The state government says it is working to support GPs to provide more bulk-billed primary healthcare consultations for families.

It has announced that all Victorian general practice businesses will receive an exemption from any outstanding or future assessment issued for payroll tax on payments to contractor GPs for the period up to June 30, 2024.

A further 12-month exemption from payroll tax for payments to contractor GPs, through to June 30, 2025 will be available for any general practice business that has not already received advice and begun paying
payroll tax on payments to their contractor GPs on this basis

By Donna Kelly

OK. By now we all know the Hepburn Shire Council is in a bit of a state financially.

But how did it all go so wrong? The Rex perhaps? Nah. Couldn’t be. Hang on, I think I know what’s happened. The numbers don’t add up. I realised that after I read the following words in the draft budget: “Even after the $4.50 million borrowings and $1.5m operational savings council will still need to identify $4.00 of permanent additional revenue or expenditure reductions in 2025/2026.”

Even the embattled councillors must have got a little laugh out of that. Maybe not.

Talking of typos, I remember quite a few years back hearing of a national newspaper being produced by a laissez faire sub-editor who filled in the front page headline space with big 60 point letters.

Keep in mind the most you should ever write in a headline space is Headline Goes Here – just in case you forget to change it.

But this guy was a joker and wrote WORLD IS… and then he put an F and then a U and then a K and then a T.

You can see how I would be thinking about that as I wade through Hepburn Shire Council’s draft budget and draft town structure plans.

The really funny thing, not for the sub because he got the sack, is that a few copies managed to get printed and delivered before someone called the wonderful “Stop the presses”. I would love a copy if you happen to have one.

Anyway, things are not going well for the council and you could say the ratepayers are revolting. I am sure the council is saying that. It really does feel like a bit of a revolution and then you wonder who will be at the helm when the next elections are held in November.

Will the current mob want another four years or is it time for them to bow out?

Or is it time for the state government to step in and take over? And what does that mean for everything on the table now?

Or will the council look for a merger – but what council would want to take on a cash-strapped neighbour. Ballarat? Moorabool? Maybe more likely Melton because we are going to start looking like that once we turn our farm land into subdivisions of ticky tacky houses.

The swathes going through Middleton Field are already pretty mind blowing and then they go and cut down an historic and important cedar tree. Yes it was on private land, and yes, it made way for access to the estate, but at what cost.

That reminds me of another time when the state government worked to move the fire station at Glenlyon to the other side of Barkly Street, mostly commonly known as the avenue of honour although I have been told it is an avenue of federation.

Anyway, to create access for the fire trucks we were told they needed to remove five of the oaks and elms.

Kyle, myself and a neighbour protested. And many people told us we were against the fire station and even called us tree huggers. Gasp!

Finally, the developer agreed that the trucks could enter from the back of the block and no trees needed to be removed. Problem solved. Although we did have one more stand to make.

A Powercor bloke came to drill under the avenue to connect power. Kyle asked him to hold off while we called his manager. He told Kyle: “They’re just f…king trees, mate.”

I then called the manager who assured me all their staff were highly trained professionals and I had to beg to differ.

Long story a little shorter, they put the power in from the back of the block and the trees are there to continue their journeys today.

I dunno, it’s all a bit crazy right now, and the public consultations for both the budget and the town structure plans are coming quickly. If you have something to say, now is the time.

And for the councillors, I don’t envy your jobs but as I have said before please concentrate on getting it right, rather than just getting it done.

The future looks a little bleak and we really are in your hands. Just sayin’..

The City of Ballarat’s draft Industrial Land Strategy has recently opened for community review and feedback.  

The draft Industrial Land Strategy is now available for the community to review and provide feedback until 14 June 2024.  

Residents can view the drafts strategy, maps and further information online at the City of Ballarat’s MySay web page.

As the economy grows and changes, new commercial and industrial opportunities are forecast to arise in the municipality and will need to be accommodated on land or in existing buildings identified for that purpose.

Planning for future industrial and commercial areas is important to ensure the ongoing supply of suitable spaces for industry, business and employment opportunities for Ballarat.

This strategy will help Ballarat take advantage of emerging business interests that contribute to and help grow the local economy and employment in the region.

Industrial land should be available in suitable locations such as away from residential areas and with good access to road and rail infrastructure – the draft strategy seeks to address this.  

City of Ballarat Mayor, Cr Des Hudson said the Industrial Land Strategy will prepare Ballarat for future business and employment opportunities.  

“It is important to plan for all types of land use, including future industrial land supply, to ensure that Ballarat is prepared for the projected population growth over the coming years,” he said.  

“Our Strategic Planning team have been busy developing important documents to assist Ballarat’s growth, such as the Housing Strategy, Growth Areas Framework, and now the Industrial Land Strategy.  

“Together, this strategic work will inform and guide future planning and investment decisions in our city.”

Entries for the Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize are now open until Sunday, August 4.

The winner will be announced at the Words in Winter festival in Daylesford on Sunday, August 25.

In her late 50’s Venie Holmgren began to write poetry and her first published anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet in 1989, became a poetry ‘best seller’.

At the same time, she applied her environmental activist skills and commitment to the campaign to save native forests near her home on the far south coast of NSW, where she was arrested twice for obstructing log trucks.

After 16 years of solo self-reliant living she moved to the local town of Pambula where she penned her travel memoir, several more books of poetry and travelled widely as a performance poet.

In 2010 Venie moved to Hepburn where she wrote her last poetry collection, The Tea House Poems. In January 2016, Venie ‘caught the bus’ at the age of 93.

Judges for the prize are Tim Loveday and Jodi Vial. Tim Loveday is a poet, writer, educator and clown-lark and in 2023 was the winner of the Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize.

As the recipient of a 2021 Next Chapter Fellowship and 2022 Writers’ Space Fellowship, Tim’s work explores class, masculinity, rurality and climate collapse.

In 2022 he won the Dorothy Porter Poetry Award, in 2023 he was shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize, long-listed for the Wyndham Flash Fiction award, and came runner-up in The Kyogle Poetry Prize.

Jodi Vial writes across the forms of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, with a focus on the intersection of literature, landscape and history.

She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle, working on a hybrid memoir that centres women’s archival voices.

In a previous life, she was a newspaper journalist. Her microfiction has been shortlisted and longlisted in the Joanne Burns Microfiction Prize, and her writing has been published by Spineless Wonders, Recent Work Press and Papatuanuku Press.

Link: www.holmgren.com.au

With Eve Lamb

Just at home riding a Harley motorcycle through the desert as he is mingling in a classy art gallery, Sailors Falls creative, Michael Lelliott works with paint, drawing, photography, film, sculpture and sound to celebrate beauty where he finds it. Currently, inspired by a very recent desert excursion, he is working on a suite of new paintings to exhibit as part of this August’s winter fundraising show at The Little Gallery in Trentham,  where he will be among participating artists.

Eve: Michael I hear that you are currently preparing for a rather special show at The Little Gallery in Trentham, the gallery’s annual winter fundraising show. What do you have in mind for that?

Michael: Phillip Edwards,  who has the Bullarto Gallery, and I are just back from a trip to the desert, the Mungo National Park, camping in swags, and I am doing on a body of work coming out of that trip for The Little Gallery show.

I am also planning to enter a work (coming out of this trip) in the Pro Hart Outback Art Prize.

Eve: A camping trip to the desert. Sounds like fun. Can you tell me a bit more about about it?

Michael: What I love about getting into that space, that landscape, is that the more you sit and wait, the more that’s revealed. You start to see the shift in colour and the shift in time, and the Mungo is on this amazing dune that’s constantly being pushed back revealing layers going back in time.

We had a little walking tour there with an Indigenous guide. And while we were there we also started painting under moonlight which was a really interesting experience.

Eve: What sort of media are you working with as you prepare work for the upcoming winter show at The Little Gallery?

Michael: Watercolour, pencil and gauche on paper. I often work at night. You can get a lot done at night, play dance music and have a glass of wine while you work. The work I am doing is very physical. I put a lot of movement into the work. I’m not a traditional watercolourist.

Eve: What is your background?

Michael: My background is in product design, consumer products. I still do a bit of brand work but I am now becoming a full-time artist.

I studied art at the Victorian College of the Arts in the late 80s, early 90s, print making and photography and I had an arts practice for 30 years, lived in Fitzroy, Europe, Germany for a while. I was pretty focussed on brands, product design but I decided to refocus at the end of ’22, start of ’23.

Last year I spent the first six months just discovering mark-making again. We went to the desert. Mutawintji and Bimbowrie. I think ‘space’ is the right word. The landscape gives you permission to be present.

Eve: Are you inspired by any particular artists?

Michael: So many. Right now I’m thinking of Fred Williams, also of Russell Drysdale in terms of landscape. Those sort of 40s, 50s, 60s Australian artists.

Eve: I know that you are truly a multi-media artist, who is even known to dance, but what genre are you working with currently?

Michael: Still life and landscape. With still life and landscape I can get out of my own way. With photography though, I do focus on people. And I tend to shoot without setting it up.  

Eve: Anything else coming up on your artistic radar, Michael?

Michael: Yes. A group show at the Bullarto Gallery with Phillip Edwards and one or two other artists in November.

I’m heading to the States (USA) in July and we – a group of friends, actors, artists, sculptors and I – are riding our Harleys from LA to New York, starting our trip by going across Death Valley.

We’re going to follow The Rockies so I’m expecting there’ll be other work coming out of that for the Bullarto show. Australia is my heart-space. But it will be interesting to see how the desert there is different.

I am also going through a series of photos I did between 2010 and 2014 for a book. It’s particularly about motorcycle subculture.

After many years of paying her dues in the competitive world of professional video production, Bullarto’s Nadine Jade has reached the stage where she can finally choose which projects to accept.

It’s a position many in this hard-to-crack field would envy – but it’s been hard-earnt.

Nadine’s chosen path emerged early, while still at high school in Ballarat when she started studying photography and then video production.

“When I was in year 10 I discovered the dark room. It was the mid-90s so it was still film and analogue VHS editing,” she says.

“I found I loved capturing people. Then I discovered video and the Mount Clear High School at Ballarat was very well equipped with a TV studio and editing suite so I learnt how to properly produce videos from about the age of 16.

“Then I started to do pro shoots in crews and make music videos. When it went to digital I was in my early 20s and I taught myself digital editing… I love editing. Turning beautiful shots into a coherent story.

“When I was 22 I started working in the industry as a video editor in Prahran.”

Creating video is a passion as well as a profession for Nadine who has just produced a video telling the story of artist and musician Monty Osewald, a colourful Daylesford character with an eventful  life story.

Nadine’s new Monty Osewald, Artist video began to take shape after Monty himself checked out her work and, duly impressed, commissioned her.

The resultant production has been enjoying a public audience at The Convent gallery in Daylesford, complementing Monty’s own most recent art exhibition that’s been staged there.

“It covers his whole life and Monty gave me a lot of background photos and artwork and the soundtrack also features his own music and also music by other local musicians,” Nadine says.

“Monty is just one of those people who is always evolving, producing new art and music. He is more modern than I am in a lot of ways even though he’s been on the earth for longer.”

Nadine says being asked to make Monty’s biographical video-doco was an honour, and after some 300 hours of work on it, she says it’s still not quite done.

“It’s about 98 percent finished.”

Nadine says  she just wants to add a little more historic detail before declaring the video 100 percent done and ready for online release.

It’s just one in a suite of current projects for Nadine Jade Productions, Nadine’s business that specialises in video production including  biographical documentary, music video and corporate work.

But Nadine has also worked on feature and short films including a notable film short that’s soon to screen as part of the St Kilda Film Festival.

This is The Job by award-winning director Tatiana Doroshenko. Nadine worked as assistant director for The Job that will feature as part of the opening of the St Kilda Film Festival on June 6.

Nadine also worked on a feature film, a thriller, shot at Glenlyon in 2021 and expected to be released later this year.

But next on the immediate horizon is a music video being made with a local band in Daylesford. This project is a little hush-hush just now but sounds pretty exciting while Nadine’s prior music videos can be checked out on YouTube.

As the mother of two teenagers, the local videographer says she generally complements her creative professional income by also working in hospitality , currently at popular local watering hole, the Radio Springs Hotel.

But despite the imperatives of parenthood, as a mature-age student Nadine made the time to also complete studies in screen and media study though RMIT.

“At the moment I’m the busiest I’ve ever been with video work,” she says.

“People want me to do the work and I’m finally at the stage where I am able to choose which projects I take on … and which I don’t .  I want my video work to feel enjoyable.”

 A fan of Danish film director and screenwriter, Lars von Trier, with a particular liking for psychological drama, Nadine says one personal goal remains to write and direct a short to target the St Kilda Film Festival.

“I have a couple of screen plays that I’ve written and I’d love to have something I’ve directed to enter into the St Kilda Film Festival. I feel like that’s the next step,” she says.

“Everything I create I write, shoot, direct, do the sound, edit. That’s what I love to do. You never know what job comes next … and I kind of like that.”

Words: Eve Lamb

The Red Dirt Ball will raise funds to halt the construction of overhead transmission lines and towers on valuable farmland, provide aid for rural mental health, and combat family violence.

It will be held at the Swiss Monte “Hangar Bar”, 60 Ti Tree Road, Smeaton on June 15.

One of the organisers, Kieran Prendergast, said he hoped people would join in the “prestigious black-tie event in the heart of the seven volcanic hills, as we come together to support mental health awareness and resources, particularly focusing on the well-being of Victorians in rural areas affected by government decisions”.

“Our mission is to raise funds, foster dialogue, and promote understanding around mental health challenges and family violence.”

Kieran said the Red Dirt Ball was born out of the need to address significant issues facing rural communities.

“Overhead power lines threaten our precious land, diminishing food bowls, ruining scenic vistas, and lowering land values. This event is not just a fundraiser; it is a movement to protect our environment and empower our community.

Link: www.reddirtball.com.au

A unique, freestyle form of Japanese artistic weaving will be on display in Clunes this month, from today, June 8 to 23.

The Celebration of SAORI exhibition will bring together over 30 saori artists from across Australia in a colourful celebration of individual creative expression through cloth.

Saori is a creative form of contemporary weaving that originated in Japan, focusing on colour and texture rather than repeatable patterns. The woven items are then made into a range of original garments, wall hangings, soft furnishings and accessories – all of which will be on display at the event.

Clunes resident Prue Simmons, above, one of only three people in Australia accredited to teach this Japanese craft, will be curating and coordinating the exhibition, enabling her students located right across Australia to showcase their original work. The exhibiting artists are part of her online program through her studio Dyeing To Weave, designed to guide and mentor saori artists throughout Australia.

“Saori weaving is actually a moving meditation – you just happen to be making an incredible piece of woven cloth as you do it. Each piece represents a captured moment in time at the loom and an opportunity for self-reflection for the weaver, giving every woven item a story and making each piece completely unique,” Prue said.

Jayne Newgreen, a saori weaver based in Evansford, is looking forward to displaying her work as part of the creative collective. “It’s such a wonderful opportunity to showcase this incredible form of creativity – saori weaving is so relaxing, and I love the freedom that I find at the loom,” Jayne said.

Prue is excited to be hosting the exhibition in the charming historical town that she calls home.

“Clunes has such a rich history of textiles and bringing an exhibition resplendent in colour and creativity will be a wonderful offering for a day trip in early winter.

“With over 50 woven items on display, this is a rare opportunity to view so many saori artists’ work and to learn more about this lesser-known Japanese weaving craft. Lots of beautiful pieces will be on display and for sale.”

There will also be free saori weaving demonstrations, talks and special weaving workshops held during the exhibition for visitors to enjoy.

Link: www.dyeingtoweave.com.au/exhibition

Words & image: Contributed

Daylesford & District Museum held a launch of its new Daylesford Ceramics Collection on Thursday, May 30 to thank the donors of works to the contemporary collection.

The exhibition will be open to the public each Saturday from today, June 8 from 11am to 3pm.

The exhibition is staged as a mock dinner party, set with white dinner plates, a unique array of rare and
unusual dining chairs.

The guest of honour is renowned creative artist, Petrus Spronk. His guests are 16 people from the
district’s past.

Their story was revealed at the launch by museum curator Gary Lawrence and will be available to be shared with visitors.

The room is completed with historic images of the community meeting and celebrating around their special tables together with some surprise artistic works.

One of the protected and historic cedar trees along Malmsbury Road has been felled to make way for
road access for the Middleton Field housing estate.

The tree was behind temporary fencing with black plastic over the top, dotted with signs saying “TREE
PROTECTION ZONES – KEEP OUT”.

Hepburn Shire Councillor Jen Bray said on social media it was “very sad to see this majestic tree coming down”.

“Council did manage to save the other tree which was proposed to be cut down by putting the condition that only one, not two trees, be allowed to be removed for the road access.

“The final decision to grant the permit for this development was made by the Minister for Planning last
year. The rest of the trees are to be protected in a public reserve managed by council.”

Daylesford resident Debora Mermadeit, who has long advocated for the trees’ protection, said the “whole process was a travesty…including councillors not getting to the bottom of exactly why even a single tree was slated to go”.

“Bureaucratic bungling and lack of rigour by all levels of council/executive branch and councillors alike led to this. It could have been avoided.

“While it is great the developers and council were finally convinced to place the remainder of the trees in a reserve it was a hard slog and had the trees’ significance been acknowledged by all from day one, including all levels of council, the removal of even one tree could have been avoided.”

Words: Donna Kelly | Main image: Kevin Childs | Inset: Kyle Barnes

Brilliantly coloured images of rock and pop stars fill a book by Yandoit’s Dave Lewis. They arose out of extreme trauma.

He says if his wife had not heard a bump as their daughter Kate fell out of bed, she would be dead. It seemed that Kate, then 16, was having a fit. She was unable to speak.

An ambulance took her first to Ballarat, then to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She was there for six months recovering from an aneurysm.

Dave and his wife, Sharon Treloar, moved to Melbourne to be with Kate in March last year.

“They operated on her for nine hours,” he says. She was in intensive care for weeks. “It was insane,” says Dave, a 55-year-old teacher’s aide and part-time rock muso.

Recuperation was slow. Physiotherapists helped, as did speech pathologists and helpers to take her shopping. There were setbacks. Kate had a stroke and a second, much milder, aneurysm. An aneurysm is a bulge in a blood vessel in or around the brain.

“We just took it one week at a time,” Dave says. “We were lucky that she lived.”

Now Kate can walk, but with a limp and has little movement in her right hand.

During Kate’s time in the Royal Melbourne Dave lined her white walls with Texta drawings of music legends, from Bob Dylan to Patti Smith.

Here, too, in his 136-page book are Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Blue Lines, Massive Attack, Kurt Vile, and Yo La Tengo, a famously noisy American alternative rock band formed in 1984, with their 1997 album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. “I tried to liven it up.” Dave says.

His book will be launched at Words in Winter in August. Dave has nursed an ambition to produce an art book for 32 years and now aims for another.

Another American band in the book is one that Kate introduced him to, the Neutral Milk Hotel, formed in 1989. They split up for what seems an eccentric reason in rock: they could not cope with the attention they were getting.

Which is unlike Dave’s band The Bedridden, which also split up, got together only to split again, only to recently emerge at Yandoit.

The spirit and survival of these bands and musicians, caught on Kate’s hospital walls, may have meant a lot.

Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Kyle Barnes

Hepburn Springs local Jim Milesi reckons he may well be Australia’s only professional speech therapist who also works as a dry stone wall builder.

It’s a part-time occupation that lately his brother, Vince, is also enjoying.

The Milesi brothers are currently working to restore a 30-metre stretch of an extensive historic dry stone wall on the private property of Trefor John and Tina Winzar at Elevated Plains just out of Hepburn Springs.

Running alongside the Hepburn Springs-Newstead Road, the wall is understood to be about 130-140 years old and one of many built by the area’s early Swiss-Italian immigrants who include the Milesi’s own forbearers.

 “This is a dream job,” says Jim whose love of the time-honoured art of dry stone walling started way back in childhood on the family’s Hepburn Springs property.

“We had some dry stone walling on the family property and I always liked it and started mucking around with it then,” he says.

Much later in life, while working as a speech therapist in Kyneton about six years ago Jim noticed a man building a “beautiful dry stone retaining wall”.

This observation would lead to him furthering his own dry stone walling skills by working alongside Evan Pierce, a renowned dry stone wall builder with Kyneton Dry Stone Walling.

“Every day was a master class with Evan,” says Jim who recently launched out independently as a part-time dry stone waller.

“I’ve been doing it for a long time but up until the last few years years I didn’t think I’d ever get paid to do it,” says Jim who’s also travelled to northern Italy and furthered his dry stone walling skills there as well.

For the current project Jim has been joined by brother Vince who has an equally surprising professional background for a dry stone waller – voice acting.

Many will have caught the television series Kitty Is Not A Cat for which Vince provided various cartoon cat voices, among his myriad other projects in the arts sector.

Currently taking a break from city life Vince is clearly enjoying working as a part-time dry stone waller as well.

“At the moment I’m enjoying a different pace of life and taking on new skills,” Vince says.

Jim says the stretch of wall that they’re working on at Elevated Plains continues the restoration of the wall started several years ago by accomplished dry stone waller, Josh Bowes.

“Dry stone walls are amazing,” Jim says.

“They provide a microclimate for lizards, birds, even bats. There is no mortar. They’re free-draining and, as a retaining wall, if they’re built property, they’re the best.”

 To restore the historic wall on the Elevated Plains property they’re sourcing the material – natural stone – from the site itself.

It’s physical work – pretty much a “full-body work out” – but it’s also good for the mind as well says Jim who has now built walls in locations including Yandoit, Daylesford, Buninyong and Rockbank, with local councils increasingly keen to conserve their unique heritage value.

“The concepts are simple. There’s not a lot of technical things to remember,” he says.

“I love them. In a sense this is a building form that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.”

With a fair bit more of the current wall to be restored beyond the 30-or-so metres that they’ve been engaged to work on, Jim says that if the property owners are happy for them to keep going he’d jump at the chance to take on more of this age-honoured art form that he loves.

“It will teach you patience. It will teach you humility,” Jim says.

“I appreciate that it’s almost thrusting mindfulness upon you. You can’t really be worrying about other things when you are thinking about what you’re doing on the wall.”

Property owner Trefor John says there’s probably about a kilometre of walls on the block, “some very dilapidated and some almost intact”.

“We’d love to restore it all but, realistically, time and funds are the limiting factors,” Trefor says.

“We’ll do what we can with what we’ve got. A drystone wall is a thing of beauty. A dilapidated or damaged wall is a sad thing.” 

Jim says he could talk about the art of dry stone walling all day, and is often in luck on this front as quite a few appreciative and observant passers-by have stopped for a chat.

“I’d encourage anyone who sees us to come and say G’day,” he says.

Words: Eve Lamb

Consultation falls short for Creswick community

Hepburn Shire Council has shown it is not really interested in genuine consultation with the community of Creswick.

Given that this community has a significant number of mature-aged people who are digitally illiterate, many without the internet/computers or mobile phones, how does the council think it is appropriate to have all the details of the proposed Future Strategy and feedback avenues all online?

Their only attempt to make it accessible (initially – as copies have now been placed in the library) was to hold a community meeting – which was held on a Friday between 5pm and 8pm.

Many elderly will not drive or walk after dark so that ruled them out. The others that had children and/or worked are not likely to show up either. Not to mention the fact that a letter sent out to notify all the residents of the consultation meeting arrived four days after the meeting date.

As one of the residents who were invited to contribute to the three-stage Creswick consultation process, I was stunned to see that the plan to develop the area around the railway station with multi-storey buildings was on the agenda from day one.

Despite the council being told it would destroy the amenity of the area and that this was a city plan for our iconic and heritage railway building to be surrounded by high-rise apartments, it has still remained in the plan.

Let’s face it, there are four trains a day and it is a single rail line, as such this area is unlikely to become a transport hub in the next couple of decades.

Very strong feedback was given by the group for the immediate need for indoor amenities for youth and a swimming pool. These are totally left out of the plan.

This plan needs to be put on pause until after the council elections in October so the community can vote for people who want what the residents want, not what the state government and developers want.

From Wendy Cato, Creswick

Police have appealed for information while investigating a fatal crash that occurred in Monegeetta last Wednesday night.

It is understood a car crashed into a tree on Kilmore Road, near Melbourne Lancefield Road, about 9.55pm.

Emergency services worked on the female driver, who is yet to be formally identified, but she died at the scene.

Anyone who witnessed the crash, with CCTV/dashcam footage or information was urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or

Prompting plenty of public opinion, the current trial of pedestrian islands at the intersection of Fraser and Service Streets in Clunes will continue through to August 4 the Hepburn Shire Council says.

The trial has been inspiring plenty of conversation and mixed responses from the community which will have the opportunity to formally provide input, with the council planning to call for feedback in response to the trial in July.

The council says that if there is strong support from the community for the pedestrian islands, it will look at options for upgrading to a permanent solution in future budgets.

If there is little support for the pedestrian crossing, the area will return to its previous layout with no affect to the area, the council says.

Installed last month, the “pin down” islands form refuge points for pedestrians attempting to cross the road and follow calls for a safer pedestrian crossing in the township, the council says.

The trial is part of the council’s wider Clunes Streetscape project with new streetlights at the pedestrian crossing, on the supermarket and creek side of the intersection also planned to improve safety there.

The pedestrian island trial has drawn criticism from some like local resident Kate Edwards who, in a letter to The Local  pointed out that there had been no recorded fatalities to date, and rating the traffic islands as a blight on the town’s wide historic streetscape

“Despite no reports of people being run over in town they (the council) have to act on the perceived danger spot and … Clunes (has) received some very ugly, brightly painted traffic islands at the main entrance to our famous, historic, widely photographed streetscape,” Ms Edwards said.

“The council says they are only there for a trial period. I assume that if there are no pedestrian fatalities in the next six months, they will be deemed successful and stay, regardless of the fact there were no fatalities before they arrived.

“There is also now the added pressure of a catch22 situation where if they are removed due to public outcry, some silly human will decide to get hit by a car and sue the council for removing them.

“Our town’s lovely deep death-trap gutters and all those unmaintained shop verandas will be the next to go and don’t forget to chop down all the trees that might fall on us. Be careful what you wish for!”

But others believe the trial is warranted with pedestrians often left confused as to the safest crossing point at the intersection, and reports of occasionally erratic and unpredictable driving at the site, one of the busiest in Clunes.

Local councillor Tessa Halliday was among many to delve into the issue in social media posts stating: “if the community finds this helpful in achieving better pedestrian safety then they will replace these with permanent outstands that suit the heritage streetscape. Likely the concrete would be bluestone edging or the like.”

“I think it is worth seeing what is possible and what we can live with in order to keep our most vulnerable community safe,” Cr Halliday said.

Words & Image: Eve Lamb

More information was available at https://participate.hepburn.vic.gov.au/clunes-crossing