TUESDAY, 20 JANUARY, 2026
Garden takes root
Operations manager Jay Chen, with aged, general medicine and subacute divisional director Kellie Vivekanantham and nurse unit manager Alyssa Macandog. (Ljubica Vrankovic) 528152
The Sunshine Hospital dementia management unit has unveiled its new dementia-friendly garden which is designed to enhance wellbeing and comfort for patients who often have an extended stay in hospital. According to Western Health, the garden’s redesign seeks to minimise behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia such as agitation, anxiety, confusion, and aggression. Divisional director of aged, general medicine, and subacute services Kellie Vivekanantham said “We are incredibly grateful to Lendlease for enabling these vital improvements so we can provide a safe, welcoming, and fit-for-purpose space to support patients living with dementia and their carers, and loved ones during their stay.” The garden was designed utilising dementia friendly design principles, and features sensory plants, a new water feature and bird bath, a workshop and potting shed, clothesline, safer walking paths, a rain gauge and spaces for quiet reflection, activities and games, or family gatherings.
Bats in heat hell By Sam Porter At least 800 grey-headed flying foxes were recorded dead in Brimbank Park during an extreme heat event this month, with rescue volunteers and politicians saying lives could have been saved if the state government had coordinated a statewide emergency response plan. Temperatures climbed past 40 degrees on Wednesday 7 January, causing heat stress among the threatened bat species huddling in camps — tree patches where bats roost during the day. In the late afternoon, bats in Brimbank Park began dropping dead from severe heat exhaustion.
Head of volunteer wildlife rescue organisation Fly By Night Tamsyn Hogarth said bats were in the direct sun for up to four hours. “It just got too much for them so they started coming to ground. That’s when we started getting volunteers that were available to head straight there,” she said. Ms Hogarth said volunteers were horrified by what they saw. “[The bats] seek comfort when they’re dying so they all gravitate, start clumping on each other, and then they start suffocating. We try to prevent it getting to that point,” Ms Hogarth said. “When they start clumping on branches, branches can fall from the
weight as well and then they have crush injuries. “It was obviously very traumatising and horrible for those rescuers to just see mass deaths.” Bat deaths were exacerbated by a period of starvation due to an unusually cold and wet spring, according to Ms Hogarth. A week earlier, Ms Hogarth contacted the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), asking for a coordinated plan for land managers and volunteer organisations ahead of the extreme heat day. Under the Victorian Emergency Animal Welfare Plan, DEECA is responsible
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for planning animal welfare support services in emergency preparedness, response, relief and recovery. Ms Hogarth said that after a period of no response, DEECA announced at the last moment it had only enough resources to attend three bat camps across the state, leaving scores of others, including the Brimbank Park camp, without support. “I was just left pretty disappointed that there were no contingencies for this kind of situation; where [DEECA] have no resources to allow the volunteers to work with the land managers to get more resources in there,” Ms Hogarth said. Continued: Page 6
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