t was wonderful to return to the Council Chamber alongside my fellow councillors this month as we turn our focus towards a prosperous 2022 for our beautiful City.

It’s been a busy start to the year as we hosted our flagship event, St Kilda Festival. It was fantastic to see people safely gathering to enjoy live music and entertainment again with 50 bands showcased over six performance days.

We are proud to lead the charge to bring events and live music back to Melbourne after such a difficult time, and it is only natural for St Kilda to be first in line considering our long history as a home for live music and major events.

It was an honour to march through Fitzroy Street to take part in the annual Midsumma Pride March with our very own contingent, the Port Phillip Pride Squad.

Another successful Midsumma Festival saw 30 events hosted within our municipality, including our Pride flag raising ceremony, where we raised the Rainbow and Transgender flags at St Kilda Town Hall. The Rainbow flag flew high above our Town Halls in St Kilda, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne throughout the Midsumma Festival in a symbol of pride and inclusion.

Our Council has been, and will continue to be, a major supporter of the Midsumma Festival and all that it stands for in celebrating our LGBTIQA+ community.

Looking back over the summer period, our Summer Sessions programming has been a hit and we’ve received great feedback regarding the KIIS Ferris Wheel in Catani Gardens. We put forward these initiatives with the focus of getting people out and about in Port Phillip to reinvigorate our lively neighbourhoods and support our many traders.

As expected, the warmer weather brought more people to our City and our summer management program was well equipped to deal with larger crowds over a busy New Year’s period and Australia Day public holiday.

Thank you for helping play a part in a safe and successful summer period in Port Phillip.

In this month’s Divercity, you can learn more about our involvement in an e-scooter trial taking place across the Cities of Port Phillip, Melbourne and Yarra.

The use of these e-scooters comes with great responsibility as users are expected to obey Victoria’s Road Laws and I encourage a thorough inspection of the rules and regulations to ensure your e-scooter trip is taken with the utmost safety.

I trialled the new e-scooters first-hand to celebrate the opening of our new Garden City Bike Corridor in Port Melbourne and they are a nifty way to get around our City or just to get out and have some fun.

As usual, don’t hesitate to contact me with any feedback or ideas for our City.

Regards,

Cr Marcus Pearl
Mayor, City of Port Phillip

The City of Port Phillip website contains information on the history of Port Phillip. The following is an extract about the history of Port Melbourne

Port Melbourne was first called Sandridge after the ridge of sand dunes along the beach. In 1839 Wilbraham Frederick Evelyn Liardet arrived with his wife and family and set up home at the beachfront. Liardet has been called the father of Port Melbourne for his many innovative and entrepreneurial ventures which included building the first rudimentary jetty and providing a mail service to Melbourne from the port.

In 1850 the first land at Sandridge was sold, although the area had been surveyed as early as 1839. The most distinguishing feature of Sandridge at the time was the great saltwater lagoon as large as the settlement itself. The importance of Sandridge as the port for the metropolis was underlined when the first passenger railway in Australia was opened on September 12, 1854. It ran from Melbourne to Sandridge.

On 13 July 1860, after some agitation for self-government, Sandridge was proclaimed a municipal district. William Morley, a local coal merchant, became the first chair of the Council. Sandridge became a borough in 1863, and in 1884 changed its name to Port Melbourne. In 1893 Port Melbourne became a town and, on 14 May 1919, was proclaimed a city.

In June 1994 the City of Port Phillip was formed from the old municipalities of South Melbourne, St Kilda and Port Melbourne.

The first Council offices opened in 1861, located on the corner of Bay and Graham Streets, Port Melbourne. The first community hall was built in 1869 on the current site of the Port Melbourne Town Hall. In 1881 the addition of the grand building in front of the hall brought the council chambers and offices to the site.

Source: https://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/explore-the-city/history-and-heritage/port-phillip-history

Andrew Bond - wants to ensure that the City of Port Phillip focuses on its residents and businesses in an efficient and effective way in order to deliver the necessary services and facilities for our municipality.

Profile
I have been a Councillor at Port Phillip for eight years, with a strong business background across large and small businesses, and a hard-earned reputation for holding Council and its officers to account. I have a Business Degree and am a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Employment history
I am employed full time as a Business Development Manager for a consumer electronics company.

Council or local government committee experience
Councillor for Junction Ward 2012 to 2016. Councillor for Lake Ward 2016 to the present.

Political affiliations
I am a member of the Liberal Party.

Reasons for standing for Council
I want to ensure that the City of Port Phillip focuses on its residents and businesses in an efficient and effective way in order to deliver the necessary services and facilities for our municipality.

Objectives and priorities for your term
Lower rates and stronger financial management, restrained council spending, improved security on our streets, better amenity for local residents, appropriate development in our neighbourhoods, support for small business, a fairer parking system, and preserve open space and off-leash areas for dogs.

Favourite parts of our City
St Kilda Botanical Gardens, St Vincent Gardens, Acland Street and Fitzroy Street.

What sets our City apart from others in Australia
We have everything. Beaches, parks and gardens, great public transport and right on the doorstep of the city.

What are you most looking forward to as restrictions ease
A couple of beers at the St Kilda Bowls Club on a warm Friday evening.

Contact
Phone: 03 9209 6705
Mobile: 0481 034 028
Email: Andrew.Bond@portphillip.vic.gov.au

February feedback opportunities
We’ve got some new consultations coming online this month and we’d love your input. Visit Have Your Say and join the conversations in 2022.

Help shape . . . . Positive ageing
We’re developing a Positive Ageing Policy to guide future decisions about responding to the needs and aspirations of people aged 60 years and older. We want to hear about your experience and aspirations for positive ageing.

Events Strategy
Help us develop a new events strategy that delivers and attracts the best events, activates the right places and partners with the right organisations, to ensure our City continues to be welcoming, healthy, safe, and vibrant for all.

Reviewing how we manage waste in our city
Your feedback will help Council review its Don't Waste It! Waste Management Strategy 2018-28, which was developed to respond to both the challenges and opportunities presented by our rapidly growing City. Learn more about these challenges and opportunities, share your feedback and suggestions.

Visit Have Your Say and sign up to receive notifications of upcoming opportunities to provide feedback on the topics that matter to you.

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear brightly coloured T-shirts and collect rubbish. That’s the case for members of your local Beach Patrol and Love Our Street groups, who volunteer their time to help keep our streets, parks and beaches nice and tidy.

Founded in 2009, Beach Patrol is an organised network of volunteers who pledge one hour each month to sweep public spaces across Melbourne collecting rubbish to help keep the environment clean.

Beach Patrol groups started in Albert Park and now span from Rye to Geelong creating a chain of volunteer groups all dedicated to keeping Port Phillip Bay clean for marine life.

From plastic bags, bottles and straws, to cigarette butts, coffee cups and now face masks, volunteers go above and beyond to help look after the public spaces we all enjoy.

Ramona Headifen, treasurer for Beach Patrol Australia and co-leader for Port Melbourne’s Beach Patrol and Love Our Street groups, said: “We have a group for every beach in Port Phillip. The Council does a lot of cleaning, but you think, what else can I do as an individual and as a community member?

“It’s one of those problems where most people are aware of it, but until they look at it and see it, they don’t realise how big of a problem it is.

“We say many hands make light work. Picking up litter is something that almost anybody can do. It’s a problem that we as humans have created and I think it takes a community response to address it,” she said.

Port Phillip Council has always been a proud supporter of Beach Patrol and Love Our Street, whose members are easy to spot in their bright coloured shirts, many of which came thanks to various council grants over the years. 

Inspired by Beach Patrol’s initiative, Elwood resident Jill Sokol decided the same work could be applied to community streets and parks in a bid to prevent waste from reaching beaches and waterways.

From there, several Love Our Street groups were founded across Melbourne, with the City of Port Phillip being at the heart of this movement. Much like Beach Patrol, they meet once a month at one of their local streets for a clean-up before enjoying a coffee together.

“Typically, our groups meet for an hour each month in a location they might feel needs a bit of attention," Ms Sokol said.

“It’s very heartening to be involved with other people who not only share a concern for the environment about plastic pollution, but are also willing to take action."

Beach Patrol’s volunteers have been responsible for the collection of more than 100,000 kilograms of rubbish over nearly 50,000 hours of volunteering. The groups even use their own Litter Stopper App and conduct research into the types of litter that are most commonly found in our public spaces.

Beach Patrol and Love Our Street groups also take part in proactive measures to reduce littering by working with local schools to raise awareness of the litter problem and help educate students about reducing, reusing and recycling.

For more information on groups like Beach Patrol and Love Our Street in Port Phillip, visit our environmental community groups page.

We invited submissions from designers, artists, architects, sculptors and other creatives to think outside the box when submitting concepts for the Reimagine – Activation Design Competition. We have our winners - and they didn't disappoint.

Six $50,000 prizes were on offer to talented artists to design and deliver amazing activations across Port Phillip creating vibrancy and increased activity through creative use of public space.

The competition criteria provided plenty of scope for imaginative entries with a preference for interactive or tactile projects, made from recycled or sustainably sourced materials. After careful deliberation, we have selected six winners for the Reimagine competition. We received some fantastic applications and while it was not easy to choose the winners, we based our decision on how well they fit the brief and how we anticipate they will provoke interest, ignite conversation, engage pedestrian foot traffic and stimulate economic activity in our neighbourhoods. 

Our six winning entries are: 

• Drift by Ying-Lan Dann
• Call to Peace by Nina Sanadze
• Fairy by Jonathan Leahey
• W(e)aves of Colour byVillage Well
• Shifting Sand by EXCX and LIAN
• Screening by Office of Culture, Technology and Architecture (OCTA)
• Meet our winners
• Ying-Lan Dann

Ying-Lan Dann presents Drift. Inflatable ocean buoys are arranged into groups of 10 to 20 and will be distributed in two to three large public spaces. The integrated eyelet is threaded with marine grade cordage / cable to create a constellation of visually striking and thought provoking public seating. The spherical forms allow users to roll over, rest and interact with the buoys.

Nina Sanadze
Nina Sanadze’s Call to Peace is a socially engaged monument activating the site through weekly community workshops with the artist as well as musical performances. Replicating a historic monument with the same title and using scaffolding as a conceptual device questioning impermanence of monuments, this large sculpture will bring intrigue and excitement to the Clarendon Street, South Melbourne. Designed as a place of gathering and social discourse, this project employs music, humour and art to call for tolerance, empathy and peace in our often polarised society.

Jonathan Leahey
Jonathan Leahey's Fairy celebrates the smallest species of penguin - eudyptula minor, or Little Penguin, an aquatic flightless bird that lives on St Kilda’s foreshore. Fairy will be anything but a “little”. Standing at 500 cm and fabricated from 3 mm corten steel, Fairy will be an icon and place maker day and night, inspired by one of St Kilda’s least transient populations. Fairy will be one of the grandest, if not the biggest, penguin on the planet. This work is created in conjunction with the Bay Keeper, Neil Blake OAM, and is an origami representation of a Little Penguin.

Office of Culture, Technology and Architecture (OCTA)
Screening is a multimedia installation that uses material and technological devices to create a variety of conditions which interrogate notions of self-image and identity in contemporary society. The installation is an immersive passageway clad with a large digital screen and one-way mirror, charging the surrounding public space with a sense of intrigue and event. The work explores society’s fascination with self-image, which is primarily constructed and curated through interaction with screens, and how our engagement with screens is altering our relationship to ourselves, others, and the material world.

Village Well and Slow Art Collective
W(e)aves of Colour will introduce 'tactical urbanism' to our City. Similar to yarn bombing, a popular form of activism with the overall goal of covering urban objects with yarn, Village Well and Slow Art Collective aim to make a public statement by changing people’s way of looking at existing spaces by adding layers of colour and intricacies in a truly collaborative process.

W(e)aves of Colour will deliver a colourful and dynamic overhead art installation that will provide a virtual roof to Acland Plaza, effectively integrating a playful sense of human scale and creating an inviting and ‘instagramable’ place for resting, meeting and eating.

EXCX and LIAN
Shifting sand is a temporary installation made primarily of dyed sandbags, an immediately recognisable object associated with temporary infrastructure, weather emergencies and coastline reinforcement. The bags have a tactile woven surface quality and are firm, sturdy, and comfortable to sit on.

A rigidly geometric timber frame is counterposed with the fluid sandbag formation, creating uncertainty about whether the frame is holding the sandbags down or the sandbags are holding the frame up. Structurally, both are the case. This tells a story about the intertwined fates of the coastline and the built environment, one constantly moving, and the other designed not to.

The installation forms various intimate spaces, at the scale of a living room yet clearly oriented outwards towards the urban surroundings and welcoming curious passers-by. It is designed as a place for people to stop and sit, for children to explore, and for small groups to collect on and around. It aims to reactivate the linear reserve on Victoria Avenue, as a generous and playful installation that is also thoughtful, poetic and responsible.

Look out for these vibrant, interactive pieces being installed throughout our City over the coming months.
Find out more: Reimagine - Activation Design Competition - City of Port Phillip

Another successful St Kilda Festival has come and gone, but the music will live on thanks to St Kilda’s music history map.

The new mapping project will see footpath decals positioned outside eight historical venues along Fitzroy Street to Acland Street, recording our live music heritage and the places, bands and characters that have contributed to St Kilda’s history.

We have started by pinning some iconic places, together with a brief history of the site, images, and links to bands who played there. Brian Nankervis, Melynda von Wayward of Punk Journey, Kaye Blum and Rob Wellington have shared their stories and knowledge. 

Songs have been sung on this land for generations, led by First Peoples and joined by voices from many cultures. 

The map is a marker of what was and what is, encouraging people to delve deeper and to share their own experiences of all genres of music in the area.

Users can scan a QR code to learn more and see imagery from the Port Phillip City Collection. We encourage you to explore the trail in person and visit some of these landmarks – stop for a drink or meal and enjoy live music again.

We invite contributions, recollections and suggestions from our community – favourite gigs, the music of yesteryear, the places lost and the new ones we love.

The sites include:

• George/Seaview Hotel - Crystal Ballroom
• Prince of Wales Hotel
• Hotel Esplanade
• Wattle Path/Palais de Dance/St Moritz/Bananas
• Earl’s Court/The Venue
• Palais de Dance/ The Palace
• Palais Theatre
• Galleon/Galleone Lounge, 130 Acland Street 

This project delivers on Council’s Live Music Action Plan, and links in with art and heritage services programming and St Kilda Festival and Renew Fitzroy Street activities with further sites to be added.

For more information, including to view the map and add your own contributions, visit: St Kilda's music history map - City of Port Phillip

The Jewish Immersion Day program is a combination of engaging sessions with a diverse range of speakers and facilitators and includes a visit to the Jewish Museum of Australia and St Kilda Hebrew Congregation.

The program provides participants with helpful insights in order to develop a rich working understanding of the nuances of the Jewish community. The session covers a range of topics including the diverse demographics of the Jewish community in City of Port Phillip, history of the Jewish community in the area, Jewish traditions and practice, Jewish responses to local challenges, and the Jewish experience in 2021/22.

Visit this website for more information.

Celebrate the fascinating lives and history of notable women who have contributed to the St Kilda community.

This guided walk will be led by Marilyn Rudd and Meyer Eidelson as part of 

International Women's Day and Women's History month program.

The walk will start at St Kilda Light Rail Station, stop 132, Fitzroy Street and ends at Esplanade, St Kilda.

The guided walk is free with bookings required.

For more information, visit the booking website.

Image: Granny's Shop, The Esplanade, 1870. Port Phillip City Collection

A powerful and unfiltered exploration of the mother/daughter relationship, BETTY is the latest highly anticipated work by Elwood writer and social scientist, Jules Allen.

Largely autobiographical, unapologetic, and wonderfully amusing, this premiere season unravels the complex tale of a mother’s unresolved traumatic childhood, and the echoing impact on her daughter.

BETTY invites audiences on the journey as Lucy’s mother, Rose, succumbs to dementia and Lucy finds herself in the challenging position of trying to care for her. Weaving through an unpredictable landscape she is brought face-to-face with the harrowing nature of old age and decline, and the urgency this places on the many unanswered questions of the past.

City of Port Phillip residents can use the promo LOCAL to receive 20 per cent off all tickets.

Tickets: https://bit.ly/twbetty 

 Rising Sun Hotel

 Prince Bandroom

 Middle Park Hotel

 Prince Alfred

 Esplanade - St Kilda

 Inkerman Hotel

 George Lane

 Iddy Biddy

 Republica

 Cornerstone

 Jimmy ONeils

 Captain Baxter

 Palais Theatre

 Memo Music Hall

 Recital Centre Melbourne

 Alex Theatre - St Kilda

 Arts Centre - Melbourne

 Crown - Southbank

 Astor - St Kilda

 Palace Dendy - Brighton

 Classic - Elsternwick

 Hoyts - Docklands

 Palace - Brighton Bay

 Village - Jam Factory

 Whats On in Port Phillip

 Jewish Museum of Australia

 Whats On in St Kilda

 Gasworks

 Events @ South Melb Market

 Markets in the Area

 Australian Tapestry Workshop

 Middle Park Bowls Events