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Chewton is surrounded by bush and the environment will rank highly among the concerns of its several hundred residents at the coming federal election.
For Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests president Marie Jones, those concerns are big picture and global as well as intimate and local.
“Weather patterns are changing and you’re starting to see the impacts on the bush,” Ms Jones said.
“Plants are operating in different ways – some are flowering earlier, others don’t flower at all one season they normally would or the birds come down from the mountains earlier than before.
“We can see it, and we want governments to recognise and act on climate change.”
Ms Jones said local landcare groups with which she was involved needed funding to operate. But also, she said, they needed information.
“That is all anecdotal – we need research and we need monitoring of the effects of climate change on biodiversity,” she said.
“We need that so that groups such of ours have the knowledge of how to properly manage the bush so you aren’t wasting people’s time or money.”
It isn’t just members of the local landcare groups who are concerned by environmental changes they are witnessing.
One of the country’s leading landscape painters, Jeff Makin, relocated to Chewton six-years ago and is now a member of a thriving community of local artists. Paintings from throughout central Victoria litter the walls of his cavernous studio.
“I’m 73 now – in my prime – and there are many places that I painted as a young artist which I’ve recently revisited,” Mr Makin said. “Places I painted 40 years ago which were wooded are now wood chipped, completely ravaged by logging on an industrial scale.
“So when you see your subject matter being raped and pillaged – quite apart from other environmental concerns that you might have – the more selfish side of you sees your landscape being ruined.
“I can see, within my lifetime, I’ll end up as a painter of still-life and portraits.”
While much of the logging of old-growth forest which fueled the painter’s rage occurred in Tasmania, he said he was equally concerned the local landscape be cared for.
“We are sitting in the middle of a landscape which has been completely reshaped by man, by the first bunch of gold miners who came through,” he said. “Their aesthetic was not an artistic one – it was a monetary aesthetic.
“But, as is often the way, nature corrects itself and you have these man-made phenomena completely remedied by natural growth.
“It is beautiful here.”
Digital lepers of central Victoria
The Red Hill Hotel opened one hour late on Thursday as owner Di Baird spent another afternoon grappling with her internet provider.
“I’m ready to kill someone!” the publican said.
Ms Baird has spent weeks trying to resolve a connection which vacillates between “patchy and non-existent”.
There has been plenty of time lost in that period. Countless phone-calls, including a two-hour call waiting stand-off. The 90-minute round trip to Bendigo made twice – once to pick-up an internet toggle, then to have the faulty equipment replaced.
There has been the impact on her business. On Thursday she had to cancel a delivery of kitchen utensils to make the latest trip to Bendigo.
There has been unforeseen financial side-effects. Unable to access her emails, she missed a reminder to make an insurance payment and was slugged a $350 late fee.
Then there is the infuriating knowledge that many people in-and-around Chewton are accessing high-speed internet.
Directly across Chewton’s main drag, David Cummings runs a conveyancing company from his home.
“Let’s see, 4.7 megabits per second … and that’s pretty standard,” Mr Cummings said.
“The internet is essential to my business – we closed our office in High Street, Northcote, to move up here for a tree change. Without good internet, that wouldn’t have been possible.”
The reason for Mr Cummings’ good fortune is that he has an ADSL2+ connection. Many others can’t access a port in the Castlemaine exchange – or aren’t located in a spot in which they could benefit from one.
“ADSL degrades the further you are away from an exchange,” Mr Cummings said. “I’m just at the point where it is almost too far.”
But though Mr Cummings is one of the ‘digital haves’ in Chewton for now, he too is concerned about ensuring the town has a high-speed future.
“Electronic conveyancing is being rolled out and, soon, we’ll be doing all our conveyancing electronically,” he said.
“So we will need NBN. And it’s up in the hills! In Chewton bushlands they have NBN but Chewton itself doesn’t … it’s like we’re digital lepers!”
NBN Co plans to connect Chewton via fibre-to-the-node by mid-2017.
Chat of Chewton: health and theatre
A fair chunk of Chewtonites visit the post office every week, if not daily.
“Do they stop for a chat?” licensee Robert Palmer laughed. “They certainly do.”
Which makes Mr Palmer a good person with whom to tap into the talk of the town. So what concerns him most in the lead up to the federal election?
“Health,” he said. “Access to services and the quality of service.
“Which I guess comes back to that old chestnut – funding.”
One local institution which recently received a funding shot-in-the-arm was Chewton Primary School, which was awarded $90,000 in the state budget.
In five years on the job, principal Julie Holden has grown the school from 19 to 64 students. She attributes that growth to restoring community faith in the school.
But even though it is thriving, Ms Holden said small schools were always in a precarious position.
“What we need is certainty of funding, that way we can employ staff permanently, not on contracts,” she said.