Mornington
Morni ngton
13 January
2015
Splish splash
Your guide to what’s on this weekend for peninsula families
> Page 3
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Tuesday day 13 January 201 2015 01 15
5973 6424 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au It’s ace: Mornington Tennis Club’s social tennis players watch Ken Withers serve a ball at the new courts in Civic Reserve. Picture: Gary Sissons
Red letter days on red courts EVERY day is a red letter day at Mornington Tennis Club’s new courts in Civic Reserve off Dunns Rd. They are part of redevelopment of David Collins Leisure Centre at Civic Reserve, which opened late last year. The $8.5 million project ($1.5 million more than originally budgeted) includes the tennis courts and clubhouse as well as an expanded area for Mornington Peninsula Table Tennis Association and a new home for Mornington Youth Club, which has moved from its old one in Wilsons Rd, sold by Mornington Peninsula Shire for housing. The shire sold the Main St tennis club land in 2013 to The Bays Hospital for more than $4 million, a generous price as the 7790-square metre block was worth 40 per cent more for commercial development. The hospital will build on the land where three storeys is permitted. The club started in Queens St near the existing shire office in the early 1900s. It moved to Main St in the early 1950s to land that had earlier been donated by John “Gib” Barrett, who died in 1943 aged 79. Continued Page 12
Mayor’s fire alarm Stephen Taylor steve@mpnews.com.au MORNINGTON Peninsula residents and visitors have been warned to be ready with bushfire survival plans. The warning from the mayor Cr Bev Colomb followed a 120 hectare blaze at Hastings that razed much of Warringine Park after a desperate battle by fire fighters to save houses. Cr Colomb said residents and visitors should “remain aware of the im-
portance of acting on the fire danger ratings and having a bushfire survival plan”. Hastings had “dodged a bullet” despite the Saturday 3 January fire which swept through the bushland reserve, the chair of the shire’s municipal emergency management planning committee, Cr David Garnock, said. The damage – and the heartache – could have been so much worse, he said. This view was shared by Hastings lawyer David Gibbs, group officer in
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charge of the local CFA brigades, who said that if the fire had jumped the Stony Pt/Woolleys roads intersection it had the potential to cause “massive destruction”. “We could have lost hundreds of homes,” he said. Luckily, no houses were lost or residents injured in the fires which began near railway tracks in Reid Pde about 2pm fanned by strong winds and temperatures in the high 30s. Piles of wood in a nearby timber yard provided an early source of fuel.
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About 300 firefighters fought the blaze which sent embers flying over Reid Pde into paperbark forests grasslands at Warringine Park, jumping six houses on Seaglades Lane. A major wind change to the southwest at 6.30pm pushed the fire back towards Reid Pde and Warranqite Cres. Cr Garnock said the fortuitous wind change – which forced the fire back onto itself – had prevented what could have been a disaster for residents. “The fires were a wake-up call for us,” he said.
A cool change later on the day of total fire ban brought rain and a 10 degree drop in the temperature, helping firefighters control the blaze by about 8pm. A community fire meeting at the Graham Myers Reserve, Bittern, on Saturday night - attended by 300 people - erupted into applause when CFA acting operations manager Neil Schlipalius said that while three houses had suffered external damage, none had been lost. Continued Page 5, 6 and 7