Predicament of public housing in Melbourne

Glenda Scalise, holds her cat Miles in her public dwelling

Glenda Scalise, 55, has been living in the public housing high-rise on 20 Elgin St. since 2004.

She was in supported accommodation before then, and before then she was homeless for two years.

She wandered on the street day after day. “I was literally homeless… I had mental health issues… the supported accommodation I was in for a year. And then this flat became vacant and I took it.”

“I was very lucky. I am very unusual because my housing worker pushed for me. Everyone else that I know has had to wait much longer…” she said.

The place she lives in locates in Carlton, one of the around twenty high-rise public housing sites in Melbourne. Spread across 14 suburbs, the sites contain over 40 high rises in total.

Where are those high–rises in Melbourne exactly?

(Source: Housing Commission of Victoria)

Entering the high rise was a bit like an adventure. The two buildings look isolated and abrupt from afar and you need to be approved by the intercom before actually go into the building. So I waited some time outside before calling Glenda. And then a hunchbacked old man, who has apparently lost his sight, felt his way to the intercom and then the steel gate slid open slowly. Last time I stopped by, it was broken and wide open.

The floor is tiled. The corridor is well-lit, although it seems a bit narrow when there are about six or seven flats on each floor.

Glenda lives by herself. Her flat has one bedroom, one bathroom and the other area constitutes the kitchen and the living room. An oven, a fridge, and a cupboard take up the whole kitchen area. Between the cupboards is a piece of board, on which all sorts of things line up one after one. Pictures and posters are all over the fridge and the wall next to it.

She has a bit trouble with space and dust. And she says she’d rather have a smaller bathroom and a bigger kitchen because it’s hard to cook in there. It’s not easy to step inside the bedroom, as bed sheets, clothes and shoes are just scattered on the floor.

“They (the government people) keep promising me new carpet and it never happened so, after about six, seven years, a friend helped me rip up all the carpet and helped me put down this…” she complained.

Glenda pays $180 a fortnight since she is on pension. Last year she worked for the Salvation Army in the drug and alcohol detox but then it was closed down. So she is on pension again. “When we got rises from the government on the pension, they put our rent up every time. So it’s not like we’re lagging behind,” she explained.

Glenda Scalise is one of the 127,000 public housing tenants in Victoria. There are about 38,000 people on the waiting list for public housing at the moment. According to Mark O’Brien, CEO of Tenants Union Victoria, Victoria has one of the worst proportions of public housing stock to waiting list of any of the mainland states. As public housing is increasingly targeted to people on the waiting list who are deemed as having special needs, it’s getting more difficult for many other low-income Victorians to get access to public housing.

In March this year, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) released a report on Access to Public Housing. It indicates that waiting times for other tenants are up to seven years.

The VAGO report pointed out the public housing system is currently in a “critical” condition. This report basically says a number of challenges faced by the system, which include: first, the operating model and asset management approach is unsustainable; secondly, the direction of public housing and the approach to managing the portfolio are unclear; thirdly, the current model costs increasingly more than the revenue so it’s not financially viable.

Following the VAGO report, the Victorian government released two discussion papers in April – Pathways to a Fair and Sustainable Social Housing System – about main issues identified in the current public housing system and Social Housing – A Discussion Paper on the Options to Improve the Supply of Quality Housing – about options for reforming the public housing system. During the three-month consultation period, the Victorian Department of Human Services (DHS) has asked for submissions and feedbacks from individuals, industries, banks, housing associations, tenants and academics.

According to Shayne Graham, the Executive Project Officer for the Director of Housing in the DHS, so far, more than 1,200 submissions have been submitted online or via mail to the DHS and KPMG is currently going through those submissions and producing a report for the government.

Mr. O’Brien says that the discussion paper canvasses a number of different reform options for public housing. But unfortunately, many of the ideas undermine the very purpose of public housing.

“The private rental market is unaffordable, inaccessible and usually inappropriate for low-income people. The public housing system addresses many of those through subsidy… through very clear pathways to get access to public housing, and through secure tenures so that people don’t have to move around a lot. And they’re very important foundations for housing, for people to be able to engage in the community and in the economy.”

But according to him, some proposals in the discussion paper affect those very things. “They propose to deregulate rents to make them less affordable, to undermine secure tenures, so to make people move around more often, and to general introduce other conditions to get access to public housing, conditions like enforced training or workforce participation, conditions that many tenants who are currently in public housing would really struggle to satisfy,” he said.

According to the Pathway Paper, public housing is defined as housing owned and managed by the State through the Director of Housing – the landlord to public housing tenants. It is aimed at providing affordable and accessible housing for those Victorians who are unable to go to private housing market at a particular time in their lives. How has the public housing system evolved since the establishment of Housing Commission in 1943?

Two high-rises on Elgin St. Carlton

Brief history of public housing policy in Victoria

History of Public Housing Policy on Dipity.

(Source: Inquiry into the Adequacy and Future Directions of Public Housing in Victoria, September 2010, Family and Community Development Committee, Parliament of Victoria)

What the public housing reform should do?

According to Mr. O’Brien, the first thing the government needs to do is to commit to an ongoing operating subsidy in the social housing sector. That operating subsidy is an amount that government would pay to keep the sector running properly.

“It would depend on what kinds of clients the sector was housing. For people who have very complex needs, so people with mental illness, people with disability, the government operating subsidy would actually be quite large. For people who have smaller needs, say for example, they just got a low income, but really no other great need, then the operating subsidy would be less. But government should identify sort of ranges of subsidy that require to make the system work,” he said.

The second thing that government should do is to look at the problems that tenants who are currently residing in public housing actually experience, which is mainly about the maintenance backlog.

According to the Discussion Paper, 42 per cent of Victoria’s public housing stock is more than 30 years old and needs to be repaired or replaced. The VAGO report estimates that portfolio maintenance will require about $600 million in the next three years.

“There is a significant maintenance backlog in public housing, so a lot of tenants have repair and structural issues with their housing. The government needs to set aside additional funds to overcome the maintenance backlog that currently exists in public housing,” Mr O’Brien said.

The third thing that’s part of the stress in the public housing system is that it’s too small a system trying to cater to too large need.

“So what’s really important in the system is the government to invest money in growing the system. It’s always easy to think that, oh, maybe we should build one more house, rather than repair an old house, which is not very good thinking, but that’s a bit of what occurred,” he added.

Housing unaffordablility in Melbourne makes it worse for public housing

The End of Affordable Housing in Melbourne research paper, done by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, shows that middle and high density dwellings is not a solution for providing more affordable housing and even flats and apartments are expensive and beyond the reach of most ordinary people on the ordinary income.

Note: (a) Low income households are defined as those in the 40 per cent of equivalised disposable household incomes (that is, the bottom two income quintiles).

(b) Rental stress is deemed to occur when households spend more than 30 per cent of their income on rent.

(c) Excludes households in collection districts defined as very remote, accounting for about 23 per cent of the population in the NT.

Dr Ernest Healy, the author of this paper, says that even low income working people are shut out of home ownership and pushed into rental accommodation; it would be much more difficult for people on pensions or benefits to find affordable housing.

“Certainly buying a house is out of question, but the competition for rental housing is very high because of the unaffordability of housing. Even relatively well-off people have to rent, then it increases the competition for available rental housing and the very low income people, disadvantaged people on government benefits and pensions are really at the margin. Their ability to even find decent rental housing is very limited,” he said.

There is pressure on the very existence of public housing estates in expensive middle-class areas in inner Melbourne. But Dr Healy thinks it really should be seen as an opportunity.

“Because in those inner parts of Melbourne, the ratio of jobs to residents is very high… And a lot of those jobs are in-person service jobs, face-to-face jobs… They are jobs that potentially that some of the residents in the housing commission towers could fill. So it makes sense from my point of view to keep the housing commission towers in affluent middle class areas because there is an abundance of in-person jobs that some of those people at least could do. But if you convert these public housing estates… move a lot of the housing commission tenants out to somewhere else; then they’re going to be mostly likely moved to places where there are fewer jobs. So I don’t think it makes sense socially to do that.”

What’s on now

According to Mr Graham, the government is undertaking an asset order, with plans to go out and assess 100 per cent of the stock of public housing. He says this is the first time and in this way, the government will get a complete view of the status on all of the property and they’ll be able to understand fully what the maintenance situation is. “There has been a bit of extrapolation to work out what the maintenance situation is, but this order will give us 100 per cent idea of what liability is in that respect,” he said.

Around 65,000 – 70,000 dwellings will be looked at all over Victoria. “The tenderer will undertake the work and report back to government. It will happen sometime next year… It’s a massive undertaking. It will take some time to do, but it’s gonna provide us with some valuable information,” Mr Graham said.

Mr Graham thinks the reform should ensure a viable and fair public housing system for vulnerable Victorians, now and into the future. “I think this is an opportunity for us to set a good bed and then to putting in place the policies that we need to make sure that we have a successful system going forward,” he said.

Mr Graham said in fact there isn’t a single proposal in the Discussion Paper. “All that is doing is asking questions, and it’s asking for feedback as to how might we do things differently.”

“It’s asking people to come back to government via the consultation process and tell us and give us some suggestions about what we could change, so it was asking questions should we change the rent or not, should we change tenure or not, what are the risks of doing these things, what are the benefits of doing these things, and what would the advantages and disadvantages be. So there’s been no decision made…” he said.

As for when the government will outline its plan for public housing, according to Mr Graham, that will depend on the feedback the government gets and also on the size of changes that they think they will need to make. “At this stage, they’re looking at releasing the framework in next year,” he said.

Mr Grahams said that although there hasn’t been any decisions made, the whole consultation process is relatively new. “This is not something that has necessarily been done in the last ten or twenty years… It will end up with a new way forward,” he said.

Catch a glimpse of where Glenda Scalise lives

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Glenda was so addicted to drug ten years ago that she lost everything. “I just had nowhere; I just kept walking around with my shopping bags.” She said she had a family but one day she just left. In retrospect, she said she was out of her mind.

She hasn’t used drugs for four-and-a-half years with the help from narcotics anonymous. “Now many years later, I made amends to my family. My son comes here all the time, it’s all good, but it took me a long time to get here.” She said these calmly, with a meaningful smile at the corner of her mouth.

Now she is grateful for what she has, for not being homeless anymore. “I love living here. I’m lucky in this building cauz there are lots of families. The kids would always be out there… I’m very reluctant to think about moving, because I’ve been homeless. And I don’t want to end up on the streets again. This is like my security.”

She said she is not clear about what the Discussion Paper says. “I’m aware that something is going on… My neighbour told me that they’re going to renovate this building too, but then another neighbour told me that they’re gonna sell it and throw us out, so…” she laughed and then paused.

“Here is good for poor people. You got public transport everywhere. You got community house centre, doctors, you got the Melbourne Uni dentistry down there, you got the Melbourne Uni optometry so you know, for poor people it’s good to be here.”

Glenda has a cat, Miles to keep her company. She had him for nearly ten years.

“Sometimes, when I cry, he is like this, he puts his paw there… funny, I never had animals when we were kids, I never had an animal before, so it’s very strange, still.”

“Hi, baby, I call him baby. Hi baby, even though he is an old man…” she smiled.

Bonding with photography all along

Browsing through the thick folder containing films which can only manifest fine views under sunlight, and photographs of beautifully decorated houses, malls, banks, to the ones of sea waves, trees, portraits of people, Paul Robinson seems at ease and contented.

Paul Robinson, looking through all the films he has taken over the years

From Buddhist temple in Japan, High Court in Australia, to Macao City Square and the night scene of California, the films are labelled with time and place in detail, carefully arranged in order. As for the photographs for real estate, there are a lot more, from the original copy of the image to the actual brochure or catalogue page produced later, Paul keep them like treasure.

Paul’s films under the sun

Photography has always been an indispensable part of Paul Robinson’s life, and always will be. This 62-year-old Tasmanian has been doing photography for the last 40 years, and his enthusiasm is growing as time goes by.

At age 20, Paul was called up for national service in the army for two years. “I spent nearly a year in Vietnam. In Vietnam, or perhaps when I was in the army, I took up photography,” he explains.

He worked for Telstra for 21 years until about 1990. “I actually resigned from Telstra because I’d been doing some wedding and portrait photography part-time. And I thought if I am never gonna do photography full time, then what’s the time?”

Since then, Paul has been a real estate photographer. But the fact is he hasn’t got any formal training in photography, except the studying of fine art in his late teens, if that counts. Mentioning that, he says with laughter: “It’s interesting because I’m only now just making enquires to go and do a degree in photography.”

“I would go and see photographic exhibitions, which give me a good idea about what’s going on in terms of print, and things that would be photographed. I’ve got a photographic library of over 300 books, so I sort of taught myself a bit about that as well. Sort of over the years… you’d pick up things as things got along.”

Paul tries to put into practice things like dealing with composition and colour and lighting. “The result of that is I try to get mood into photographs.”

He lifts his finger and points at one of the many pictures hanging in his lovely home. “As you see that one up there of Hong Kong, it’s got a lot of mood in it.” It does. The image he refers to features the skyline of Hong Kong, obscured by the mist and rosy clouds. The light is dim but soft, yet the outlines of building of various shapes are distinct. It captures the bright and shadow, getting you to appreciate the unique perspective.

Another big step on Paul’s photography path is the founding of the Caulfield Photographic Society. “While I was at the Essendon Camera Club, people at my local church were interested in photograph, and they put a little bit pressure on me to form a photography club in the church, which I did and that started in 1980.”

“It was not an easy task, he recalls. “The years then were harder because we were trying to build the club up, initially 17-18 and then the number decreased significantly.”

To get the club members back up, Paul and Jean-Philippe Weibel, who is from Switzerland and joined the club since the beginning, decided to run a photography course. “We ended up with about a dozen of people signed up, and that helped with our finances.”

Now, the Caulfield Photographic Club has nearly 40 members. “When digital photography became more popular since the early 1990s, particularly since the year 2000, the photography club members increased,” Paul says.

For photography clubs around in Melbourne, some of them are really big. Essendon has about 90 members; Melbourne Camera Club has close to 200, Frankston Camera Club has got about 120. There are about 60 camera clubs in Victoria, and of the 60 clubs, Caulfield is one of the smaller ones. “But we also have some talented photographers, some of them are semi-professional, and some of them are like myself, do photography full time,” Paul says.

Paul describes himself as practising Christian, being supportive, analytical, free to do things his way, and a teacher, even though he jokes about not having any qualifications in it.

“I try to do things for people … there was a famous saying by Jimmy Carter, the former American president, where he liked to do as much as he can for as many people as he can as often as he can, while I thought that was in fact a pretty reasonable sort of approach to life. And that’s where I am in a lot of ways, but I guess where he focused politically, I am focused photographically.”

Recalling a fun photograph, Paul finds that happens spontaneously. “I was doing some photographs out in front of a… it look a bit like a steam engine… They had a, like a jazz band, made of all sorts of nationalities, playing around. They’re all young people, but I was just trying to take a photograph of them. And all of a sudden, they all went into this funny sort of pose, so you know, bang, I got the shot. And they all changed, it was that quick, you know. Those sorts of funny things happen often, it’s interesting.”

The Waves — By Paul Robinson

Paul thinks to be a good photographer, one must have a good understanding of the medium of photography, and that of aesthetics. He says, “I know from myself that I would probably never stop learning photography, and I’ve been learning it for forty years. It’s a life-long process.”

Having written two books on photography, Film to Digital and Judging Photographs, Paul’s goals now will be to continue writing and photography. And the other thing is to do a degree course in photography.

Modestly dressed in a plain coloured striped shirt and a black hat, Paul says with a hint of smile: “In fact… I’m gonna go tonight and teach the class. Tonight the topic I am covering is dealing with motion, how to capture that on camera, dealing with basic composition and dealing with basic colour.”

Yeah, just like that, Paul Robinson will throw himself into the world of photography once more, and also refresh the bonding with it once more, or say, all along.

Where is breed specific legislation going?

Dog certainly bites, but is breed specific legislation an answer? Or it might just be a simplistic attempted solution when the government is under media scrutiny, as expert says.

Sajani De Silva, a vet nurse, was about 16 years old when she was bitten by her own pet dog, Zorro. Inside the gate of her home, Sajani was petting Zorro gently while talking to someone as well.

“Suddenly he went to grab me to play with him, but I didn’t want to go with him.” He seized her hand and grabbed her right arm. “I was not aware of what was happening. I tried to jump onto the wall…”

Zorro is a black and brown Rottweiler, large size. At the time, he was only one-and-a-half years old.

“It ended up with me going to the hospital, because I had three wounds on my arm…some tissues also came out, in the outside.”

“It took more than a year to recover because the wounds are deep. The canine teeth of dogs are really sharp. Two of them are canines and one is the bottom.”

The three scars, like three drops of ink, are still visible. “The doctor used part anaesthesia. I feel like small wounds, but actually it’s bigger… Maybe because it was my own, it was like playing, but it was rough playing.”

Sajani is only one of the countless people who have been bitten or attacked by a dog. Dog bites, a serious public health problem, has never been far from each and every of community members.

Following the tragic accident of four-year-old, Ayen Chol on 17 August 2011, who was mauled to death by a pit bull in St Albans, breed specific legislation has been introduced by the Victorian government, with American pit bull terries the top of five restricted breeds.

According to Crimes and Domestic Animals Acts Amendment (Offences and Penalties) Bill 2011, owners of dogs that kill will face severer criminal sanctions, being guilty of an indictable offence with a maximum jail term of ten years. Local councils are also empowered to seize and destroy unregistered, restricted dogs wandering on the streets.

Pit bull – By LA Wad from Flickr

Bill Sykes, the Member for Benalla, welcomes this legislation and says he strongly support the restricted dog laws and believe they will help reduce dog attacks.

“Pit Bulls and their crosses are by nature and training dangerous – from my personal experience,” says Mr. Sykes.

Tim Pilgrim of Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) says RSPCA respects the government for looking at ways to protect the community. It does not however advocate breed specific legislation, and rather believes the “deed” of the dog, not the “breed” of the dog is the issue.

RSPCA believes that responsible pet ownership is the key in preventing dog attacks. “This includes early socialisation, behavioural training and loving care to ensure animals are well behaved. It is also the responsibility of the owner to make sure that their dog is securely contained to their property,” Mr. Pilgrim says.

According to American Veterinary Medical Association Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions (2001), a dog’s reaction in any situation depends on at least five interacting factors including heredity, early experience, later socialisation and training (or lack of), health (medical and behavioural) and victim behaviour.

When breed alone is considered, only heredity is addressed.

Mr. Slava, a dog owner of a black two-and-a-half year old Staffordshire Bull Terriers, also known as Staffy, is worried that his pet might be mistakenly identified as pit bull.

He is also concerned about American pit bull. “You can’t imagine how friendly they are inside home. My friend has two American pit bulls… Never accidents.”

To Mr. Slava, the tough law makes no sense. “Just kill dogs, for what?”

Jacob O’Shaughnessy of Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) says that the reason they don’t believe in banning specific breeds is because it has been shown not to work.

“There is actually no affinitive DNA test of pit bull terries, the one that has been regarded as a problem,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy says.

“So that leads to back on visual identification… It’s actually quite hard to tell one type of dog from another. If you are at a park, there might be 25 different looking Staffys in the park and lots of them or some of them may look like a pit bull terry. But in fact they are not; they are Staffys.”

After the review of epidemiological literature on dog bites, Dr Maria Kaspersson fromUniversityofGreenwichfound that dogs like Pit Bulls were certainly dangerous, but their bite was no more dangerous than many legal breeds such as the Rottweiler and German Shepherd.

Writing in An Online Journal by the British Society of Criminology (2008), Dr Kaspersson holds that it is not justified to singling out pit bull for breed-targeting legislation since ‘dangerous breeds’ don’t bite at a significantly higher rate.

“Instead, there are adverse effects of breed-specific legislation as it gives the illusion of tackling a problem, when it in practice only addresses a limited number of symptoms,” says Dr Maria Kaspersson.

According to the National Canine Research Council (NCRC), breed specific legislation is not only cruel but ineffective, which has been demonstrated to people from Europe andNorth America.

Many countries or regions within countries have introduced breed bans such as various states in theUnited States,OntarioinCanada,Britain, some now repealed such asItalyand theNetherlands, Lower Saxony inGermany.

Mr. O’Shaughnessy says that the AVA’s position is that it needs to be a tightening up for regulation for responsible dog ownership.

“It’s a combination of tightening up of the restricted regulation, combined with increased education and socialization of animals. But those things can’t be done separately.

“We actually believe that it needs to be done at the local council level. They need to be properly funded. So they can go out and they can find problem dogs in the community,” says Mr. O’Shaughnessy.

Linda Watson, Research Fellow and PhD candidate at Monash University Accident Research Centre says that breed specific regulatory measures reflect a simplistic and unrealistic appreciation of the causal factors.

“The State Government’s banning approach is definitely a simplistic attempted solution when the government is under media scrutiny.

“Current breed specific regulation removes responsibility for dog biting incidents from dog owners and places the focus on dogs. It may also engender a false and dangerous perception that breeds not included will not show aggression.”

Further, Ms. Watson points out that in the education process, there is an obvious flaw.

“Anyone can go and get a dog without any requirement for them to have any knowledge about dogs or dog behaviour. I believe people should be licensed not dogs. Many dog owners have no understanding of dog behaviour or the needs of dogs,” she says.

“A fundamental principle of injury prevention is that the most effective solutions involve a multi- dimensional approach which in the instance of dog bite injury would involve dog owners, parents, children, the community at large, local authorities and legislators.

“To reduce the incidence of dog aggression, a recommended approach includes that all dogs should be socialised, obedience trained, understood and managed competently by their owners,” she says.

Sajani’ parents were upset after the accident and they told her to stay away from Zorro.

“(…but) it’s hard to keep our friend, Zorro, away because we love him a lot. So we didn’t want to give him to anyone else…Zorro was like part of my family,” she says.

Unfortunately after two years Zorro died. It was sudden death.

“I felt really sad. I love him even though he bit me and grabbed me. Even after the accident, I was close to the dog. After that I was more aware of what is happening… I had to keep distance and protect myself.”

Colour is beyond a simple message for Glen Eira floral painter

Local painter Anna Blatman didn’t discover her creative talents until she was 25. Now she has succeeded in bringing more than colour to people’s life with her floral paintings.

Floral paintings on the wall of Anna’s studio

Everybody needs colour in their life.

“You know when you’re stressed, you look at the painting and it might calm you down. Instead of doing yoga, you can just stand and focus on the colours.”

Anna Blatman says her paintings carry a simple message of colour. But colour itself is beyond a simple message.

Anna knows the magic which will put life into the colours spread by her painting brush. With her floral paintings, she keeps reminding people of appreciating and feeling the power of colour.

Being a local artist in Elsternwick, Anna, 46, has been painting for 21 years. After seeing one of her mother’s friends’ art works, she had lessons from her and discovered her own creative talents. Less than a year later, at the age of twenty-five, Anna went out on her own.

Dressed with casual elegance, singing along with the radio, Anna is fully immersed in painting, oblivious of anything around her. This moment she is working on flower branches with deep brown, the next moment she is beginning to draw the outline of magnolias with oyster white.

“There are lots of layers and I like to put certain colours next to certain colours and I think people don’t seem to realize that seeing certain colours together makes them happy.” Anna says.

“The painting can be upside down but people still like it because they love the colours. So it’s not so much the form, it’s the colours. Something is connecting with them, with the colours.”

Unlike many artists, Anna doesn’t really mix with other artists because she’d like to keep her style pure. She says: “I don’t like to go to exhibitions because I don’t want to go the exhibitions of someone and that night I dream, and I wake up, and I come to work and I do someone else’s painting. I like it to be mine.”

For Anna, it is ideal to work in her gallery by herself because she needs to fully concentrate. “I need to have a pure line from my hand and my brain to the painting. If someone comes in, it starts blocking my thoughts.”

She also does beach scenes, landscapes and mountains and little talian houses, but she loves doing flowers. She has sold her paintings to every continent in the world. “ExceptAntarctica. And I’m working on that.” Anna laughed.

She has succeeded in her goal to make a career out of something that she loves doing. In her earlier years Anna worked really hard and that’s help her for now. She doesn’t have to worry about the business side of painting and has donated a lot of paintings to charities as well.

“Even if I have only sold one painting and somebody loves that painting, that’s success to me. That someone is willing to take their hard-earned money and says, ‘I’m gonna give this to you because what you’re giving me makes me happy.’ That’s to me, is fantastic. I appreciate it, definitely.”

All different people, old and young, buy her paintings. She laughed: “I’m lucky. I’m lucky. And I even sometimes see children walking past the window and they stop and they look and I think, Wa!!! That’s fantastic, even little children want to touch it.”

“You get flowers when you have a baby, when you get married. All the main things in your life there’s always flowers around. So it’s something that people always love.”

“I try to put my personality on the flowers so I try to take what nature has and make it a little bit different and make it my own flowers.”

She loves gardening, but surprisingly, there are no flowers in her beautiful garden.

“I like all different shades of green. I like putting a dark plant next to a light plant, next to a different coloured to build different layers of different greens. When you look out, your eye will see all different. Nothing is next to another plant that is the same colour, just to create something for my eye.”

Anna describes herself as friendly, happy, hard-working, conscientious and passionate, which are fit for describing her floral paintings as well. With warm colours, smooth strokes and exquisite designs, the paintings smell like springtime, brimming with zeal and brightness.

When Anna got separated, she put a lot of efforts into working, and that helped her get over her divorce. “I never really failed. I don’t think I’ve failed much because I have a good attitude. I don’t see anything as being a failure. Even if a painting doesn’t work, I change it into something that does work.”

There are times when she couldn’t get the image in her head onto the canvas. She had to keep working and working and working until finally got the painting right.

Talking about long-range goals, Anna aspires to have some of her designs onto something else, maybe on handbags, anything, using her ideas in another form. “[But] my mind doesn’t work in a marketing way. I just focus on the designs and someone else can do the other bit that they know how to do it.” Anna says.

“Keep going and just practice, practice and practice and develop your own style. Just keep going if that’s what you love to do.” That’s the word of advice Anna Blatman gives to beginner artists.

“You’ve got to go and have a look at people that not have many resources as we have now. I like to look at people that worked with barely any materials and they worked in cold weather, no heaters, where the paint took a long time to dry. I’d like to look at people that have done it hard. So I would say that LOOK BACKWARDS TO GO FORWARDS. Look at the past to go into the future and use that as an inspiration.”

Glen Eira volunteers getting involved

City of Glen Eira is active in doing voluntary work, but a close data analysis shows suburbs perform differently.

Comparison of volunteer rates within the City of Glen Eira

Comparison of volunteer numbers among all the suburbs in the City of Glen Eira

City of Glen Eira is about 2% higher in volunteer rate than that of Melbourne Statistical Division in 2006, according to data drawn from the Glen Eira Community Profile.

During the year prior to the Census, about 15.5%, nearly half a million enumerated population in Melbourne have participated in voluntary service.

Among all the suburbs in Glen Eira, Glen Huntly is the only one with volunteer rate (14.7%) lower than Melbourne Statistical Division. It is also the least in number of volunteers (520).

St Kilda East stands first in volunteer work participation, with more than 28% residents involved in unpaid work.

While considering the population base, Bentleigh East leads with 3006 people, although it is the third last in percentage.

Caulfield North – Caulfield East is at second place in both figures: 2697 in number and 21.4 in percentage.

Glen Eira City Council pays tribute to the contributions of volunteer work at a volunteer recognition ceremony each year.

Now in its 22^nd year, as part of National Volunteers Week, Volunteer Recognition Ceremony will be held this month, with 207 awards to be presented.

Volunteers are nominated by not-for-profit, community based groups or organisations to recognise their contribution of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 hours of service, or for the special contribution category which recognises 10 or more years of continuous service.

Glen Eira Community Profile hasn’t released the figure of year 2012 yet.

At the end of 2011, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) published the data about participation in unpaid voluntary work through an organisation or group, which can be accessed through the 4441.0 – Voluntary Work, Australia, 2010

Note:

1. This data includes help willingly given in the form of time, service or skills, to a club, organisation or association including:

• assisting at events and with sports organisations
• helping with school events and activities
• assisting in churches, hospitals, nursing homes and charities
• other kinds of volunteer work (e.g. emergency services, etc.).

This data applies to persons aged 15 years and over and to voluntary work undertaken in the 12 months prior to the Census.

2. To find a voluteer opportunity, please access Victoria’s Volunteering Portal, which is an online community and information resource for Victorian volunteers and volunteering organisations. To volunteer in Glen Eira, please go to Volunteering Glen Eira.

Glen Eira mosaic artist urges locals to feel good

Merryl Sacher tells with her own story how creating mosaic is more of a therapeutic experience.

Merryl Sacher demonstrates how to produce your mosaic artwork

Rochel Pinczower is fully absorbed in putting the last pieces on her first mosaic. She is quiet but underneath the quietness, you can clearly feel her excitement. “Nobody would believe you when you hang that up on your wall.” “I know. I can’t wait”, she says with laughter, “People will say ‘Wow, where did you get that?’, and I’ll say I made it! As soon as they walk into my house they’ll see it so you won’t be able to miss it.”

Lynette Raiter, just one metre from Rochel, has just started a new mosaic of an elf, which is so different from her former pieces, like Von Gogh’s Sunflower and Starry Night. “With the Starry Night, it took me long time to get the flow. It’s in Perth now hanging on my mum’s wall. Every time she looks at it, she cries,” she says. The Sunflower is big. “It was too good to go outside so I put it in the dining room.”

Yaffa Barak is working on her piece of Israeli doors, which remind her of her home. Now in her fifties, she suddenly realises all her kids are gone from the house. “Everything is gone… I got emptiness in my life, from very busy person to zero busyness… I was really in a very bad depression stage in my life… And suddenly I found Merryl.”

Merryl Sacher, at Merryl’s Mosaic, next to her piece ‘Skyline’, after a workshop class. She describes herself as peaceful, creative, gentle, grounded and feminine.

Merryl Sacher is the woman who has brought many people, including Rochel, Lynette and Yaffa, together to her workshop in Caulfield South with her magic mosaics. Her studio, Merryl’s Mosaic, was born three years ago out of passion for colour, mosaic and interior design and her desire is to help people to produce mosaic artwork and design their home to reflect their personality. But more importantly, Merryl says: “It’s just about getting into the moment and forget about everything else, you just have a really happy experience with yourself.”

Born in South Africa, Merryl did her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a postgraduate in Human Resources. She got married at the age of 22. After moving to Melbourne, Merryl spent 20 years working as an office manager at Sachers’ Associates, a Human Resources and management consulting company set up by her and her ex-husband. But Merryl says she did whatever it is but it was never something she is really passionate about.

The truth is she just ‘stumbled’ on doing mosaic. “One day I just bought some tiles and made a mosaic. I enjoyed it and it was great fun and it came out nicely so I made another one,” she recalls, “I took one of them to be framed, big one. The guy at the framing art shop asked me if he could buy it because he wanted to make prints of it… That gave me the confidence… So I took it to one gallery and they took it in.”

The decoration of Merryl’s Mosaic is simple, but it sends out a feel of welcome and warmth. At first sight you may notice the mosaic in which three girls are in colourful long skirts, one is playing the piano and the other two playing the flutes. Then you start to surrender to the details of the work: the piano keyboard is flowing, the girls’ long hair floating in the air and their orange and naval blue high heels are exquisitely made. As you walk in, you’ll find yourself surrounded by a lot of unbelievably stunning mosaic artwork: from the skyline of Melbourne, Luna Park, a true-to-life head portrait of Audrey Hepburn, the hand of God, to a basketful of flowers and a snapshot of a leisurely balcony.

With soft light, lively music and a cup of coffee, Merryl turns her studio into a cozy home. She is seated, leaning forward to put on another shining piece of mosaic glass while sipping coffee. Rochel is putting glue on her board just opposite to Merryl, while Lynette is cutting the glass into tiny little pieces for her elf’s long ear. Sometimes they ask questions. Or Merryl walks around the room to see how everyone is going with their work. The sound of glass cutting is sharp, but somehow it doesn’t seem abrupt or harsh. Once in a while, another woman walks in, everyone greets her and Merryl gets all her stuff. “I could be expecting six people on one day, and three of those six don’t come, but another seven do. I never know. I don’t really mind, I’ve got the space,” Merryl explains with the trace of a smile.

Merryl love both interior design and mosaic. She is so proud when she recalls designing her Bayside Melbourne house by herself and winning the Victorian Home of the Year in 1999. With eyes sparkling, she says: “they came to video us and we were on national TV, it was like a big buzz. I just did it for fun and it was such a fun outcome… my family was famous for a few days. My kids just loved it. It just spurred me on, it was fun.”

Now her workshop has entered the third year, Merryl says she is quite happy with it. She finds mosaicking a niche because it is not only about making a mosaic; it’s really about feeling good. “Most people come to my workshop with no artistic experience, and they come here and make something rather beautiful, and they become very proud of themselves, their family become very proud of them.”

“What I am saying is that mosaicking is a very therapeutic experience too. People come here for three reasons: one, to make mosaic; two, to socialise. You know, you saw people become very friendly with each other; and three, to feel good about themselves. They feel good, they really do… I started doing it when my marriage was really bad, and I wasn’t happy, and it makes you feel happy. It’s not about being artistic, it’s about feeling good. That’s what special about it.”

The only next progression for Merryl is to slowly build up the glass fusing side of her business. “I realise that people like mosaicking like glass, if you can make a mosaic you can also fuse glass, so I bought some kilns to just do experiments. In a few years, I hope both my mosaic business and my glass-fusing business would be about the same size. But we’ll see.”

In Merryl’s Mosaic, the light music goes on while three hours have passed by. Somehow, like many students say, they get ‘addicted’ to it. Now some women are starting to clear up their stuff, from the cutter, glue, to all colourful pieces of mosaic glass. But more importantly, they are gathering up their thoughts, ideas, passion for their work and probably more than those and save them till the next time they return.

 

View Merryl Sacher’s Timeline here:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/merryl-sacher-1964

Slideshow: Merryl and some of her students’ mosaic work

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Indian & Chinese Cuisine? Try Spicy Dragon

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For many people, Indian and Chinese style cuisine seems an odd combination, but Spicy Dragon, a restaurant located close to Carnegie Station, has figured out a way to make it work. The name literally brings to mind really spicy Indian dishes, beckons food lovers to embark on a new adventure; while dragon, with its auspicious … Continue reading →

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