Time of Ngoonungi
The Time of Ngoonungi - Murrai'yunggory — cool, getting warmer (September-October) in the D'harawal calendar of Indigenous Weather Knowledge begins this week. This is the time of the gathering of the flying foxes. A magical time of the year when the flying foxes gather in the darkening skies over D'harawal Lands. They come in from the north-east, the north, the north-west and the west, and swirl over the Sydney area in a wonderful, sky-dancing display just after sunset, before setting off for the night-time feeding grounds to the south.
It is also a very important ceremonial time for the D'harawals, which begins with the appearance of the splashes of the bright red Miwa Gawaian (Telopea speciosissima - waratah) in the bushland.
Waratah (Telopea speciosissima) photos by Selena Griffith - Residents do not state where they have seen these glorious flowers as there are people who come to pick them and steal them for profit. Native plants are protected in New South Wales by the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (BC Act). Under the BC Act it is an offence to pick, possess, buy or sell native plants listed in the Act for commercial purposes without a licence.
Visit: A Bunch Of Wildflowers: Historical Spring September Songs
The D'harawal Country and language area extends from the southern shores of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to the northern shores of the Shoalhaven River, and from the eastern shores of the Wollondilly River system to the eastern seaboard.
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Council's Crown Reserve Land Categorisation: Seeking Your Input
Submissions Close Sunday October 4th, 2020
Council are proposing land categories for 35 Crown reserves as part of an obligation under the Crown Land Management (CLM) Act 2016. The CLM Act legislates that we are required to manage Crown land in the same manner as Community land, in accordance with the Local Government Act 1993.
This is an initial land categorisation process and only relates to current/existing use. It does not propose any change of use for the subject Crown reserves or indicate desired future use.
How to have your say
Council would like your thoughts on their proposed categorisation of these reserves.
To make commenting easier, they've presented the Proposed Crown Reserve Land Categories here in an interactive PDF document. You can also download the whole document here.
If you prefer, you can share your feedback in the submission form or via email council@northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au.
Feedback is also accepted in writing marked 'Crown reserve land categorisation' PO Box 82, Manly NSW 1655.
A few tips to get you started:
- Do you know of other factors impacting on the categorisation of a particular reserve?
- If you think another category would be more suitable, please let us know why.
- Any proposed variation to land categories must be justified in line with the category objectives.
Following this process, Council can then prepare new or updated Plans of Management (PoM) for the affected reserves. The relevant community engagement requirements and process will be followed at that time.
Background
In NSW, Crown land is administered by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment in accordance with the Crown Land Management (CLM) Act 2016, which came into effect on 1 July 2018. Following an extensive review of how Crown land is managed, the CLM Act was passed in order to create a more simplified management structure.
The CLM Act requires Crown reserves managed by Council to be managed in line with the Local Government Act (LG) Act 1993 in the same manner as Council Community land. The transition requires the affected Crown reserves to be managed via a plan of management (PoM). The first step is to assign the appropriate land categories.
The transition to managing Crown reserves in accordance with the LG Act is to occur by June 30th 2021.
On June 23rd 2020 Council resolved to undertake community consultation on the proposed land categories. Comments will be reported back to Council with a recommendation, along with a summary of community feedback. The Minister will be notified of Council’s preferred categories and, following confirmation from the Minister, PoMs can be prepared.
Katandra Season 2020
Katandra Bushland Sanctuary on Lane Cove Rd Ingleside is now open every Sunday until October 25, 10am-4pm. Visitors to this lovely bushland have recently seen Powerful and Boobook Owls, Swamp Wallabies and Lyrebirds. Visitors, please make a small donation towards management of this Crown Land reserve. More details: http://www.katandra.org/home.htm
Several creeks flow down the escarpment - photo by Marita Macrae
Bushcare In Pittwater
Where we work Which day What time
Avalon
Angophora Reserve 3rd Sunday 8:30 - 11:30am
Avalon Dunes 1st Sunday 8:30 - 11:30am
Avalon Golf Course 2nd Wednesday 3 - 5:30pm
Careel Creek 4th Saturday 8:30 - 11:30am
Toongari Reserve 3rd Saturday 9 - 12noon (8 - 11am in summer)
Bangalley Headland 2nd Sunday 9 to 12noon
Bayview
Winnererremy Bay 4th Sunday 9 to 12noon
Bilgola
North Bilgola Beach 3rd Monday 9 - 12noon
Algona Reserve 1st Saturday 9 - 12noon
Plateau Park 1st Friday 8:30 - 11:30am
Church Point
Browns Bay Reserve 1st Tuesday 9 - 12noon
McCarrs Creek Reserve Contact Bushcare Officer To be confirmed
Clareville
Old Wharf Reserve 3rd Saturday 8 - 11am
Elanora
Kundibah Reserve 4th Sunday 8:30 - 11:30am
Mona Vale Mona Vale Beach Basin 1st Saturday 8 - 11am
Mona Vale Dunes 2nd Saturday +3rd Thursday 8:30 - 11:30am
Newport
Bungan Beach 4th Sunday 9 - 12noon
Crescent Reserve 3rd Sunday 9 - 12noon
North Newport Beach 4th Saturday 8:30 - 11:30am
Porter Reserve 2nd Saturday 8 - 11am
North Narrabeen
Irrawong Reserve 2nd Saturday 2 - 5pm
Palm Beach
North Palm Beach Dunes 3rd Saturday 9 - 12noon
Scotland Island
Catherine Park 2nd Sunday 10 - 12:30pm
Elizabeth Park 1st Saturday 9 - 12noon
Pathilda Reserve 3rd Saturday 9 - 12noon
Warriewood
Warriewood Wetlands 1st Sunday 8:30 - 11:30am
Whale Beach
Norma Park 1st Friday 9 - 12noon
Western Foreshores
Coopers Point, Elvina Bay 2nd Sunday 10 - 1pm
Rocky Point, Elvina Bay 1st Monday 9 - 12noon
Gardens And Environment Groups And Organisations In Pittwater
Morrison government plan to scrap water buybacks will hurt taxpayers and the environment
The Morrison government today declared it will axe buybacks of water entitlements from irrigators, placating farmers who say the system has damaged their livelihood and communities.
Instead, Water Minister Keith Pitt says the government will scale up efforts to save water by upgrading infrastructure for farming irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin.
The move will anger environmentalists, who say water buybacks are vital to restoring flows to Australia’s most important river system. It also contradicts findings from the government’s own experts this week who said farm upgrades increase water prices more than buyback water recovery.
The government has chosen a route not backed by evidence, and which will deliver a bad deal to taxpayers and the environment.
A Brief History Of Water Buybacks
Farmers along the Murray Darling are entitled to a certain amount of river water which they can use or sell. In 2008, the federal Labor government began buying some of these entitlements in an open-tender process known as “buybacks”. The purchased water was returned to the parched river system to boost the environment.
In 2012, the Murray Darling Basin Plan was struck. It stipulated that 2,750 billion litres of water would be bought back from irrigators and delivered to the environment every year. The buyback system was not universally supported – critics claim buybacks increase water prices, and hurt farmers by reducing the water available for irrigation.
The Coalition government came to office in 2013 and adopted a “strategic” approach to water buybacks. These purchases were made behind closed doors with chosen irrigators.
In a review of these buybacks released last month, the Australian National Audit Office found many of these taxpayer-funded deals were not good value for money.
The federal government ordered the review after controversy involving the 2017 purchase of water from two Queensland properties owned by Eastern Australia Agriculture.
The government paid A$80 million for the entitlements – an amount critics said was well over market value. The deal was also contentious because government frontbencher Angus Taylor was, before the purchase, a non-financial director of the company. The company also had links to the Cayman Islands tax haven.
Infrastructure Subsidies: A Flawed Approach
The Coalition government is taking a different approach to recover water for the environment: subsidising water infrastructure on farms and elsewhere. This infrastructure includes lining ponds and possibly levees to trap and store water.
The subsidies have cost many billions of dollars yet recover water at a very much higher cost than reverse tenders. This approach also reduces the water that returns to streams and groundwater.
Read more: Australia, it's time to talk about our water emergency
The justification for water infrastructure subsidies is that they are supposedly less damaging to irrigation communities. But the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) concluded in a report published this week that on-farm water infrastructure subsidies, while beneficial for their participants, “push water prices higher, placing pressure on the wider irrigation sector”. This is the very sector the subsidies purport to help.
So why would the government expand the use of water infrastructure when it costs more and isn’t good value for money? The answer may lie in this finding from the ABARES report:
Irrigators who hold large volumes of entitlement relative to their water use (and are frequently net sellers of water allocations) may benefit from higher water prices, as this increases the value of their entitlements.
Farmers with limited entitlement holdings however may be adversely affected, as higher water prices increase their costs and lowers their profitability.
In other words, the “big end of town” benefits – at taxpayers’ expense – while the small-scale irrigators lose out.
Missing Water
Adding insult to injury, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists released a detailed report this week showing the basin plan is failing to deliver the water expected, even after accounting for dry weather. Some two trillion litres of water is not in the rivers and streams of the basin and appears to have been consumed – a volume that could be more than four times the water in Sydney Harbour.
The Wentworth Group says stream flows may be less than expected because environmental water recovery has been undermined by “water-saving” infrastructure, which reduces the amount of water that would otherwise return to rivers and groundwater.
This infrastructure, on which taxpayers have spent over A$4 billion, has not had the desired effect. Research has found those who receive infrastructure subsidies increased water extractions by more than those who did not receive subsidies. That’s because farmers who were using water more efficiently often planted thirstier crops.
We Deserve Better
It’s clear taxpayer dollars are much better spent buying back water entitlements, through open tenders, rather than subsidising water infrastructure. We can, and must, do much better with water policy.
Today, the federal government has doubled down on wasteful spending at taxpayer expense – in a time of a COVID-induced recession.
So what is on offer from the Morrison government? Continuing to ignore its own experts’ advice and delivering yet more ineffective subsidies for water infrastructure. Our rivers, our communities, and all Australians deserve much better.
Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
New research reveals these 20 Australian reptiles are set to disappear by 2040
Action came too late for the Christmas Island forest skink, despite early warnings of significant declines. It was lost from the wild before it was officially listed as “threatened”, and the few individuals brought into captivity died soon after.
Australia is home to about 10% of all known reptile species — the largest number of any country in the world. But many of our reptiles are at risk of the same fate as the Christmas Island forest skink: extinction.
In new research published today, we identified the 20 terrestrial snakes and lizards (collectively known as “squamates”) at greatest risk of extinction in the next two decades, assuming no changes to current conservation management.
While all 20 species meet international criteria to be officially listed as “threatened”, only half are protected under Australian environmental legislation— the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. This needs urgent review.
Many of these reptiles receive little conservation action, but most of their threats can be ameliorated. By identifying the species at greatest risk of extinction, we can better prioritise our recovery efforts — we know now what will be lost if we don’t act.
Six Species More Likely Than Not To Go Extinct
Our research team — including 27 reptile experts from universities, zoos, museums and government organisations across the country — identified six species with greater than 50% likelihood of extinction by 2040.
This includes two dragons, one blind snake and three skinks. Experts rated many others as having a 30-50% likelihood of extinction over the next 20 years.
More than half (55%) of the 20 species at greatest risk occur in Queensland. Three live on islands: two on Christmas Island and one on Lancelin Island off the Western Australian coast.
Two more species are found in Western Australia, while the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and New South Wales each have one species.
Read more: Australia's smallest fish among 22 at risk of extinction within two decades
Each of the 20 species at greatest risk occur in a relatively small area, which partly explains the Queensland cluster — many species in that state naturally have very small distributions.
Most of the top 20 occupy a total range of fewer than 20 square kilometres, so could be lost to a single catastrophic event, such as a large bushfire.
So Why Are They Dying Out?
Reptile species are declining on a global scale, and this is likely exacerbated by climate change. In Australia, where more than 90% of our species occur nowhere else in the world, the most threatened reptiles are at risk for two main reasons: they have very small distributions, and ongoing, unmitigated threats.
The Cape Melville leaf-tailed gecko meets this brief perfectly. This large and spectacular species was only discovered in 2013, on a remote mountain range on Cape York. It’s threatened by virtue of its very small distribution and population size, and by climate change warming and drying its upland habitat.
Habitat loss is also a major threat for the top 20 species. Australia’s most imperilled reptile, the Victoria grassland earless dragon, used to be relatively common in grasslands in and around Melbourne. But the grasslands this little dragon once called home have been extensively cleared for agriculture and urban development, and now cover less than 1% of their original extent.
Little Conservation Attention
For most reptile species, there has been less conservation work to address the declines, partly because reptiles have historically received less scientific attention than birds or mammals.
We also still don’t fully understand just how many species there are in Australia. New reptile species are being scientifically described at an average rate of 15 per year (a higher rate than for other vertebrate groups) and many new reptiles are already vulnerable to extinction at the time of discovery.
To make matters worse, few reptiles in Australia are well-monitored. Without adequate monitoring, we have a poor understanding of population trends and the impacts of threats. This means species could slip into extinction unnoticed.
Reptiles also lack the public and political profile that helps generate recovery support for other, (arguably) more charismatic Australian threatened animals — such as koalas and swift parrots — leading to little resourcing for conservation.
Lessons From The Past
Only one Australian reptile, the Christmas Island forest skink, is officially listed as extinct, but we have most probably lost others before knowing they exist. Without increased resourcing and management intervention, many more Australian reptiles could follow the same trajectory.
But it’s not all bad news. The pygmy bluetongue skink was once thought to be extinct until a chance discovery kick-started a long conservation and research program.
Animals are now being taken from the wild and relocated to new areas to establish more populations, signifying that positive outcomes are possible when informed by good science.
And the very restricted distributions of most of the species identified here should allow for targeted and effective recovery efforts.
By identifying the species at greatest risk, we hope to give governments, conservation groups and the community time to act to prevent further extinctions before it’s too late. Neglect should no longer be the default response for our fabulous reptile fauna.
Read more: A hidden toll: Australia's cats kill almost 650 million reptiles a year 
Hayley Geyle, Research Assistant, Charles Darwin University and David Chapple, Associate Professor in Evolutionary and Conservation Ecology, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan Review
The Australian and Queensland governments are reviewing the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, also known as the Reef 2050 Plan. This plan is Australia’s long-term strategy to protect and manage the Great Barrier Reef.
The plan sets clear actions, management goals, objectives and outcomes. These drive and guide the short, medium and long-term management of the reef.
The review and drafting of the updated Plan is being conducted by:
- Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment
- Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
- Queensland Government Office of the Great Barrier Reef.
Scope of the review
The 2020 Review is the plan’s first 5-yearly review. The Federal Government would like to hear your thoughts on the:
- outcomes, objectives and management goals of the plan
- priority work areas
- strategic actions that deliver outcomes for the Reef.
The Government are seeking your views on the updated Reef 2050 Plan to ensure it contains the right priorities and actions to support the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef.
Share your feedback
You can now provide feedback. Your input will help us update the plan.
To have your say:
- read the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan Public Consultation Draft
- read the Reef 2050 Objectives and Management Goals
- read the fact sheet
- take the survey now
Submit your feedback by 11.59pm AEST Wednesday 30 September 2020.
Limeburners Creek National Park, Goolawah National Park And Goolawah Regional Park: Public Consultation
Planning for the future –NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is preparing a new plan of management for Limeburners Creek National Park, Goolawah National Park and Goolawah Regional Park.
These parks are in the traditional Country of the Dunghutti and Birpai Aboriginal Peoples. The parks play a fundamental role in the lives of local Aboriginal people, helping to maintain a tangible link to the past and enabling continued connections to Country.
The existing plan of management for Limeburners Creek National Park was written in 1998. The areas that are now Goolawah National Park and Goolawah Regional Park were formerly Goolawah State Park and Crown land. Initial community consultation about the Goolawah parks was undertaken in 2012, soon after they were transferred to National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Since this time large new areas have been added to the parks, including the intertidal zone on some of the beaches. There has also been a steady increase in visitors, and new recreational uses have become popular. Information about the values of the park has improved and new approaches to managing fire, pests and weeds have been developed.
Accommodating all of these visitors, maintaining the unique visitor experience and protecting the environment is challenging. Good planning is essential to manage increasing demand and provide sustainable visitor facilities and opportunities while minimising impacts and retaining the natural and low key nature of this beautiful stretch of coast. The development of a new combined plan of management will help to protect the parks' unique values and improve the effectiveness of how we manage the parks.
What opportunities will the community have to contribute to the development of a new plan of management?
Previous consultation, including a community forum, identified a range of issues important to the local community which will be considered in the new plan. It is now time to reach out and reconnect with our neighbours, stakeholders and local communities, as well as extending the invitation to the wider community of park users.
There are now 2 opportunities to be involved in the development of the plan of management for Goolawah Regional Park and Goolawah and Limeburners Creek national parks:
- During the development of the draft plan - register your interest below to receive updates and be notified of further consultation dates. Complete the form to provide your ideas on what you believe are the most important values of the parks and how they should be managed in the future. Your input will be used to draft a plan that reflects community values and aspirations.
- During public exhibition of the draft plan - there will be another opportunity to have your say when the draft plan of management is completed and put on public exhibition for 90 days. Anyone can submit comments on the draft plan during this time.
Register your interest
Complete the online form here to register your interest, provide initial input and be notified of further consultation dates. Tell us what is important to you about the parks and what you would like to see in the future. Comments close 30 October 2020.
Limeburners Creek National Park, Goolawah National Park and Goolawah Regional Park engagement map Photo: DPIE
Echidna Season
Echidna season has begun. As cooler days approach, our beautiful echidnas are more active during the days as they come out to forage for food and find a mate. This sadly results in a HIGH number of vehicle hits.
What to do if you find an Echidna on the road?
- Safely remove the Echidna off the road (providing its safe to do so).
- Call Sydney Wildlife or WIRES
- Search the surrounding area for a puggle (baby echidna). The impact from a vehicle incident can cause a puggle to roll long distances from mum, so please search for these babies, they can look like a pinky-grey clump of clay
What to do if you find an echidna in your yard?
- Leave the Echidna alone, remove the threat (usually a family pet) and let the Echidna move away in it's own time. It will move along when it doesn't feel threatened.
If you find an injured echidna or one in an undesirable location, please call Sydney Wildlife on 9413 4300 for advice.
www.sydneywildlife.org.au
Lynleigh Greig, Sydney Wildlife, with a rescued echidna being returned to its home
New Shorebird Identification Booklet
The Migratory Shorebird Program has just released the third edition of its hugely popular Shorebird Identification Booklet. The team has thoroughly revised and updated this pocket-sized companion for all shorebird counters and interested birders, with lots of useful information on our most common shorebirds, key identification features, sighting distribution maps and short articles on some of BirdLife’s shorebird activities.
The booklet can be downloaded here in PDF file format: http://www.birdlife.org.au/documents/Shorebird_ID_Booklet_V3.pdf
Paper copies can be ordered as well, see http://www.birdlife.org.au/projects/shorebirds-2020/counter-resources for details.
Download BirdLife Australia's children’s education kit to help them learn more about our wading birdlife
Shorebirds are a group of wading birds that can be found feeding on swamps, tidal mudflats, estuaries, beaches and open country. For many people, shorebirds are just those brown birds feeding a long way out on the mud but they are actually a remarkably diverse collection of birds including stilts, sandpipers, snipe, curlews, godwits, plovers and oystercatchers. Each species is superbly adapted to suit its preferred habitat. The Red-necked Stint is as small as a sparrow, with relatively short legs and bill that it pecks food from the surface of the mud with, whereas the Eastern Curlew is over two feet long with a exceptionally long legs and a massively curved beak that it thrusts deep down into the mud to pull out crabs, worms and other creatures hidden below the surface.
Some shorebirds are fairly drab in plumage, especially when they are visiting Australia in their non-breeding season, but when they migrate to their Arctic nesting grounds, they develop a vibrant flush of bright colours to attract a mate. We have 37 types of shorebirds that annually migrate to Australia on some of the most lengthy and arduous journeys in the animal kingdom, but there are also 18 shorebirds that call Australia home all year round.
What all our shorebirds have in common—be they large or small, seasoned traveller or homebody, brightly coloured or in muted tones—is that each species needs adequate safe areas where they can successfully feed and breed.
The National Shorebird Monitoring Program is managed and supported by BirdLife Australia.
This project is supported by Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority and Hunter Local Land Services through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program. Funding from Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and Port Phillip Bay Fund is acknowledged.
The National Shorebird Monitoring Program is made possible with the help of over 1,600 volunteers working in coastal and inland habitats all over Australia.
The National Shorebird Monitoring program (started as the Shorebirds 2020 project initiated to re-invigorate monitoring around Australia) is raising awareness of how incredible shorebirds are, and actively engaging the community to participate in gathering information needed to conserve shorebirds.
In the short term, the destruction of tidal ecosystems will need to be stopped, and our program is designed to strengthen the case for protecting these important habitats.
In the long term, there will be a need to mitigate against the likely effects of climate change on a species that travels across the entire range of latitudes where impacts are likely.
The identification and protection of critical areas for shorebirds will need to continue in order to guard against the potential threats associated with habitats in close proximity to nearly half the human population.
Here in Australia, the place where these birds grow up and spend most of their lives, continued monitoring is necessary to inform the best management practice to maintain shorebird populations.
BirdLife Australia believe that we can help secure a brighter future for these remarkable birds by educating stakeholders, gathering information on how and why shorebird populations are changing, and working to grow the community of people who care about shorebirds.
To find out more visit: http://www.birdlife.org.au/projects/shorebirds-2020/shorebirds-2020-program
“Great White Sighting In Pittwater”: Art By Sea
(about: Art by Sea celebrates our natural environment with sustainable art by locals). Take a stroll along the pathway from Bayview to Church Point and cast your gaze further afield.
Visit: https://www.instagram.com/artbyseaau - more soon!
Governor's Best Wishes For HSC Students
Students To Help Shape Future Of Education
Olympians Empower Mental Health With Wellbeing Week
Opportunity: Students Encouraged To Apply For Award In Fisheries Conservation Research
Competing in Birmingham, live from Mount Druitt: how hip hop moved online under COVID-19
In the South Bronx of New York City, in the early-to-mid 1970s, block parties started to incorporate much of the artistic elements of hip hop as we know it today.
On the streets between their apartment buildings, young African-American, Caribbean and Latino people would gather at parties in which graffiti art, breaking, DJing and rapping were taking place.
These block parties, writes American studies scholar George Lipsitz, were “an attempt to channel the anger of young people in the South Bronx away from gang fighting”. They would become a positive social, cultural and political force for many young people and their communities.
By the mid-1980s, hip hop had hit the mainstream with a force. Today, it is one of the most popular musical genres in the world. During the coronavirus pandemic – and with the resulting high unemployment, disruption to education, restricted travel and lockdown – hip hop has again become a vital outlet for many young people.
Instead of dancing on the streets, they are now performing online and across the world.
Connecting Online
As hip hop music and dance artists tend to gather in public places, the pandemic and lockdowns have heavily restricted these kinds of events. Many hip hop artists - both in Australia and internationally - have taken to social media to voice their frustration and disappointment with feeling cut off from this community.
Artists responded to the early stages of the pandemic by moving online. Zoom, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube provided a much needed social and creative outlet.
In July, Melbourne hip hop dancer Nadiah Biddle started running an online “Krump Dance” program for women. Krumping started in Los Angeles in the 1990s, and is now recognised for its expressive, exaggerated, and highly energetic movements.
Attracting dancers from across Australia and New Zealand through Zoom video-conferencing calls, Biddle teaches the basics of Krumping and leads students through choreography.
“The vibes have been really high”, says Biddle.
“The ladies have expressed to me that they feel so much more uplifted [after dancing] and that they always look forward to the classes.”
Sydney dancer Lowe Napalan recently won the The B-Side Hip Hop Festival organised by the Break Mission crew in the UK.
The annual festival takes place at Birmingham’s Hippodrome Theatre, but during the pandemic it moved online for the first time – opening up the competition to international artists like Napalan. He competed from the comfort of his own home in Mount Druitt via Instagram live.
Although he was on the other side of the world, Napalan says he had a real feeling of belonging in the event, just as if they had all been in the same room.
He set up his laptop in the living room to watch the other competitors and to film himself. It was a little strange, he says, because the music had to come through the laptop speakers, and there was some internet lag during some moments of the competition.
Nonetheless, it he found it amazing to compete on the international stage with some of the top breakers in the world.
The move online hasn’t just been for professionals. The Perth City Breakers, a collective of hip hop dance teachers and performers from Perth, started a hip hop dance podcast featuring local performers and an online training program for absolute beginners, giving people a new way to stay fit under lockdown.
A Global Artform
Hip hop is ever-changing, dynamic and globally diverse. While graffiti art, breaking, DJing and rapping are often recognised as being the forms core artistic elements, the label is much more expansive than that.
It encompasses a wide range of different musical and artistic practices, all of which are able to be expressed and transformed in ways that are local and unique.
Read more: Aboriginal hip-hop meets Iranian diaspora in a cross-border rap
In late July, for instance, Soundz of the South, a hip hop music collective based in Khayelitsha, South Africa, organised an open-mic event called Rebel Sistah Cypher. Eight South African hip hop music artists and poets each performed on a Zoom call live-streamed on the group’s Facebook page to raise money for Wave of Hope, a charity that supports refugees and asylum seekers living in overcrowded camps in Lesbos, Greece.
Hip hop is the representative voice of many young people, since the culture was created by and for them. It is a uniquely malleable, dynamic and empowering artform – and its adaptation to the pandemic is especially vital given creative outlets are so important for well-being.
Lucas Marie, Early career researcher, Curtin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
‘Help Harvest NSW' Launched To Help Secure Ag Workers To Bumper Harvest
Farmers will be able to capitalise on what is predicted to be the best harvest in many years, with the launch today of a new one-stop resource which will help the agriculture industry overcome a COVID-induced labour shortage and get unemployed Australians into critical work.Avalon Public School Supporting Cobargo Public School
Cobargo Public School is at the centre of a community that sustained significant losses during the bushfires in late December 2019 and early January 2020.
Avalon PS would like to help Cobargo Public School to support its community by raising money for them to build some gardens and attractive play areas for the students to enjoy.
A mufti day will be held on Tuesday 8 September. Avalon students are invited to wear blue, as this is the colour of the Cobargo school uniform, and donate gold coins or "fivers for the fires".
Money raised will go directly to Cobargo Public School to assist them with their gardening and landscaping projects.
On Saturday two students from this school were singing songs down in the village to raise more funds - well done and thank you.
What a great initiative from a great school!
New Playground and a Tips from an Olympic Basketball Legend
In other Avalon PS news their new soft-fall playgrounds have been completed and will open Monday - yay - looks fantastic!
The school has also had a visit from Olympic basketball giant Brad Dalton this week to give them some great tips on a great game - Brad is a local player through and through - regular Readers will have seen some of the local basketball activities he has sent through in past years for you to get involved in this sport at Warriewood.
Brad started his playing days on the Northern Beaches where he played for Manly. He donned the NSW and Australian colours when he was selected in the respected Under 20’s teams.
Brad was a long servant in our national league, playing a mammoth 290 games with City of Sydney Astronauts, West Adelaide Bearcats, Sydney Supersonics, Geelong and Sydney Kings.
In 1978, he had the chance to travel the world with the Australian Junior Men’s team. He also took his talents to Europe where he played with and against some of the best.
He didn’t have to wait long for the Australian selectors to realise that he had immense talent. Brad was selected in the 1981 team due to some enormous performances in the lead-up to the Olympic Games.
Playing in the Olympics, the pinnacle of sport events, was always his number one goal and he had the opportunity to do so in 1984 at the Los Angels games and again in 1988 at Seoul.
Brad’s passion for the game of basketball has kept him in the sport following his playing career. Since stepping down from being a player, he has concentrated on his coaching of juniors, mainly through his involvement with schools, and at Warriewood as already said, and the Manly -Warringah Basketball Association.