Permaculture Out West

Posts Tagged ‘Maidstone’

We have finally received official notification that Council will be voting on what to do with the Maidstone Community Hall this Tuesday 20th July.  The meeting is open to the public and it would be good to have  strong showing of POW supporters. It starts at 7pm. The Agenda for the meeting, including the Officer’s Report and Recommendation for the site will be available at www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au from Friday 16th July. Please click on a link below to see the official letter from Council. Thank you.

letter re council meeting 20 july 2010

Below is the text of an email that Colleen Hartland MLC sent to Mayor Sanli and Councillor Carter in support of a community garden on the Maidstone Public Hall site.

Dear Mayor Sanli,

Re: Support for establishment of a community garden at the Maidstone Hall site.

I am writing to you to express my strong support for retaining the Maidstone Hall site in the hands of the community, and to support the proposal for a community garden and demonstration sustainability centre.

Community gardens bring great benefit to individuals, communities and neighbourhoods. They provide much needed open space ? an asset becoming increasingly important with a growing population and density. Community gardens also have positive health and social wellbeing outcomes through providing fresh produce, but also a source of physical activity, a site for social and community activities, and provides many educational opportunities. Health and social wellbeing outcomes are of great priority with many health concerns and social exclusion evident in our communities. The best part of community gardens is that they are open to participation for the whole of the community.

There are many examples across Victoria, Australia and the world demonstrating successful community garden projects undertaken in partnership with local councils, and the many benefits that have resulted. These include at Ringwood, St Kilda, CERES on the Merri Creek and many more.

I encourage you to support the proposal for a community garden and demonstration sustainability centre for the Maidstone Hall site.

Yours Sincerely

Colleen Hartland

St Kilda Community gardens

It’s been a busy few months for all of us at POW, but we’ve finally got around to planning a thank you social event for all of you who helped us keep Maidstone Public Hall in community hands. We’ve also just been asked by council to have some input in to how they might best use the site in future, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to hear from the locals. As things stand, Council has not decided what to do with the land. Our submission still stands, but if you have any other ideas for the site or if you’d just like to express what’s most important for you, then come along and have a chat. We’d love to see you.
When: Wed 26th May, 6pm
Where: Maidstone Community Centre, 21 Yardley St Maidstone
What: Dinner and drinks – please bring a plate and whatever you wish to drink

Please RSVP to info@pow.org.au

Watch Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS 1 at 7.30pm 22nd April.

Costa explores Melbourne’s Kevin Heinze Garden Centre where people with disabilities get their hands in the dirt, do something physical and experience the sensory delights of the space.   It’s a space where people can see, hear, touch, smell and taste a variety of plants and flowers.  The Maidstone Community Centre also wishes to create this type of garden for their members and Costa, with the help of POW, transforms their overgrown backyard into a sensory haven where people can interact and connect with nature.  It’s a philosophy that the Abbott of the Quang Mihn Buddhist Temple endorses – we need to create harmony and balance between the environment and our use of it which is why the Temple has installed a commercial worm farm to recycle the Temple’s waste.

Costa’s garden odyssey

Kids in the Kitchen – primary and secondary school age children

Young people can learn how to make a healthy lunch that they can eat and enjoy between 12noon – 1pm at Maidstone Community Centre. All ingredients are provided and there will be people there to help. Stay on afterwards and join in the many activities available at Maidstone Community Centre.
LOCATION: Maidstone Community Centre, 21 Yardley Street, Maidstone 3012
CONTACT NAME: Wendy Vine  PHONE: 9317 0747
EMAIL: wendy.vine@maribyrnong.vic.gov.au
WEB: http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/Calendar

This coming Tuesday, Council will decide on our proposal to save from sale the old Maidstone community hall site in Thompson St. Please come and show your support. Tuesday 16th March, 7pm Council chamber, corner Hyde and Napier Sts. There will be opportunity to ask councillors questions at the beginning of the meeting, so please be on time and bring a pertinent question.

The agenda for the meeting, including the officer’s recommendation to council can be viewed from Friday 12th March at www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au. Councillor’s email addresses can also be found on the Council website. They’d love to hear your thoughts on the officer’s report when it is published.

Details of our submission can be found here.

On March 21st, there is a big community Harmony Feast at Maidstone Community Centre to celebrate Harmony Day and Multicultural Week.  Heaps of free food and entertainment.  Permaculture Out West will be running a drinks stall and providing info on who we are and what we do. The drinks are: Iced soy chai, Morroccan Mint, Local Lemonade and Lemon verbena / lemon balm tea, with many of the ingredients being sourced from the garden on the site.

Scott will be doing the prep on the Saturday, so people are needed to run the stall (pouring chilled drinks) from 12 PM until 3PM, plus a bit of set-up and pack-up either side of that. Scott will be running the woodfired oven as well as overseeing the food safety issues.  Could people please email Scott their availability during this time and can be scheduled in. Ideally we should have 2-3 people at a time on for about an hour each over the three hour program, giving plenty of time to enjoy the other activities on the day.

The Mayor of the City of Maribyrnong, Cr Sel Sanli, invites you to a food security forum

Date: Wednesday 3 March, 2010

Time: 11.30am – 2pm

Venue: Maidstone Community Centre, 21 Yardley

Street Maidstone (Mel Ref: 41, F1)

Maribyrnong City Council and VicHealth, as part of the ‘Maribyrnong Fruit & Veg for All’ program, will present an exciting forum food security issues. The forum will include practical information from three interesting and informative speakers and a delicious lunch from the woodfired oven.

This forum is designed for agencies and community groups that work with people who are prone to food insecurity. You will leave the forum with some new perspectives on how food security issues can be tackled. Speakers will discuss tried and tested methods of increasing food security in the community with long term solutions, provision of skills and access to resources.

Our speakers include:

Pablo Ermini: Visiting from Argentina where he works in a national program that addresses food security, funded by the Ministry of Social Development and INTA. He will describe how this program encourages people to grow their own food, provides site assessments, training, free packets of seeds and free chickens to raise for meat and eggs.

Neesh Wray: Local activist and the driving force behind many food based initiatives in the West, Neesh will discuss how food co-ops can be set up and the social and financial benefits to those involved.

Scott Hitchins: With many years of experience in community gardening and running community projects, Scott will speak about the success of the Planting Seeds Program. The successful program has led to the development of a fledgling ‘Community Nurseries’ project that hopes to provide support to potential home gardeners, and ‘Friends of…’ groups by tapping into the support of local gardening enthusiasts.

RSVP: To Jane Torney by Friday 26 February 2010 on 9688 0182 or jane.torney@maribyrnong.vic.gov.au

Dear Councillors

Request

I am writing to you to seek your support to decide to retain Maidstone Hall as Community Use at Maribyrnong City Council Meeting of Council in March 2010.

Personal Background

I write to you as a person who was born in Summerhill Road West Footscray in 1950, lived in Hex Street Tottenham from 1954 to 1969, returned to West Footscray 1978 to 1981, returned to Yarraville in 2004 and returned again to Footscray in 2009. I was a member of West Footscray YMCA from 1962 to 1969. I established Lonesome Road Folk Club in Ballarat Road Maidstone with teenage friends in 1967 ~ the sign still remains today.

My father’s family were very involved with community from the time they arrived in 1882, to take up quarry men positions in Summerhill Road, where they later established a poultry farm and engineering fabrication workshop. Our family worked along side many others in the West Footscray and Maidstone neighbourhoods to raise funds and to contribute labour & materials to establish community facilities and services. My Great Uncle Earnie is named on one of the Commemorative Light poles at the entrance to the “Footscray Town Hall” ~ where you are meeting tonight once again!

I am imbued with a family tradition of “neighbours that play together, enjoy life and get through the hard times together!”

The street that I was born in, Summerhill Road West Footscray, was in 1950 to 1970, a neighbourhood of proud generational Australians, mostly from the British Isles, but our own family included Uncle Jacky Poppy, of French descent. The street I moved to once my father & mother built our house, Hex Street Tottenham, has 58 houses, which in 1954 had people from 32 language groups, and English was the minority. Dad, at first called most of them wogs, but soon they were our family friends and neighbours.

My wife, Dr Srebrenka Kunek, and I returned to Footscray in April 2009, to provide services as Creative Director to the Living Museum of the West. We are passionate about community and its capacity for social enterprise and support during times of radical change, hardship and opportunity.

Argument for retaining Maidstone Hall as Community Use

1. Community facilities such as Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts are more than Municipal Assets for Use or Sale. The very existence of them is testament to community efforts to nurture and sustain a better life for all, regardless of wealth and education.

2. Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts dilapidated state reflect an absence of community custodians, due in part to an ageing neighbourhood and poor stewardship by Council. These transitional failures are no reason to forsake community at a time when gentrification is producing new energies that can be leveraged by community and Council together in a partnership for sustainability.

3. The environmental imperative for innovation to nurture sustainable neighbourhoods ~ food, gardens & lifestyle, is supported by the availability of Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts.

4. The Permaculture Out West submission to project manage the site for five years provides a robust community organisation to replace the lost community auspice, and to enable Council to manage community engagement seamlessly.

5. The business model presented by POW is one which enables community to leverage resident, recreation & sporting, corporate and government resources to sustain the project and the community asset.

My question

With the above argument in mind, why would Council decide to sell the Maidstone Hall & Tennis Court site for an MCC Officer forecast sum of $2,000,000?

Final assertion

Councillors have an opportunity to provide the citizens of Maribyrnong, particularly Maidstone, with the leadership to meet the challenges of sustainable healthy living by demonstrating the opportunities for food security, bio-diversity and healthy living at the neighbourhood level.

I urge Councillors to vote unanimously to support the POW application for custodianship & social enterprise of Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts site.

Yours sincerely

John Shone

Footscray Victoria 3011.

Tuesday 16th February at 7pm: Maribyrnong City Council will vote on POW’s submission to stop the sale of the old Maidstone Community Hall and to turn it into an urban market garden. We received a very positive response from Councillors Clarke and Carter when we spoke before them last year and a strong presence at this meeting could be enough to persuade Council to vote in our favour. Please come and show your support.

We are having a meeting this coming Thursday 28th January at 7:30pm to discuss what else can be done to persuade Council and what to do if Council votes against our proposal. Members and non-members of POW are welcome and encouraged to attend, especially local Maidstone residents. Venue: 28 Fontein St, West Footscray. We hope to see lots of you there!

To read our proposal. Click here.