withdrawing existing facilities from use, resisting including public toilets in new stations.
All the while local government does not want to accept responsibility for providing an adequate network of public toilets.
Cost of cleaning and maintenance is the main bugbear.
For Christ's or any other deity's Sake, it is the public that needs public toilets that foots the bill.
The fine notion of encouraging walking for all those valid reasons needs the addition of practical measures that do come at a cost - it is not a free ride.
We are buying our share of local government services with every obligatory rates payment we make, every discretionary fee or charge we incur.
FofEV will continue to advocate to others on your behalf, to work ourselves as volunteers to contribute, to keep the issue of your well-being before the people who have the capacity to improve our lives.
1st Anniversary
Still unsullied by the placement of bikes after a year's close observation by neighbouring residents...............
Unwanted, unloved, unused.
Member discussion