Reports

President’s Report 2022

Upon reflection of last year’s meetings with the inconvenience of the pandemic with which we have persevered and held our meetings this year.

Our areas of concern this year have been:-

Along the coast

Mentone Lifesaving Clubhouse.

This huge new structure that has caused great damage to the clay cliffs at Mentone right up to the around the bay bike track is nearly finished. It has been elevated to protect it from future storm damage inevitable with climate change weather and rising tides. Why was this structure with so few of Victoria’s population using it, for so few months of the year, at such great expense was passed by D.W.E.L.P. and Kingston Council at such great expense? It does not blend into the landscape as building along the foreshore are supposed to do.

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Beaumaris Rotary Club Report

When I was invited to speak to the Beaumaris Rotary Club about the activities of the Mordialloc Beaumaris Conservation League it was, in a sense, as if the group had returned home because in 1969, a portion of City of Beaumaris, from Cromer Road to Charman Road, was part of the City of Mordialloc and this environment group came into existence when, in 1969, a smooth operator was found plotting to construct a marina in Beaumaris Bay. Fortunately residents, who lived in Beaumaris at that time, decided that the red fossil cliffs and sea ledges were too important to be buried under concrete so letters were written to Sir Rupert Hamer, Member for Local Government, seeking his help, and as a result the marina didn’t eventuate.

It was then decided to form an environment group to protect the foreshore from Charman Road, Mentone to Mordialloc Creek. The first Mordialloc Beaumaris Conservation League (MBCL)president was Jack Iggulden, a feisty Beaumaris businessman, a glider pilot, an author and a dedicated environmentalist. His wife, Helen, was an efficient and supportive secretary of MBCL. The aims of the group were protection of the local environment, particularly the fragile foreshore reserve, native coastal vegetation and habitat, to preserve the natural aspects of the coastal environment and encourage the restoration of wetlands to improve the water quality entering the Bay from Mordialloc Creek.

In 1970 Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) planned to grade the badly eroding Mentone white clay cliffs. The MBCL committee would have preferred an environmentally sensitive method of preserving the cliffs but after lengthy and terse correspondence between MMBW and MBCL committee.in 1971 the steep cliffs were graded and planted with stabilising vegetation. The white cliffs may now be viewed in the National Gallery of Victoria in a painting by Tom Roberts, one of the Heidelberg school of painters who camped and painted at Mentone in 1887 with Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers and others. The white cliffs are also featured in Sandringham painter ,Clarice Beckett’s painting,’ Cliff Path 1929′ and also Mentone Cliffs (Beaumaris Landscape ) 1931. Beckett also painted waves washing over and destroying bathing boxes during the severe storm of 1934 when much of Mordialloc was flooded.

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The Value of Trees

Richard Adey, ABC RN, 31-8-2017 and Dr. Gregory Moore, former Principal of Burnley Horticultural College @ Mordialloc Neighbourhood House, 9-1-2018, both spoke on the same topic though on different dates and locations.

Property investors admit that a good-tree-lined street is where prices can increase up to 30%. In some cases a 10% increase in trees planted results in an increase in profits of $50,000. There would also be a decrease in energy use, and therefore a cost reduction in use of air conditioners because of the shade that trees provide for the house and surrounds.

In shady streets and roads there is a 2-4 degree heat reduction, and in some places as much as 10 degrees reduction in heat. Therefore owners of cars parked alongside a back-of-kerb bike track lined with trees would appreciate the fact that trees have not been removed. And, of course, the cyclists and pedestrians using the shared bike/walking track would also be relieved that there is a canopy of mature trees shielding them as climate change temperatures increase.

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