Day: June 18, 2014

OPPOSING factions in the “Great Flinders Sculpture Debate” are set to battle it out at a specially convened meeting of the Flinders Community Association next weekend. At stake is the erection of “a magnificent” four-metre high bronze sculpture by internationally renowned peninsula artist Andrew Rogers. The sculpture was to be “gifted” – at cost-price of about $100,000 – to the Flinders community to commemorate the town’s 150th birthday and a site in the middle of a roundabout at the intersection of Cook and Wood streets had been agreed upon. A town hall meeting in March voted in favour of the…

A BY-ELECTION will be held Saturday 23 August to fill the vacancy on Mornington Peninsula Shire Council created by the resignation of Cr Frank Martin. The outcome of a postal ballot will decide the new councillor for the Red Hill ward position held by Cr Martin for the past six years. Cr Martin resigned in May due to recent poor health. He was first elected in 2008 and served as mayor in 2011/12. The Red Hill ward – established in 2004 as part of the shire’s amalgamation – and includes Red Hill, Red Hill South, Main Ridge, Balnarring Beach, Somers,…

CONCERNS about over-fishing by commercial netters at the southern end of Port Phillip have prompted a petition to state parliament to have them banned. Organiser Ken Tainton, of Third Ave Rosebud, said he had “easily 1100-1200 signatures” on several petitions from local anglers worried that stocks of snapper, whiting, flathead, salmon and flathead are in terminal decline. A member of the Tootgarook Boat Ramp Club, and long-time former commodore of the Rosebud Motor Boat Squadron, Mr Tainton is meeting with Nepean MP Martin Dixon on Friday to discuss the anglers’ fears. The petitions will then be combined as one and…

CELEBRATIONS marking last week’s 50th anniversary of the Beatles tour of Australia struck a resonant chord with Rosebud’s John (Johnny) Chester. The popular musician was a support act for the Fab Four when they played to packed – and screaming – houses in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and then New Zealand. Memories came flooding back when the phones ran hot last week after the screening of an ABC documentary on the landmark tour. Australia had never seen anything like it before, with half of Adelaide’s population jamming the route from the airport and Melbourne’s streets a sea of eager young faces…

THE situation could not have been more exciting for the gunners at Fort Nepean – or those on the German merchant ship steaming for The Heads – on the first day of the war in 1914. Hostilities had been declared officially three hours and forty-five minutes before the Pfalz made her run for it, hoping to escape to open sea before her new enemy could intern her. But it was not to be: the gunners aimed well and a six-inch shell from gun emplacement number six roared into the water only a short distance from Pfalz and the Australian pilot…