LAPEROUSE

To download the full Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan click here (8.4MB).

For the Synopsis of the plan click here (2.2MB)
“With our natural advantage Australia can and should be positioning itself as a global renewable super power for future prosperity. This report will help shift the climate debate to focus on energy; security; affordability; export and of course opportunity. Beyond Zero Emissions offers a new and invigorating message that is much needed” Professor Robin Batterham, President, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, formerly Chief Scientist of Australia

“For decades, those opposing the transition to clean energy have claimed that it is not technically feasible. This report puts that argument convincingly to bed. There is no longer an excuse for inaction. Starting the transition now is our responsibility to future generations.”Professor Ian Lowe,President of the Australian Conservation Foundation,Emeritus Professor Griffith University

“The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan is a provocative and timely contribution to the climate change debate, and it deserves attention both here and abroad. The Plan demolishes a pile of conventional wisdom that Australian policymakers still seem unable to get past. The sorry history of Australian climate policy procrastination is littered with polluter-friendly analyses conducted by economic hired guns. Read the rest of this entry »

We are currently celebrating the Macquarie Bicentennary with major exhibitions, eg. State Library (see link)  So why wasn’t this work on the Macquarie Tower done before the Bicentennary celebrations?    Why is there no information displayed for visitors?   Why is there no marketing to attract visitors?   Another case of Fawlty Towers.

Article about the Tower from Sydney Morning Herald 15 November1930, page 11.

The Macquarie Watchtower is the earliest known surviving, sandstone tower building in Australia. The Macquarie Watchtower has long been recognised as a picturesque landmark on the headland, which is much photographed.

The Macquarie Watchtower is the oldest surviving watchtower in Australia, the oldest building in Botany Bay and the only known tower specifically constructed for colonial border protection and the prevention of smuggling. It became the first Customs outstation in Australia in 1829 and operated as a Customs Station until 1903. It is also a rare surviving symbol of the vexatious issue of customs barriers between the colonies, which was one of the main factors underlying the push for Federation.

Exhibition: 15 July 2010-16 January 2011
Open 10am–4pm Thursday to Sunday
Laperouse Museum - End of Anzac Parade, La Perouse, Sydney  For further information

(painting of L’Astrolabe and La Boussole by Robert Carter)

    At the Exhibition opening on July 13: L-R Delivering Speech- Alistair Henchman, Director Sydney, National Parks & Wildlife Service; Tom Peters, William Peters,  Joshua Jones with Bob Carr and Vic Simms.

There have been three sightings of humpback whales off Frenchman’s beach over the past week.  Good places in the Bay for watching are Frenchman’s Bay, Bare Island, and the Sydney Ports Visitor’s Lookout at the end of Prince of Wales Drive (Molineux Point).  BW photo taken 1965 at Bare Island.

Ports Australia, the peak body representing Australia’s Ports operators have complained about environmental scrutiny and paying for environmental management and mitigation.  Submission to the Draft National Ports Strategy. 

The current Chairman of Ports Australia  is Jeff Coleman (Brisbane) and Deputy Chairs are Gary Webb (Newcastle) and Vincent Tremaine (Flinders). The other Board members are Stephen Bradford (Melbourne), Andre Bush (Port Hedland), Brad Fish (NQBP), Grant Gilfillan (Sydney), Robert Ritchie (Darwin) and Paul Weedon (TasPorts - up until 2010 Chief Operating Officer at Sydney Ports).

Ports flounder in red tape, Annabel Hepworth, The Australian, June 28, 2010

Container ships at Port Botany in Sydney. Picture: Stephen Cooper Source: The Australian

THE country’s ports are demanding the federal and state governments fast-track approvals for channel dredging. Read the rest of this entry »

Environmentally Speaking Winter 2010 Issue 24

Contents: Peter Garrett’s Kingsford Smith - the Forgotten Bay and its Forgotten People; Booralee - Sydney’s First Fishing Village in Botany where Fishing is now Banned; The Greatest Moral Challenge of Our Time; Death by Flying Fox; End of An Era - Cann Snake Show; Whale at Bare Island 1965; The Truck Numbers Don’t Add Up.

Up to 45 road deaths could be avoided every year if just 15 per cent of ‘contestable’ road freight was transferred to rail. This was revealed recently in an article published on the latest issue of the Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety.

“A simple shift to rail of the 15 per cent of road freight said to be transferable (or contestable) could save up to 45 lives annually (calculated on the basis of roughly three deaths for every 1 per cent of freight hauled).”

The article, written by independent transport and road safety researcher Peter MacKenzie, also suggests that by shifting the same amount of freight from road to rail, 275 people or more could be saved from paraplegia, quadriplegia, brain damage and other long-term serious disabilities. In economic terms, it is estimated that the potential saving to the nation would be more than 1 billion dollars.

Bryan Nye, chief executive of the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) said: “I want to be very clear in that this is not a competition with the trucking industry, we are simply advocating for the optimisation Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty-two students and their teacher from the Lycée Condorcet  (French School)  in Maroubra celebrated the end of the school term with a visit to La Perouse. The Laperouse story, in the Museum,  has been compressed into less than a quarter of the space that it occupied when the collection was gifted to Australia by the French Government in 1988.  Major items like the Receveur Tree Stump are no longer in the Museum but have been returned to France.  John Winch’s tapestry (seen in background during visit of school from Villers-Bretonneux )  which marked the entry to the Museum has been moved upstairs to a room now available for hire for ‘conferences’.  Stencilling, sympathetic to the architectural period of the Museum and to the Laperouse story (such as in this photograph ) has now been painted over.

The students today were very interested in the remaining items and replicas from the wreck of l’Astrolabe.  The Wrecks Room, seen in this photograph , has been dismantled and some of the items from the room are now located in the two rooms which contain remnants of the original exhibition. The students lay on the floor of the former Wrecks Room so they could look at the specially commissioned mural (link to artist)  and imagine the last glimpses experienced by officers, scientists and crew of l’Astrolabe.

Students at the Laperouse Monument.  The monument was commissioned by Hyacinthe de Bougainville on his visit to Sydney in 1825 (the new storyboard in the Museum records this as 1824, the year of Louis Duperry’s visit)

Link to further information of the Wrecks Room

Photo taken May 28 at the opening of the Lowy Cancer Research Centre includes Frank Lowy, Premier Keneally, Prime Minister Rudd, UNSW Vice- Chancellor Hilmer.  

The bulk of the funds for construction of the Lowy Cancer Research Centre came from the sale of land in Little Bay.  The 11.42 ha Little Bay site, orginally part of the Prince Henry Hospital estate,  was gifted to the University for the building of a medical school.  The University never built its school but did operate animal research labs.  Playing fields were located on the site and the first building to generate green power in NSW - Solarch - was built there. In early 2007 the local community was advised at a precinct meeting that the site was to be redeveloped into 150 town houses.  In the same week Solarch was burnt down.  In January 2008 UNSW sold the site, with the ‘townhouse’ approval, to developer Charter Hall.  Charter Hall resubmitted a development plan for a project which can achieve 4 times the density and despite  opposition from Randwick City Council was supported in the Land and Environment Court.  Link to previous story

The Lowy Cancer Research Centre was built at a cost of $127 million - $10 million from the Lowy Foundation, $13 million from the Federal Government, $18million from the State Government and $86 million from UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Research Institute (the Institute has contributed $26 million to UNSW research since 2004). 

The University also sold out its lease at the Prince Henry site even though the previous local member, Bob Carr, assured the community that the University would remain.