LAPEROUSE

The ‘De Bougainville’ is a trailing suction hopper dredger with a capacity of 3,700m³. It was built at the Tianjin Xinhe Shipyard in The Peoples Republic of China, launched in June 2006 and is now at work dredging Botany Bay around Molineux Point. We have previously had other dredges at work this year, including the Leonardo da Vinci. De Bougainville is named for the famous French father and son navigators. De Bougainville senior was the first Frenchman to navigate the globe and de Bougainville junior while on a circumnavigation of a globe in 1825 stopped over in Sydney for three months. While here he commissioned the construction of the Laperouse Monument and Receveur Tomb. Further details.

Jan du Nul have commissioned construction of another dredge of this type to be named de Laperouse as well as two Split Hopper Barges called Boussole and Astrolabe (expected 2009/10).

The Department of Planning is currently assessing submissions made in response to Energy Australia’s amendment to the Botany Bay Cable project. In the original proposal Energy Australia stressed that there would be no dredging, only trenching. Now they want to include dredging. The Department of Planning received submissions from Randwick Council, Sydney Ports, Maritime, Department of Environment and Climate Change(DECC) and Department of Primary Industries (DPI). If you expected Departments with responsibility for protecting the marine integrity of Bare Island to oppose this threatening process, take a read of what was said by DPI and DECC. There is an attachment to the DECC submission but nowhere is there anything about the significance of the marine creatures and their habitat at Bare Island. Maritime is only interested in watercraft and Sydney Ports is gearing up for its next assault on Botany Bay and it lists requirements to facilitate widening and deepening of the shipping channel from the Heads to the terminals. For good measure the Port’s Senior Manager Planning suggests that Energy Australia will have a greater impact on beaches such as Lady Robinson and Towra than Sydney Ports are having with their third terminal construction. The only stakeholder to go to bat for the Weedy Seadragon and other significant marine creatures in the area has been Randwick Council. Council has again suggested that the cable avoid Bare Island and go via Prince of Wales Drive. Energy Australia have replied that they can’t do this because there are conflicts with the Desalination Project, drilling under the revetment wall would be a ‘high risk’ activity, and access to Port Botany during an emergency may be adversely affected. For some reason the ‘risks’ to residents, the National Park, the La Perouse Headland and the integrity of the marine environment around Bare Island don’t stack up against these other ‘risks’. For more information about Weedy Seadragons.

In answer to suggestions that Marine Mammals will be disturbed, Energy Australia say that they are rarely seen beyond the Heads. The DECC backs up these statements.  Botany Bay has been a sanctuary for Marine Mammals for thousands of years.  We look to the DECC to advocate for the environment but as usual when it comes to Botany Bay they are found wanting.  In its original submission to the Cable Project, the Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance requested that the value of all Heritage items(natural/built) be carried out and a bond be posted.  This process was used for the Port Expansion but rejected here. From the Summary of Submissions:  “Requests full valuation of heritage items affected by construction and a bond,approved by the community, in case of damage to these items or introduction/dispersion of invasive species . A (Answer)  comprehensive heritage study was undertaken in respect of the Project and it was concluded that the Project would not have any significant impact on any items of heritage.

Peter Garrett’s response to concerns about Weedy Seadragons at Bare Island

The full report on submissions.

Randwick City Council has advertised vacancies on its Advisory Committees - all residents/ratepayers and workers in Randwick are welcome to apply - click the links below for details:

1. Cultural & Linguistic Diversity:

2. Older People

3. Public Art and Cultural

4. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander

5. Access

Darwinius masillae (Darwin’s creature from Messel) is being hailed as a significant ‘missing link’/ ‘transitional species’ in the evolution of primates. This beautifully preserved specimen was discovered in 1983 in the Messel Fossil deposits in Germany and reassembled in 2007. For the last 2 years it has been studied and described by a team of scientists led by Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo;  the university purchased the find for a reported $1million in 2007. The specimen is reportedly 95% complete with hair, tissues and stomach contents and this is remarkable when you consider that Lucy was only 40%. Messel has revealed other well-preserved specimens of the Eocene including eight species of crocodile, more than 20 snakes, more than 60 specimens of pygmy horse, the largest ant ever to crawl the planet and eight fragmentary primate specimens. The first Archaeopteryx was found in 1861 in Germany. Link

Darwinius masillae, nicknamed Ida after Hurum’s 6year old daughter, lived around 47 million years ago(mya). Ida is a primate because she has nails on her digits rather than claws and she has opposable thumbs and big toes. Ida is female because she has no baculum. She dates from a time that our branch of the primates (the haplorhines) which includes monkeys and apes split from a second group including the lemurs, lorises, pottos and bush babies (the strepsirrhines). Key features of her skeleton suggest she is not an ancient lemur. She has no “grooming claw” on her second toe, a feature that all lemurs share. She also does not have a set of fused teeth in the middle of her bottom jaw called a “tooth comb”. The tarsus bone in her ankle is shaped like our ancestors. So it is likely that she is a very early haplorhine primate. Ida’s left wrist was broken, but had partly healed. The researchers believe this injury would have hampered her climbing and may have contributed to her death or possibly she was overcome from carbon dioxide fumes from the Messel Lake. The large eye holes in her skull suggest she was probably adapted for night vision and so was nocturnal. Her milk teeth are in place with adult teeth forming behind, indicating that she was still a juvenile – probably six to nine months old (equivalent to 6 years in human terms). Ida’s last meal contained fruit and leaves, but no insects.

Our local dig on the ex-UNSW adjacent to Prince Henry has yielded fossils from the early Miocene (approx. 22 mya) including pollen from the Wollemi Pine. While Australia has no transitional primates in the fossil record it does have mammals dating from the late Oligocene through to the mid Miocene (25-12 mya).

Local identity and well- known Australian entertainer, Vic Simms, gave a lively talk to visitors at the Laperouse Museum. Vic spoke about growing up in La Perouse and displayed ochre, boomerangs, spears and clap sticks. In 2001, Vic won a Deadly Award for his outstanding achievements as an entertainer. His LP recording, The Loner, is recognised as one of the greatest collections of protest songs produced in Australia. More recently he featured at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games opening ceremony concerts, at Woodford’s Indigenous Festival, and gave the Welcome to Country at the Sydney Town Hall for the 2000 Olympics.  Wikipedia Link and for those who missed this talk tune into this feature which was produced by the ABC. Link

Principal, Miguel Quillent, teacher Evelyne Petijean and students from the College Jacques Brel, Villers Bretonneux, visited the La Perouse Headland today to pay their respects at Australia’s most important site celebrating the bond between our two nations. The visit to Australia was hosted by the Returned Services League and included a stopover at the twin city of Robinvale in Victoria. The citizens of Villers-Bretonneux (pop. 4135) raised over $20,000 to rebuild a school destroyed in the recent Victorian Bushfire tragedy. The French town launched the appeal in a campaign similar to the one which saw the citizens of Melbourne adopt Villers-Bretonneux to help rebuild the town after WW1. Link to photographs of Villers-Bretonneux 1918-1919(The Australian multimedia website)

The visit to La Perouse was hosted by the Mayor of Randwick City Council, Bruce Notley-Smith, and the Friends of the Laperouse Museum in association with the French Consul-General, Lionel Majeste-Larrouy and the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change.

Photographs (L-R): Carole Roussel, guiding the group around the Museum; presentation of Pamela Griffith etching;In front of the Laperouse Monument with Mr and Mrs Baker (NSW RSL); in front of the Tapestry with the Mayor of Randwick and the French Consul-General and family.

The bond between Australia and France was established on Australia’s National Day January 26, 1788 when Captain John Hunter welcomed Laperouse, France’s most famous navigator, to Botany Bay. As Laperouse noted in his journal at the time “all Europeans are compatriots at such a great distance” and during the following 6 weeks there were at least another 11 occasions when French officers and scientists met with the British.

The French were the first to establish an Observatory, a Garden and to observe Christian services. On February 17th they buried their Franciscan Friar and Scientist, Receveur, who had succumbed to wounds received in Samoa. Governor Arthur Phillip on seeing the grave a few months later ordered that it be appropriately marked. Decades later, officers from one of the expeditions which had been searching for Laperouse, Duperrey, engraved the eucalyptus tree that shaded the grave. The following year Governor Thomas Brisbane granted Hyacinthe de Bougainville land for the purpose of building a monument to Laperouse and a Tomb for the French Friar. These were completed in 1828.

The gravesite is a humbling reminder of the supreme sacrifice that young Australian men would make on the Somme 90 years later - April 25 - three years after Anzac Day and also the anniversary of Friar Receveur’s birth.

A man’s destination is not his destiny,

Every country is home to one man

And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely

A one with his destiny, that soil is his. (T.S. Eliot)

The focus for commemoration of Australians lost on the Western Front is the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The battle of Villers-Bretonneux on April 25, 1918 was a turning point in the war. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s Alternative Technology Association magazine has an article on Low-cost electric vehicles, where author David Rowe explains how you can convert for around $6000. The author’s EV page

This morning’s most viewed article in The Age on-line:

• May 8, 2009, The Age, Alan gray

The efforts of households to cut carbon emissions should not let big polluters off the hook.

RECHARGING an electric car in Victoria would produce about as much carbon dioxide as running a small petrol hatchback — so there would be no benefit. That’s been the message in recent media items.

My family have been driving a four-door, fully electric hatchback for more than a year now and we’re yet to burn a single gram of carbon dioxide. Read the rest of this entry »

Prince Henry had its origins managing patients with infectious diseases such as Smallpox in 1881, Diptheria, Tuberculosis and Scarlet Fever and in 1890, Leprosy. In 1900 there were 303 cases of Bubonic plague claiming 103 lives with a further outbreak folowing in 1921. But the hospital was stretched in 1919 when the 1918 Spanish Flu/Swine Flu pandemic was at its height. Prince Henry closed its doors a few years ago and its services were transferred to Prince of Wales in the heart of Randwick. How would Sydney now cope in a pandemic without facilties such as Prince Henry. (Photo- horse drawn ambulance)  Link to Timeline

On the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, the Daily Telegraph in the UK ran this article: 03 Nov 2008:

Flu epidemic anniversary: How would modern Britain cope with an influenza pandemic?

Ninety years ago this week, as the First World War was drawing to a fitful close, a dreadful epidemic swept across Britain.

“So many were ill that only the worst could be visited,” recalled a GP’s son from Lancashire. “People collapsed in their homes, in the streets and at work… All treatment was futile.”

The symptoms of the ‘Spanish’ influenza – so-called because Spain, as opposed to countries involved in the conflict, did not censor reports of the spreading plague - included a hacking cough, projectile nose bleeds, and a condition known as heliotrope cyanosis, a dark-blue discoloration caused by shortage of oxygen to the lungs. Unlike most strains, it did not just strike the very young and old but also the 20-40-year-old age group. Around 228,000 Britons perished, and worldwide, it killed at least 50 million – ten times as many as had died in the war. Read the rest of this entry »

Randwick City Council’s Draft Management Plan 2009-13 is on exhibition and comments close June 2 (June 1 is the next Precinct Committee).

The relevant link 

The following are key issues affecting the Precinct which I have pulled out (may have missed something so please share anything you think relevant):Draft Budget

1. Coastal Walkway: $200,000 for survey concept and consultation with Golf Courses. Cromwell Park to La Perouse and finalisation of the Lurline Bay Concept.

There is a total of $4,283,825 allocated to the Coastal Walk (including part of the expenditure for the La Perouse Loop) to be spent 2009-2014.

2. Upgrade La Perouse Loop to accommodate coastal walk extension $1,300,000 (this includes $600,000 from enviro levy)

3. Roads to be upgraded: Goolagong Place (No 25-11)- Adina to end; Goonda Avenue (Cnr to No 20 - Elaroo Ave to End; Tasman Street; Murrong Place; Mirrabooka Crescent;

4. Cycleways (throughout municipality) $150,000 to be spent in accordance with Council’s Cycle Plan (Malabar to La Perouse has been identified for implementation in coming financial year). Allocation 2009-2014 $1,182,080 (walking facilities - $172,647 2009-14 )

5. Drainage augmentation $19,000 for Outlet Scour Protection works in La Perouse and Clovelly.

6. Remediation: $2,395,000 Chifley Women’s Althletic Field Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Botany Bay Cable Project Newsletter - distributed Friday 13th March - makes reference to a ‘prosposed amendment to works in Botany Bay’. In light of the amendment the Minister responsible for the EPBC Act, Peter Garrett, was contacted. This is the email sent and here is the reply.

Energy Australia, after what looks like considerable consultation with Sydney Ports, intend to include dredging as part of this project, with the spoil being diverted to the Port Botany Expansion reclamation site. The details of the amendment are at http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=3041

It has been the classic approach to major development approvals. Bombard the community with paperwork, minimise the outrage by proposing a less invasive method and then after it is approved and the community has stopped paying attention go for the change to a more invasive option and submit the application during the holiday season. In this case it was the 21st January.

The project (without dredging) was referred, under the EPBC Act, to Peter Garrett’s department and in December 2007 Read the rest of this entry »