Author Archives: fobif

Engage Victoria is running a new consultation, this one being on litter and rubbish dumping in regional areas, including Mount Alexander shire. The consultation involves a questionnaire of 34 questions, and will include a workshop in Bendigo on August 28. … Continue reading →

The picture below shows two mature Ironbarks cut down and removed from alongside the Poverty Gully track in the Diggings Park. Illegal timbergetting from public land has become a bit of a plague lately, and FOBIF has heard both from … Continue reading →

FOBIF has sent an objection to the Mount Alexander Shire to the displayed plans for a new supermarket at Forest and Urquhart Streets Castlemaine. The essentials of our objection are as follows: ‘We emphasise that we have no opinion on … Continue reading →

Here’s an activity that should be of wide interest:

A large crowd gathered at the Campbell’s Creek community centre last Friday to mark the funeral of one of this community’s most distinguished leaders: Dja Dja Wurrung elder Uncle Brien Nelson, who died on June 28. There is a good … Continue reading →

Here’s a brief follow up to our very modest victory over moronic TV advertising last week. The Ad Standards community panel found that that the Suzuki ad depicted unsafe driving in a positive light: ‘the Panel considered that the depiction … Continue reading →

FOBIF’s complaint to Ad standards, the body supervising the voluntary code of practice of the car industry, about Suzuki’s ridiculous ‘for fun’s sake’ TV commercial, has been upheld. Suzuki went to great lengths to defend its commercial. Among other things … Continue reading →

Mount Alexander Shire hosted a consultation with interested citizens last week to consider a management plan for the Botanical Gardens flora and fauna reserve. The plan would be implemented in tandem with the gardens conservation management plan, which was open … Continue reading →

What does the phrase ‘extensive vegetation modification’ mean? Answer: in Heritage speak, it’s a reference to what happened to our landscape during the gold rush. It’s code for: trashed landscapes, ruined waterways, denuded forest lands. Why do heritage documents use … Continue reading →

The new plan does make some advances on the old on the twin questions of environmental damage and Aboriginal dispossession. For a start, it explicitly tries to incorporate a role for indigenous questions in park interpretation: ‘In 2013 settlement of … Continue reading →