Speeding danger on Mathoura
Dear Echo News,
Both my husband and myself have been living a nightmare on Mathoura Street with cars racing and cars parking on people’s verges.
It seems over 60 people I’ve spoken to in our street feel the same, but there is no help whatsoever. We pay our rates too. We were promised a roundabout, as this will slow the speeding down.
What a joke. Yes the roundabout has been built, I for some weeks thought it wasn’t being finished off yet; it is so ridiculously small it’s a joke. Children use the hump to run over, cars just drive over it.
I was told our street was too narrow to build a bigger one, but I’ve checked and there are proper roundabouts on Hooley Road looking East to Ferguson, Wellaton, Ewart and Bushby, all streets that are the same width as Mathoura.
Of the residents of Mathoura, 60 per cent of us are ratepayers and are really tired of how we are being treated.
G Walsh
Midland

Lack of comms is a problem
Dear Echo News
The fellow who wrote the novel of that name (“They’re a weird mob”) about Australians, I think in the 1950s, wasn’t wrong, was he?
And the story ‘Poste Café owners explain their decision’ ( Echo News, June 7) about the closure of Poste Café in Guildford simply confirms that business and bureaucracy too often refuse to communicate with each other.
The owners of the now closed café business appear miffed that they might be asked to jump through a few hoops – so they shut-up shop, while the City of Swan apparatchiks seem to have refused to communicate effectively with one of their ratepayers.
What a pity. I call it “munication” when two parties refuse to either speak or listen to each other…taking the “co” out of it completely.
The real pity is those previously employed at the Poste Café no longer have jobs and we who patronised the business (it was one of the best cafes east of the city!) were completely ignored.
Shame on both parties. You both need your bottoms smacked!
P Carman
Hovea

Concern over lake danger
Dear Echo News,
The west bank of Lake Leschenaultia is currently darkly dangerous for young children and the elderly, to swim in.
In the water, the yellow sand is ok to stand on but the dark patches, exposed by the lowered water level, are lethal. Most of these dark patches are not weeds but are pockets of ‘quicksilt’; which is black silt that acts like quicksand; your feet sink into the silt until they reach the ground, but then the silt acts with suction to make it difficult to pull your feet out again.
Your feet feel like they are glued to the ground and so it is impossible to shift your feet to balance yourself.
Experiencing this as an elderly person I felt real fear as I struggled to mainain balance to keep upright. I had real difficulty in pulling my feet out of the quicksilt. If I had fallen over at the wrong angle, I might not have had the strength to get myself up before drowning.
Since then, I have been imagining what it would be like for a young child to step into one of those patches of quicksilt. The quicksilt would come up far higher than their calves, and as soon as they toppled over, their head would be below water and they would have zilch chance of getting up again.
It could happen so fast the child could disappear under water without anyone noticing.
As an eco-scientist with much experience and knowledge of Lake Leschenaultia, on which I grew up, and on which I have mentored research studies, I recognised the lake is finally ‘eutrophifying” - which means the clear water will turn swampy - and I know why, and how to solve the problem.
So I took my case to the Mundaring Shire Council by presenting a ‘question’ during question time, at the mid-April monthly council meeting. I spent the three minutes allotted, to make a question making my case that Lake L is eutrophifying, which is causing danger, and I could do a study to prove it and solve the problems. The response was positive; yes, I could go ahead and organise a study.
With dismay I realised I had gone about things the wrong way. I had not conveyed the immediate danger. The danger needs to be urgently addressed, not wait until I have organised a study! In the meantime, a toddler especially, could drown.
I am writing to the Echo in the hope of getting the warning info out faster, and I am contacting the shire with more detail. My hope is that the shire will actually close off the west shore for swimming while implementing two measures for making the lake clearer and safer for swimming. Let’s hope the council acts quickly to resolve the quicksilt danger in Lake Leschenaultia.
S Braun
Mundaring