The Coal Point Chronicle: January 2025

Monday, 27 January 2025

2025 is looking to be a big one for the CPPA!

We’ll be doing a lot of celebrating and socialising this year. The first major event is an open day at Progress Hall on Saturday 22nd March, from 10am-2pm, celebrating the kitchen completion and hall refurbishments, 30 years of local landcaring and holding our AGM!

CPPA members and the local community are warmly invited to visit Progress Hall and inspect the recently completed kitchen and hall facilities. The new kitchen now has all the mod-cons including a dishwasher, induction cooktop, large oven, a very neat bin system, places for everything and everything in its place. The $35,000 project has been overseen by Selma Barry who has done an amazing job coordinating the transformation with funding provided from an $8,000 grant from the State Government, a donation of $8000 from Eraring Energy’s Community Fund, and an incredible $2000 in donations from our members!

Thirty years of local landcaring will be celebrated with a special cake and a display of freshly picked local weeds and some ‘grow me instead’ options to purchase. Landcarers will be on hand to share their weed treatment techniques and knowledge of our reserves and local biodiversity. https://coalpointprogress.blogspot.com/p/bonza-backyard-gardening-guide.html

There’ll also be an opportunity to express your interest in having habitat hollows installed in large trees on your property, utilising the Hollowhog approach, as part of a funding application under consideration to enhance the number of hollows for our local wildlife within our community. It takes over 100 years for a hollow to form, a significant number of our fauna require hollows for shelter and nesting. The Hollowhog approach fast tracks hollow creation.

The CPPA Committee will be on hand to hear your thoughts about activities that the CPPA can undertake, especially around utilising our unique community-owned hall. There will be a rolling morning tea and nibbles on hand and an opportunity to join or renew your membership to the CPPA.

A brief and efficient Annual General Meeting will be held from 1:30-2pm. The Agenda will be as follows

Welcome
Minutes of the previous AGM
President’s Report
Financial Report
Election of CPPA Committee

If you would like to join the Committee a nomination form is available.

Drop in for a quick visit or hang around for a while, the Open Day at the hall is an opportunity to catch up with some locals and share your thoughts on what you’d like to see happen in our community or at our hall.

Membership renewals are due ...

or join our progressive progress association.

CPPA membership aligns with the calendar year and membership renewals are due, or join up now!

Our annual membership fees are $8 for an individual, or $13 for a household (defined as people living at the same address, whether a family or not). Five-year memberships are $32 and $52.

There’s a membership form on the website and inside.

Wanted: Civil construction advice on addressing access to Progress Hall.

The CPPA will be applying for funding to improve access to the hall and would greatly appreciate some advice to guide our application.Please contact cppasecretary@gmail.com or 0438 596 741 in February to discuss.

Coal Point Progress Landcare

Coal Point Progress Association Landcare is a small, dedicated group of landcarers who are happy to welcome and provide training to new members. We meet every Thursday 8am-12pm, rotating around our local reserves

According to the Awabakal seasonal calendar we are at the end of the hot dry time of the year and looking forward to cooler weather with some rain. The kararkarmatara (banksia) is a common flowering plant on Awabakal Country during wunal (summer). The kararkarmatara exudes a rich nectar from its muraban (flowers), and it was common practice among Aboriginal people to enjoy its sweet taste. At Landcare we enjoy spotting the flowers and watching the pollinators at work. The Banksia serrata (Old man banksia) is the one in flower to look out for now.

We also spend a lot of energy working on eradicating weeds to give the native plants room to grow. A sleeper weed that is awakening at the moment is the formidable Formosa lily. It looks pretty, with its bold white trumpet flowers, has a fun seed capsule that makes a great rattling sound and the seeds are flung far when shaken. This makes them very attractive to pick and play with while walking through the bush. But today’s fun is tomorrow’s bane of the bush and the rapid increase in Formosa lily numbers is a problem.

Our botanically enthusiastic landcarer, Ros Cornish, conducted an experiment to observe germination of the “scales” from the Formosa lily bulbs. She evenly spaced 50 scales in a seed tray containing potting mix, and covered them with soil.

After a few weeks there was some evidence of germination with a few thin leaves visible. Two months later leaves were quite visible on the germinated scales with 60% germination.

What was interesting, disturbing and unexpected, was that several plants germinated from the one scale!

In the wild this possibly explains why there can seem to be a few plants close together when we weed.

The twinning of the Formosa lily was on display at the February landcare session on the the old water tank site on West Ridge, where Nico was dwarfed by the monster twin-lily (The Lily flower and seed pod are not to scale).

After years of methodically removing Formosa lily flowers from our bushland the odd plant or two still manages to emerge over summer. If the flower gets pollinated hundreds of seeds form, get blown on the wind and the process continues.

The flower buds are forming now and it’s time to get this garden escapee out of the bush. If you like cut flowers feel free to collect this ornamental and scented flower and take it home, just leave enough of the stalk so the landcarers can remove the garlic like bulb.

If you’d like to have a go at removing the whole plant to give the bush a breather there’s an instructional video that the local landcarers put together on the website- Formosa foe not friend.

There’s lots of information about our Landcare sites and the calendar on our website https://coalpointprogress.blogspot.com/p/guardian-group-information.html

Want to join us?
If you would like to receive weekly emails about where we are landcaring and what we will be doing? email Ros cppalandcare@gmail.com

Housing Diversity plan on pause for pondering

Council’s Housing Diversity Planning Proposal, a major planning document which has the potential to reshape residential zones across the City, was presented to the new Councillor cohort in December 2024.

Thankfully the new councillors were concerned enough about the lack of genuine community consultation and city-wide impacts of this controversial issue to not support the proposal, request more information, have more options considered, and have several internal workshops to better understand the issues, options and implications.

To address the housing crisis the State Government has already directed local governments to permit increasing housing density within 400m of designated train stations (Fassifern is not a ‘designated’ train station) and local business centres, including Toronto.

In addition the State government is aiming “to permit three to six storey flat residential buildings in the R3 Medium Density Residential Zone within 800m proximity of town centres and train stations. It also aims to permit multi-dwelling housing, attached housing and two-storey residential flat buildings in the R2 Low Density Residential zone within 800m proximity of town centres and train stations” (p12 LMCC’s Recommendations to the Development and Planning Standing Committee Meeting - Monday 2nd December 2024)

Council is, however, proposing to allow for potential density increase in every R2 and R3 zoned block across the entire city, subject to their suitability. It will also allow suitable blocks to be subdivided down to 200sqm.

From a local perspective where our community is dominated by large, often bushland, blocks in a R2 zone (low density, the proposed changes have the potential to see a land use change that would decimate our bushland corridor as building footprints are increased at the expense of our biodiverse assets. Council states the planning proposal applies to residential zoned land and will not increase risk to critical habitat or threatened species, populations or ecological communities, or their habitats. Within our community threatened species, such as Squirrel Gliders, Powerful Owls and Tetratheca juncea, do exist, fragmentation of vegetated corridors is a key driver of local extinctions and in a biodiversity crisis this should be acknowledged. Indeed, Council’s own species management plans recognise this.

Additionally, as many would be aware, our existing infrastructure is inadequate for the current population let alone the projected increase. Footpaths are almost non-existent locally and Council has repeatedly advised that new ones will not be constructed due to geography and low population; increasing density in a geographically constrained area will still not result in more footpaths. Local roads are already too narrow in places hampering parking and access during construction projects. Public space per capita for the Toronto area has already been identified as not meeting the needs of the projected population increase.

Genuine community consultation is required to better understand the Council’s proposal and its impact. Only 20 submissions were received during the public consultation period. The question has to be raised, is this a representative sample of the residential population that will be impacted by the city-wide Housing Diversity Plan?

Our local councillors are keen to ensure that the community is aware of the very real impacts this proposal would deliver.

Take a chance to read the Housing Diversity plan and communicate with your councillors. https://shape.lakemac.com.au/housing-diversity

Cr Anthony Swinsburg is actively seeking community feedback.

All Councillors have a workshop on the Housing Diversity proposal in early February.

Our West Award Councillors are;
Anthony Swinsburg (Ind) - aswinsburg@lakemac.nsw.gov.au
Madeline Bishop (ALP) - mbishop@lakemac.nsw.gov.au
Kate Warner (LI) - kwarner@lakemac.nsw.gov.au
Jason Pauling (Lib) - jpauling@lakemac.nsw.gov.au

Hall for hire again

The kitchen and communal space of Progress Hall has had a major renovation and freshen up making it a vibrant and serviceable community asset. We are looking forward to opening the hall back up to the community in March.

Community halls are vital spaces that bring people together, fostering connection, creativity, and a sense of belonging. We invite local individuals, businesses, and groups to make use of our hall for a variety of activities.

Whether you’re hosting a creative arts or music class, an exercise group, a birthday celebration, a family gathering, or a meeting for your business or community organisation, our space is designed to support your needs. Let’s build a vibrant community together—one gathering at a time!

Please call our Hall Co-ordinator Cath Fairs on 0405297830 to discuss your needs.

Cath Fairs- Hall coordinator

Toronto Multi Purpose Centre gets a surge of power

The Eraring Community Investment Fund has awarded the Toronto Multi Purpose Centre (MPC) a grant for the installation of a 36.52 KW Solar System on the roof of the (MPC) in Thorne Street, Toronto. The system is estimated to generate 54.02 MWh on average every year, which will reduce the MPC’s annual energy consumption from the grid by 13.2 MWh and have a huge environmental and financial impact.

In awarding the grant, Eraring commented “that they were thrilled to be supporting the amazing work our Centre does in the community”. This installation will aid community well-being by reducing our current unsustainable energy costs and enable us to maintain an inclusive community space for the many vulnerable groups who use the space.

The Volunteer Management Committee of the MPC would like to publicly thank Origin’s Eraring Community Investment Fund for this much needed grant and we would also like to thank the Coal Point Progress Association for their valuable advice in preparing the application.

-Carole Obre (President MPC)

DAs in Play 1/10/24 to 23/1/25

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: