HIGH-profile Winter Olympian and long-time peninsula resident Belle Brockhoff is ready to go above and beyond to help turn the tide against discrimination. The Olympic snowboarder, who grew up on her family’s estate in Dromana, was last week appointed a beyondblue ambassador and said she plans to use her new position to highlight the issue of homophobia. Brockhoff was also the only openly gay member of the Australian team at the Sochi Winter Olympics earlier this year and spoke out against Russia’s anti-gay laws. Not only is Brockhoff proud to be gay, the 21-year-old has also shared her story of…
Day: June 24, 2014
THE Mornington Peninsula bore the brunt of last week’s fierce wind storm which damaged homes, cut power supplies and created havoc for commuters as train services were suspended and major roads closed to traffic. Dozens of trees and power lines were brought down by wind gusts of up to 122km/h as an icy storm front labelled by the Bureau of Meteorology as a “winter weather bomb” blasted the state’s south-east on Tuesday. Emergency services were stretched to the limit clearing roads, rail lines and homes from fallen trees, branches and other debris, while police were kept busy responding to chaos…
A MORNINGTON resident has hit out at the shire council after being rebuked for voluntarily helping maintain a beach access track. For the past four years, Peter Ritchie says he has trimmed back overgrowth, cleared fallen trees and branches and levelled washed away areas of a track leading from The Esplanade to the leash-free area at Fossil Beach. But last week, Mr Ritchie made the apparent mistake of informing shire officials of his voluntary efforts after writing to the shire to suggest a number of measures to help improve the safety and amenity of the beach. Not only were his…
A THIRD wave monitoring and modelling investigation is to be carried out at the badly eroded Portsea front beach. The $290,000 investigation will cover Port Phillip Heads, the Great Sands and the shoreline from Pt Nepean to Portsea and is expected to take 18 months. The two earlier studies were reviewed by the CSIRO which noted that there is limited wave measurement data in this part of the bay, limiting the accuracy to which any model can be calibrated and adding a degree of uncertainty to any results. Both studies recommended more extensive measurements of waves as they move into…