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INSIDE
PR OP ER TY
Over the moon By Jim Fagan
Fiona Groom’s paintings have landed on the moon.
Picture: ROB MACCOLL
Popular local artist Fiona Groom is still coming down to earth or, maybe more appropriately, she’s over the moon. The reason: A video of her in her studio starting and completing a painting of two emus is in the space capsule Odysseus which touched down last Friday on Malepart, a crater near the South Pole of the Moon. “I’m so excited. It’s like living in a sci fi movie but it’s real,” she told Noosa Today when we called the next day to congratulate her. Launched by NASA (the first US Moon landing in more than 50 years), Odysseus is the first in a series of time capsules to the moon and beyond. The series is called the Lunar Codex and, when completed, will contain the work of 30,000 artists, musicians, authors and other creatives from 157 different countries. U.S. astrophysicist and best-selling author Dr Samuel Peralta is the mastermind behind the project. He sees it as “a message in the bottle of the future.” So how did Fiona (63) and her emus merit space on the capsule? “Five years ago, a New South Wales artist, Graeme Stevenson, produced a documentary TV series called ‘Put Some Colour in Your Life’ featuring artists in their studios. “He came to my studio and while I talked to him, I created the painting. He also took some more images of my work. “I understand the series was distributed worldwide on TV and Foxtel to millions of viewers and featured and hundreds of artists, with film teams in Australia, New Zealand, USA and the UK. Continued page 3
Foreshores’ suffer By Margie Maccoll Noosa Council’s encroachment policy needs real teeth if it is to meaningfully address the continued damage caused by encroachment in our coastal foreshores, said Marcus Beach Bushcare Association past president Judy Tulloch in an address to Noosa Parks Association Friday Forum last week. Judy told a packed meeting that Council had recognised the extent of the problem but its local law applied only to vegetation damage and had insufficient ‘clout’ to deal with encroachments as defined in the Noosa Encroachment Policy. Council developed a separate policy (Noosa Encroachment Policy 2023) from the Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan (November
2021) and the Eastern Beaches Reserve Management Plan (August 2023) and the Noosa Encroachments Organisational Procedures 2023 guides the Councils management of encroachments into Council Reserves, parks and Council-managed land. “It clearly defines what constitutes an encroachment,“ Judy said. “What we need is a zero-tolerance of encroachments, strong compliance measures and action by Council to enforce compliance. Without clear and well-communicated strong local laws and compliance measures, some property developers or home owners may see paying a fine for damage to vegetation as a small cost for the perceived improvement to the value of a property.
“This has gone on for too long without many people in the wider community realising what is happening. It needs to be out in the open so that the people of Noosa understand why the Council must act now to stop any further damage to Noosa’s Reserves and public spaces.” Judy led a push for protection of nature reserves on the Eastern Beaches in 2022 when a petition was presented to Council. “A resident approached the association concerned about an encroachment, and hadn’t had a response from Council,“ she said. “When I went down to have a look I was really shocked at what I saw - 300sqm had been cleared from the dunal area over 18 months. “In May 2022 residents raised complaints
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with a huge garden that’d been built, trees cleared. “When we first looked into this we couldn’t understand why nothing was being done. We’re still in the same place. “In that petition we asked for this garden to be restored to its former state, and for that to be done at the expense of the owner, not the ratepayers. “Second thing we asked for was that Noosa takes a proactive zero tolerance approach to illegal appropriation of public land, degradation of public land through removal of native vegetation and unlawful dumping on public land. Continued page 6