Catching Up with the Community

It’s been five months since the last Chronicle, the largest hiatus in the 29-year record of almost monthly production by this editor, and quite a bit has happened during the break. 

 Annual General Meetings were held by both Coal Point Progress Association (CPPA) and Toronto Area Sustainable Neighbourhood Group (TASNG), returning largely unchanged committees to continue undertaking community projects within the greater Toronto area. 

The Progress Hall kitchen renovation has been moving ahead at a pace dictated by availability and capacity of trades. The kitchen has arrived and is awaiting installation until the walls get gyprocked and painted and the uneven floor levelled and resurfaced.

I am once again thankful for the support and trust the CPPA Committee has shown in endorsing my long-term residency in presidency of the CPPA. I’ve been very fortunate indeed to have found a community cause that allows me to fulfil my “Why’, acting locally while thinking globally, being a part of a group which is endeavouring to protect what’s left of our beautiful and biodiverse bushland, and attempting to prevent the local extinction of threatened and familiar species, whilst supporting the community in their capacity to care for the bush and each other, by living smart and sustainably. 

Thirty years ago, climate change was ‘global warming’ and the impacts were unknown. Now we live with extreme weather events that are both visible and visceral. We are now also having to address another equally challenging existential threat, the loss of biodiversity. I believe that the CPPA, alongside TASNG, can support the community to navigate the changes needed so that our community and the local biodiversity can survive and thrive into the future.

If you’re new to the area, a big welcome, and if you’re wondering what this yellow paper in your letterbox is, a visit to the website will provide some historical context. There’s a little bit of recent CPPA and TASNG history over the page to save the searching. 

Congratulation to our newly elected councillors.

CPPA AGM outcomes

The CPPA AGM was held on 30/6/24 and the Committee was returned with the exception of Tony Dynon who retired from the CPPA committee.

It is with heartfelt thanks that Tony’s contribution is acknowledged and his support for the community through the CPPA recognised.

Tony has been an amazing contributor to the CPPA for 24 years. He was Treasurer 2001-2005, and 2009, Vice President 2006-2008, and an active committee member since 2011, taking on the newsletter coordination from 2018-2022.

Tony has a voice of calm reason with a problem-solving mind, a willingness to be where he was needed and do what he could do, and always supportive of community projects.

The CPPA thanks Tony for being at the meetings, the working bees, the art shows, the trash n treasures, all the social events and for keeping the books balanced, the newsletters delivered and the fire safety checks delivered on time.

Petition- pedestrian

Local resident Matt Hutchinson has started a petition “Implement Footpaths in Coal Point, Carey Bay, and Kilaben Bay for Safer Commuting”

The request is simple - we need footpaths. They are not just a convenience but a necessity for safety, accessibility and promoting a healthy lifestyle within our community.

https://www.change.org/p/implement-footpaths-in-coal-point-carey-bay-and-kilaben-bay-for-safer-commuting

Walkers – ½ to ¾ Hr a month

Do you like to walk around the neighbourhood? Got a pet pooch that likes to take you for a walk?

Do you have 30-45 minutes once a month or so to help letterbox ‘The yellow Chronicle’ locally?

The CPPA needs a few community-minded people to assist in distributing our wholly & solely locally produced, non-chatGPT written Chronicle.

A few of our very regular, long-time walkers have retired, we need a few extra walkers to help share the load from those that do multiple routes, and we need some standbys when folks go on holidays.

If you have the capacity and inclination Nico would enjoy talking with you about which areas need assistance. Nico cppavicepresident@gmail.com, 0418 967 158

How dense can we be?

On exhibition at present is Council’s Planning Proposal for Housing Diversity and it’s well worth a look and even a comment or two. There is no denying that the housing crisis is real. The majority of housing stock in Lake Mac is detached dwellings (84%), and there is a need for more varied and affordable housing types.

Council’s Housing Diversity Planning Proposal states “The basis of the existing policy is to prevent higher intensity infill in the R2 zone and restrict lower intensity infill in the R3 zone, however given the subtle difference between the residential development types, this approach is unnecessarily restrictive. The intensity and character of development can be managed through other controls including maximum building heights, zone objectives and development controls.”

Unfortunately, Council’s track record of utilising “building heights, zone objectives and development controls” to manage the character of a development has often been exceedingly poor and therefore taken an extraordinary amount of community vigilance to ensure that community character is retained, often with outcomes that only exhausted the community members involved. It’s a tough cause when pitted against cashed up developers and professionals. Even when proposing their multi-storey complex on Bath Street at Toronto’s foreshore Council ignored their own planning instruments.

On exhibition until October 14, you can read the whole proposal and make a submission at https://shape.lakemac.com.au/housing-diversity

In the table above, extracted from the Housing Diversity Planning Proposal, the R2 zone, which is the majority of low density residential zoning in our community, is proposed to also be able to accommodate, multi-dwelling housing, residential flat buildings, dual occupancy and semi-detached dwellings. as is the case in the R3, medium density zoned areas.

Progress Patter

Some recent CPPA history

The CPPA was founded in 1946 to serve the interests of the community and ensure equitable distribution of rate resources. This forward-thinking group banded together to raise funds to purchase the land for our locally designed and owned Progress Hall, which was built in 1951, as a space for locals to gather. This space has serviced the changing needs of the community as needs ebbed and flowed. 

Over the past decade, grant funding has enabled the CPPA to install solar panels, underfloor insulation and air conditioning, making it very comfortable all year round and highly energy efficient. The renovated kitchen space, once completed, will allow us to explore and expand the uses of the hall, the rental of which is one of the income streams that supports the hall’s ongoing maintenance. If you’d like to contribute to the ongoing ambitions and costs for maintaining our hall you can donate here http://www.givenow.com.au/cppa.

In 1995 the CPPA almost folded due to an ageing committee and burdensome hall maintenance requirements and costs. It was at that AGM that the current President, Suzanne Pritchard, was elected. One of the early actions was to form a landcare group. There were only a few other such groups in the city. The CPPA Landcare group adopted a model that supported caring for multiple reserves under one incorporated entity, the first steps in caring for, understanding, and appreciating our bushland backyard. Multiple grants have since been obtained to support the local landcarers and with the additional support of Lake Mac Landcare, our local group continues to be an exemplary one, meeting every Thursday in a reserve near you. Contact Ros, cppalandcare@gmail.com if you’d like to be put on the list that advises when and where landcaring will be happening.

The CPPA also endeavours to be across council activities that impact our community. By sharing the local Development Applications, interpreting the neighbourhood reverberations of council plans and strategies, and encouraging community submissions, the CPPA and TASNG have been endeavouring to retain our community character whilst stimulating conversations around community conscious design in developments. Ongoing dialogue over the decades with a litany of council officers, highlighting the need for council to supply adequate infrastructure to accommodate the existing residents and the proposed increasing density, will continue to be ongoing. 

The CPPA also advocates for the community when a combined voice is needed. The main vehicle being the yellow Chronicle and accompanying web presence and Facebook page. The production and distribution of this newsletter into 2370 local letterboxes is a wholly volunteer exercise requiring 25+ people. Sponsorship of The Chronicle is another significant income stream for the CPPA which supports both Landcare activities and when required … surprise, surprise… the Hall’s upkeep. If you would like to assist in delivering the newsletter, get in touch with Nico at cppavicepresident@gmail.com.

Blink and you’ll miss it- Biodiversity on the brink

Biodiversity month just finished…did you notice? Held in September each year to focus on the variety of all living things it was a blink in the calendar of life. You can make the memory last though. The CPPA has started an iNaturalist project, https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/coal-point-landcare to collect and share images of the wonderful wildlife that surrounds us. Inaturalist is easy to use. You can download the app and when you see something you know or don’t know, take a picture and the team of specialist behind the scenes will assist in identifying your discovery. 

We can’t protect what we can’t see, love it or lose it. Recently the Department of Environment and Heritage produced the NSW Biodiversity Outlook Report 2024.

There were several key findings in the report:

• only 50% of threatened species are expected to survive the next 100 years
• only 29% of the capacity of habitat to support native species remains
• past habitat loss and future climate change will significantly reduce the capacity of landscapes to retain biodiversity over the next 50 years
• for the first time, land permanently secured for conservation has exceeded 10% of the state, increasing from 8.6% in 2007 to 11.2% in 2023.

It’s no secret the CPPA’s focus over the past few decades has been on protecting and preserving the local environment. Long-term locals can recall a time when little birds, like pardalotes, use to flit through the abundant bushland understorey, the chorus of frogs resonated after rain, blue-tongue lizards were about, the foreshore didn’t need fortification and big trees provided hollow-homes for parrots, possums, squirrel gliders, sugar gliders and microbats.  

More recently locals have been witnessing the fragmentation of our biodiverse bushland through sub-division and larger building footprints, the loss of small birds and ground dwelling animals as uncontrolled cats and the odd fox roam at night and kill, the smothering of the relatively fragile native flora as robust exotic plants and grasses are dumped into local reserves, the incursion of possums into roof spaces as their hollow bearing trees are felled, and the disappearance of canopy connectivity that allows the local wildlife to navigate space but also provides shade, shelter and the backdrop of our bigger bushland backyard.

We know a fair bit about our local biodiversity. From 2012 to 2018 the CPPA completed a $1million project, Threatened Species Last Stand (TSLS), on the Coal Point peninsula. There were many great outcomes from that project. There was a successful environmental burn, which you can read about as part of the journal Ecological Management & Restoration .The Landcare activity around our 12 local reserves trebled and allowed the landcare team to get the upper hand on many of the long-term weed incursions. There was a shift in the recovery trajectory of the reserves and in the capacity of the landcarers from despair to hope. Flora and bird surveys were regularly undertaken and for the first time threatened species were formally identified; the very cute Squirrel Glider, the ever graceful plant, Tetratheca juncea, and the majestic Powerful Owl. During this period Council undertook plans of management for these three threatened species and noted both their presence and the tenuous nature of their existence on the Coal Point peninsula due to the isolated nature of the populations in an increasingly fragmented bushland.

Another major finding from the TSLS project was that, because of the mosaic of public-private land along the bush-dominated ridge tops and the dearth of public land along the foreshore mid-slopes, unless private landholders also do their bit to support the local wildlife and the bushland it depends upon, our public reserves run the risk of becoming little more than silent islands of isolation and uniformity. In addition, options for wildlife dispersal on a peninsula are somewhat constrained by being surrounded by water.

Retaining our local biodiversity requires a multi-pronged approach involving boosting the options that are available for wildlife and their habitat on public and private land, whilst ensuring that future housing models do not further fragment and destroy the basic integrity and connectivity of the bushland that remains.

DAs In Play 11/9/24 to 30/9/24

The CPPA endeavours to provide a summary of active applications in our area as outlined in the table Please consult LMCC’s website for a full listing: https://www.lakemac.com.au/Development/Planning-and-development-services/Application-Enquiry.

TASNG Talk:

The Toronto Area Sustainable Neighbourhood Group (TASNG) was formed in 2011 and covers Coal Point, Kilaben Bay, Carey Bay and Toronto east of The Boulevarde. It is one of 10 such groups under the Sustainable Neighbourhood Alliance across Lake Macquarie.

Over the years many projects - including plastic-free cafes, the footpath along Brighton Ave from Ambrose Street to Jarrett Street, fire-retardant garden at Toronto fire station and the Awaba Road verge garden- were completed and many submissions written on development proposals. We work closely with the Coal Point Progress Association.

TASNG continues to educate the public about the Circular Economy and Recycling now that Council has changed its bulk waste system and NSW Government looks likely to extend its ban on some plastic packaging and plastic-lined takeaway coffee cups. Hundreds of signatures have been collected on our petition to make recycling more accessible and create jobs from recycled products.We have sold (recycled) household items collected from bulk waste throw out and other sources at the Toronto Lions Market.

We regularly help clean up around Toronto during Clean Up Australia Day and have joined in the campaign to save the turtles from Fennel Bay to Dora Creek during the big Lake cleanup in May.

TASNG has improved Toronto in many ways, especially over the last year. With support from Origin (through the Eraring Investment Fund), businesses and Council we have removed a lot of graffiti and installed stunning aboriginal prints at Goodsir Place, near Coles. A celebration of artists’ works was held at The Hub with 35 attendees.

We hold fortnightly landcare sessions to rehabilitate the wetlands adjacent to Fennel Bay bridge. We continue to support Coal Point Landcare, the Hub Community Garden and the development of the new Toronto Foreshore. We are in communication with Council about possible natural sculptures along our Greenway, the importance of increasing visibility of the wheel stops along The Boulevarde to keep pedestrians safe and we have participated in Council’s Resilience Project to prepare our area for climate change events such as bushfires and storms.

We continue to canvas for better cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in and around Toronto and for shared pathways from Booragul to Toronto and heading down to Rathmines along the foreshore.

We also support the Five Bays SNG’s Pampercare project which provides food and counselling services at Woodrising Neighbourhood Centre.

All our efforts are through volunteering. We are always keen to have new members and friends. Annual membership is only $5. We also support The Chronicle by extending its distribution to Kilaben Bay and Toronto. However, this requires financial commitment.

Please consider joining TASNG and/or providing a donation or helping to deliver The Chronicle to assist us in continuing this distribution. Contact Nico (Secretary) for membership forms and bank details at torontoareasng@gmail.com.