building resilient community
Dear readers
Transition Yarra is looking for ideas and content for building and supporting our local economy.
Please make contact if you’d like your small business to be included. There are so many incredibly industrious people out there doing amazing things.
k
Met Cam by chance yesterday and we chatted about the fantastic results from the community planter boxes of Greeves St. Also heard about an annual street party coming up soon. The many hidden joys of community food boxes:) 
How important are Melbourne’s city-fringe farms? Very.
One of the best things about Melbourne is its food, but as the city grows, it is gobbling up our best farmland and replacing it with houses. Without us even realizing it, Melbourne is losing its source of fresh, local food.
The Know Your Foodbowl project has launched its findings, and now we’re getting the word out about how important this area is. Around 40-50% of the vegetables produced in Victoria grow on Melbourne’s fringe in areas like Casey-Cardinia, Werribee South and the Mornington Peninsula. Melbourne’s fringe also produces a large proportion of some types of fruits too – 99% of Victoria’s strawberries grow on Melbourne’s fringe.
These areas are vital to the supply of certain types of fruit and vegetables, like Werribee South, which produces 85% of Victoria’s cauliflower and Koo Wee Rup, which produces over 90% of Australia’s asparagus.
These areas are under threat from continued city sprawl. The Know Your Foodbowl project aims to raise awareness of the importance of Melbourne’s Foodbowl to Victoria’s food supply and our economy.
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3e5e58acdfe8891f3b89f5cf1&id=fcf90b126e
Collingwood Children’s Farm: where locals have been farming for 40,000 years
Celebrating Farming is a week of family friendly community events being held at the Collingwood Children’s Farm from 23 – 29 November 2013, on the 175th anniversary of the first land sales in the district. The week will acknowledge that these land sales represented the final dispossession of the Wurundjeri traditional owners and put an end to their millennia-old farming practices. Through this acknowledgement, we will be celebrating the 40,000 year-history of farming on the Abbotsford Precinct Heritage Farmlands (APHF).
Nestled on a bend of the Yarra River less than 4km from the centre of Melbourne, the Collingwood Children’s Farm is a charitable Not-For-Profit organisation set on seven hectares of heritage farmland, gardens, orchards, rustic buildings and shady trees. During Celebrating Farming, different aspects of the Farm’s history and community connections will be highlighted and celebrated.
This will be a spectacular and unique community event, offering a shared opportunity to celebrate and learn more about the Farm, past and present. ‘The Farm believes in the community-building power of creating celebrations around nature and community. Doing things together creates community, a sense of achievement and pride,’ states Alex Walker, Farm Manager.
You are invited to participate in the Celebrating Farming festivities!
The Celebrating Farming Week of Events
In the last week of November we invite you to reflect on our past, enjoy the present and visualise the future of farming at the APHF, known as the Collingwood Children’s Farm. The Farm is a place where locals have been farming for 40,000 years, ‘In fact, we now know that this publicly owned Crown land has always been farmland and that is something we can all value and enjoy,’ says Alex Walker, Farm Manager.
The opening celebration 10 am, Saturday 23 November is to be launched by Mrs Elizabeth Chernov, the Farm’s Patron, and a special Family Day will be held on Sunday 24 November—both days, will have plenty of interesting and entertaining activities for children. At the Launch, we will acknowledge and highlight Indigenous farming and custodianship of this land with an Indigenous Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country by local Wurundjeri elders and community musical performances will entertain visitors.
‘We have lots of support and involvement from our local community, but I think some people are not aware of how extensive our commitment is to working with people in need. We are a charitable organisation and therefore it is a clear mandate for us, something we work towards every day. We want this to come across throughout the celebration week,’ says Walker.
Our monthly Family Day will be held on 24 November (instead of 1 December) and will be a day jam-packed with pony and tractor rides, cow milking, performances, farm demonstrations, animal feeding, displays, and roving children’s performers, face painting, story-telling and more for the kids. The Spinners and Weavers Guild will conduct an exhilarating ‘Back to Beanie’ competition as they challenge each other to produce a wearable beanie from wool sheared off the sheeps’ backs that morning, including spinning the wool and then knitting the beanie. Singers and musicians from Community Music Victoria including the ‘Homebrew’ Men’s Choir will be bringing the Farm alive with traditional farm songs amongst the various heritage buildings and grounds.
Throughout the week playgroups, primary and secondary education programs will facilitate children’s connections with various aspects of the Farm’s history and community. A range of activities reflecting our many community connections will be highlighted by themed days, such as looking at Indigenous issues, reflecting on our shared history with Abbotsford Convent, looking to traditional food preparation championed by groups such as the Country Women’s Association (CWA) and holding a community planting day.
From 6pm on Tuesday 26 November author Bill Gammage will discuss his Prime Minister’s Literary Award-winning book ‘The Greatest Estate on Earth’, an exploration of traditional Indigenous agricultural and land management practices prior to 1788. ‘We are honoured to host Bill Gammage’s talk about Indigenous farming, this is an area most Australians are not very familiar with’ says Alex Walker.
On Wednesday 27 November we will be launching an exciting new interactive Children’s Garden Trail project. On this day we will demonstrate the power of nature-based learning for all people, especially the very young.
Then on Friday after a community planting day known as ‘Feeding the Future’, we will close our celebrations with a bang as we look forward irreverently with our twilight closing event ‘Future Farming’, a comedy hypothetical hosted by a great Farm supporter and climate change ingénue the inimitable Rod Quantock. Justine Sless whose show Tomatoes and Other Stakeholders sold out at the recent Melbourne Comedy Festival and Roy Maloy, ‘Australia’s Circus King’ and hero of the Australian Agricultural Show circuit, will display some of his ‘unblended impressionism’ paintings and be among the panellists dissecting what farming will look like into the future. ‘It should be a bit of fun, sitting outside at the end of a summer’s day, enjoying our wonderful environment here at the Farm. We think people will really enjoy that. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do here,’ remarked Alex Walker.
Making appearances during the festivities will be Children’s Book Author and Illustrator Roland Harvey who will be working on a free-hand illustrated aerial map of the precinct’s Farmlands.
So, come along and be part of the story! There will be music and fun for everyone on every paddock and in every barn and stable!
Event Name:
Celebrating Farming at Collingwood Children’s Farm
Location:
Collingwood Children’s Farm , St Heliers St, Abbotsford, Melways Ref 44/G5
Dates/Times:
Saturday 23 November, 10am – 2pm – LAUNCH
Sunday 24 November, 10am – 5pm – FAMILY DAY
Monday 25 – Friday 29 November, 10am – 4pm –THEMED SCHOOL & CORPORATE PROGRAMS *
Tuesday 26 November, 6 – 8pm – BILL GAMMAGE ‘THE BIGGEST ESTATE ON EARTH’ BOOK TALK (free event)**
Wednesday 27 November (time TBC) – CHILDREN’S GARDEN LAUNCH
Friday 29 November, 6 – 9pm –‘FUTURE FARMING’: A TWILIGHT COMEDY NIGHT ($10)**
Daily Entry Fees:
$16 family $8 adult $4 child
$20 Closing Event Concession rates available.
*School and Corporate Bookings should contact Farm Reception for costings.
**Seats Limited – Reserve your tickets through TryBooking.com or via the Farm.org.au website.
Media & Broadcast opportunities
Promotional Photo, TV or Radio broadcast opportunities can be arranged. The week will provide a vast number of excellent media opportunities.
Further Information Contact:
Carla Bruce-Lee, Celebrating Farming Coordinator
–OR–
Alex Walker, Farm Manager
phone: 94175806 fax: 94175806
email: celebratingfarming@gmail.com OR enquiry@farm.org.au
website: farm.org.au
facebook: /collingwoodchildrensfarm
The financial case for the east-west link hinges on a prediction that toll road use will jump over the next 30 years because of rising wealth and shrinking petrol and CBD parking price rises.
A cabinet-in-confidence document, obtained by Fairfax Media, for the first time details key assumptions used to justify the $6 billion to $8 billion project, which the state government claims will produce a return of $1.40 for every $1 invested.
A discussion paper produced by VicRoads, the Linking Melbourne Authority, the Transport Department and Public Transport Victoria, reveals the government was able to boost its predictions for the road by as much as 15 per cent using a controversial assumption that time will be more valuable to future motorists because of rising wealth.
Behind the plan to justify the east-west link.
The report, used to prepare the highly secretive business case for the road, says the methodology ”has not been used in any of [the Transport Department’s] other public transport projects or program modelling to date”.
Despite this, it says there is ”evidence to suggest that as the community’s wealth increases more people are prepared to pay tolls as they value their time more highly”. As a result, the business case assumes car drivers will be 1.4 per cent more willing every year to use toll roads over non-toll roads, while drivers of commercial vehicles will be 1.8 per cent more willing to pay tolls.
The document reveals that this assumption alone meant predicted traffic volumes were 15 per cent higher by 2031 than they otherwise would have been had the methodology not been used. ”This is … inconsistent with initial modelling for the Eastern Freeway undertaken for the Doncaster Rail Feasibility Study,” it says.
While the cost of inner-city parking is currently rising by about 4 per cent a year in real terms (above inflation), the business case assumes the annual rate of increase will fall by more than half to 1.6 per cent by 2041.
It also predicts growth in the cost of operating a car – mostly petrol prices, but also maintenance, insurance and registration – will slow from an annual rate of 2 per cent to 0.5 per cent by 2041.
A source said there had been internal concern that the government had been prepared to use ”garbage” assumptions to make the project appear to stack up, accusing it of manipulating modelling to produce a favourable result.
But another source familiar with the modelling work said the assumptions were standard.
While previous projects have relied on the ”in-house” Victorian Integrated Transport Model to assess major projects, the government outsourced the east-west link process to Brisbane-based company Veitch Lister, making scrutiny difficult.
Opposition planning spokesman Brian Tee accused the government of ”playing the public for suckers” by deliberately using spurious assumptions to justify the link.
”It is a fraud on the Victorian people, and the real price is the schools, hospitals and roads which could have been built if the government wasn’t so hellbent on delivering this dog of a project,” he said.
A government spokeswoman said the Comprehensive Impact Statement, due to be released in November, would include further, detailed traffic modelling information.
A government source described the earlier document, from mid last year, as out of date, saying it should not be relied upon.
The government has so far refused to release the full business case for the project, releasing instead a ”short form” version asserting the project will generate a return of $1.40 for every $1 investment. Earlier studies have found the link, connecting the Eastern Freeway to the Tullamarine Freeway, would be unlikely to be viable, generating just 50¢ for every $1 invested.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/secret-case-for-link-revealed-20131001-2ur5r.html#ixzz2hpPSa8Js
We are launching in to the 4th year of The Fitzroy Market with a bang! Some great new stall holders – smoothies, tea sets, second hand books, kids toys, plants, vintage clothes and some of our favourites – gourmet icy poles, kimono dolls and well, our very popular sausage in bread! See y’all there this Saturday 19th January at Fitzroy Primary 10am-3pm.
Saturday January 5 2013. Nature strip cr Queens Parade & Grant St. North Fitzroy. A taste tour & home grown edibles exchange. Meet Glenda Lindsay there.
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