WeHo's first Wombat Crossing and painted bikelanes

Hi everyone

ICYMI, the latest Hobart City News features a photo of our new Wombat Crossing - it's on Hill Street, helping people cross safely from the pharmacy towards Lansdowne Crescent School.

This photo was taken on 8 Feb 2019, in the first week of school this year, when the school community organised a "Stride and Ride Day".  Kids, parents and teachers met at four gathering points around West Hobart and all walked and rode their bikes to school together.  It was great fun for the kids and helped them and their parents see how it might be possible to walk and ride to school without resorting to using cars.

For the first and second weeks of the school term, members of WHEN and other WeHo community members carefully observed the wombat crossing in the busy hour both before and after school.  We counted the numbers of children and adults using the crossing, and observed the behaviour of the drivers at this new road feature.

Our most important finding is that drivers are now braking and slowing down at this busy intersection, and courtesy towards pedestrians crossing the road was pretty good.  Pedestrians were becoming more confident through the period, and we thought that pedestrians choosing to cross at this corner might be increasing in number.  There is a new safer crossing point up at Hamilton Street as well, where the new "bus platform" is, and we saw lots of people crossing there as well.

Council will be engaging a consultant to do a formal evaluation of the safety improvements effected by the new road designs on Hill Street, and it will be interesting to see what they find. We hope that more wombat crossings will be installed around West Hobart to calm traffic further and make it safer for all of us to use the street.

Did you know that the works currently being undertaken on Lansdowne Crescent, between Alison and Warwick Streets, will also include a "raised threshold" on Poets Rd?  This will encourage cars exitting Poets Rd to slow down properly and will improve safety for children and adults crossing Poets Rd.

There are some new short stretches of on-road painted bikelane along Hill Street, and some mini bikelanes through the new improved pedestrian crossing points.  Riders have mixed views about such onroad painted bikelanes.  While it is nice to have an "invitation to ride", these bikelanes are actually located within the "dooring zone" i.e. where drivers tend to open their doors without looking to see if anyone is steaming up the road towards them first. 

If you're a driver, please make every effort to look carefully before opening your car door.  Because this sort of bikelane is not very safe for riders, some will choose to ride in the main traffic lane, especially if they are about to turn right, and some will choose to ride on the footpath.  So please don't be surprised about that.  

Gardening Notes - January

Dear gardening friends

I hope the Christmas and New Year period has been a restorative one for you, whatever your faith or world view. My facebook feed has been full of happy family scenes, though I know it is not always peace and joy in the bosom of the family!

It's been very productive in my garden, in the midst of the berry season, especially on the boysenberry front - summer puddings, red currant jelly, country wine fermenting away in the big jar on my kitchen table and a freezer bursting with frozen berries of all sorts. The scarlet runner beans are setting the the bright red flowers are quite a display in their own right. Tomatoes are swelling. All the chooks are laying. All seems well with the world while I'm in the garden.  I hope you are enjoying yourselves there too.

Thank you, as ever, to Greg S for the planting notes.

JANUARY	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
French Bush Beans (last chance)	x
Swedes (last chance)	x
Turnips		x	x	x
Shallots/Spring Onions	x	x
Lettuce (last chance to grow to decent size)	x	x	x
Cauliflower   P to G	x
Cabbage        P to G	x
Broccoli        P to G	x
Cabbage (direct seedlings small style cabbages)	x	x	x
Punnets
Cauliflower	x
Lettuce - last chance before winter	x	x

Best wishes

Margaret

Knocklofty - Hobart's Back Yard

Residents of Hobart love walking through the tall trees of Knocklofty Reserve, visiting the Frog Ponds, spotting mopokes and wallabies, and admiring the wattle trees in bloom. But there’s a lot more to Knocklofty than its natural beauty.

In the early days of European settlement, its boundaries reached much further, and its history is intertwined with the modern suburbs of Sandy Bay, South Hobart, West Hobart, North Hobart, Mount Stuart and Lenah Valley. Once a refuge for absconded convicts and a venue for fistfights and other dubious pastimes, Knocklofty yielded a bounty of timber, stone and brick that helped to build the Hobart of today.


Suzanne will be launching her new book, "Knocklofty - Hobart's Back Yard" on Monday 10th December,at the Forest Road end lookout on Knocklofty, at 6pm.

Locals are invited along to meet the author and hear some of her stories about Knocklofty and what it has meant to West Hobart residents over the years.

All welcome!

The book is also available from Fullers Bookshop.

Margaret's Gardening Notes - December

Dear gardening friends

More rain over night and my garden, overplanted as is my custom,  is a dense mass of green growth. I was half hoping for small plum and boysenberry crops this year but looks like bumper ones again. 

 

The front garden has been full of flowers - self-sown or perennial. I'm planting more salvias which are really sturdy and flower extravagantly. (I have a gorgeous purple salvia near my letter box if you are walking at the top of Goulburn St. It makes me happy!).

I'm off out to stake tomatoes and net the boysenberries.  I hope you are having fun in your gardens.

 

Here are Greg's notes for December in WeHo:

DECEMBER	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
Silverbeet - punnet, pot to ground, or direct seeding	x	x	x	x
Brussel Sprouts - punnet, pot to ground or direct seeding		x	x	x
Kale - punnet, pot to ground or direct seeding		x	x	x
Cabbage - punnet, pot to ground or direct seeding		x	x	x
Brocolli - for March		x	x
Swedes	x	x	x	x
Shallots/Spring Onions	x	x	x	x
Lettuce	x	x	x	x
Kohlrai	x	x	x	x
French Bush Beans	x	x	x	x
Climbing Beans - Last chance as on the limit.	x
Cauliflower		x	x	x
Sweetcorn - last chance as on the limit.	x

Punnets
Lettuce	x           x		x	x
Brocolli - punnets or pots for winter	x		x
Cabbage - punnets or pots for winter	x		x
Cauliflower - punnets or pots for winter		x	x

Margaret's Gardening Notes - October

Hello gardeners

October sneaked up on me!

Potatoes are in and some scarlet runner beans and tomatoes - both grown from seed saved from last year. I am going to try some purple sweetcorn this year - a heritage variety that is supposed to be a bit tolerant of cool weather. My seeds have come from Seed Freaks who are local seed folk - Google them.

The winter brassicas are extravagantly in flower, which I'm feeding to the chooks, who are all laying again, what little heroines! 

So here are Greg's WeHo planting notes for October.  Have fun!

 

OCTOBER	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
Beetroot - large direct sowing for winter Feb to Oct.				x
Carrot - large direct sowing for winter Feb to Oct.				x
Shallots/Spring onions	x	x	x	x
Sweetcorn - pregerminate then sow direct	x	x	x	x
Lettuce - Direct seeding and punnet to ground.	x	x	x	x
Runner Beans		x	x	x
French Bush Beans				x
Kohlrabi	x	x	x	x
Tomatoes - outdoors punnet to ground				x
Zucchini- pots to ground. Put juice bottle over plants		x	x	x
Cucumbers				x
- pregerminate then plant in glasshouse in protected area
Radish	x	x	x	x
Punnets
Lettuce	x	x	x	x
Basil	x	x
Leeks - for harvesting Feb to October. Plant a lot.	x	x	x
Zucchini - pregerminate and plant in pots in propagator.	x	x	x	x

Margaret

Town Hall Meeting - Tues 11 Sept - 5.30pm - 7pm

This public meeting will be an important opportunity to talk about what we, the people, can do when our elected politicians fail us.  Don't despair, come along and hear what good things are happening and how you can help!!!!!


If the print above is too small (!), try this:

CLIMATE - WHERE TO NOW? 

Now we have a Prime Minister who loves coal, an Energy Minister who hates wind turbines, an Environment Minister who was a mining company lawyer, no rational energy or climate policy and no chance of meeting our Paris commitments. And a climate that is moving towards human and natural disaster.

What should we be doing?!

Come share ideas. Learn what people are doing around Australia. Hear intelligent and insightful people. Take heart. Go home supported and fired up!

Speakers and panellists:

Professor John Church, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW - What science is telling us

Assoc. Professor Evan Franklin, Centre for Renewable Energy and Power Systems, UTAS - Into and out of the energy policy wilderness

Bill Harvey, Alderman, City of Hobart -, When the national government fails, what are state and local governments doing?

Bethany Koch, ACF community organiser - What is the strategy for the grassroots climate movement and what is already happening?

Student spokespeople - What we need and what we are doing

Q&A, discussion and information sharing.

Convened by
climateactionhobart@gmail.com.au
http://www.climateactionhobart.org/