Permaculture Out West

Posts Tagged ‘Maidstone’

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.

Last Sunday, Costa’s Garden Odyssey came to Maidstone Community Garden. POW members plus other community members helped Costa clean up the community garden. A lot of hard work was done by all, and the result was truly inspiring. At the end of the day, a mural painted by all who participated was hung in the garden as the finishing touch. The program will go to air early next year in February.

Mural hanging at Maidstone Community Garden

Some very happy people in front of the mural

Members of POW are in the process of creating a submission to Maribyrnong Council for a Market garden in Maidstone. It’s the site at the now disused Maidstone Tennis Club on the corner of Norfolk and Thomson Street. According to the local newspapers, some councillors are in favour of housing development at the site. In the same article, it suggests that the Council may look favourably at submissions from a community group. Stay tuned for further developments.