Category: General news

West End businesses have significant levels of support when it comes to interfacing with government.

The West End Traders Association is a group of local businesses, mostly retailers in the strip shopping centres of 4101, banding together to support, organise and benefit from local activities. They meet at the Croquet Club in Musgrave Park on the 1st Thursday of the month. Westender is a long term member of the association. Founding editor, Kerrod Trott is a past president of the association,

Business South Bank has the tag line, well connected and lives up to its name, catering for the engineering firms, big hotels and glamourous businesses of South Bank. It provides a range of opportunities to network, lobby and promote the precinct between the river and the rail line to the rest of Brisbane.

There are three classes of membership starting with Bronze membership for businesses who rent their premises and have less than ten employees. Fees are available on application.

South West Chamber of Commerce services businesses between the River and the SE Motorway as far south as Acacia Ridge. Focused on small to medium enterprise (SME) it has sister relationships with international chambers such as the Philipine Australia Chamber of Commerce and the Hong Kong Australia Business Associations; as well as local groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland and West End Traders Association.

Annual fees start at $165 per annum for a business membership. Westender is a season sponsor of the Chamber and regularly covers the Chamber’s business breakfasts.

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland offers considerable depth of resources including advice on Industrial Relations, Occupational Health and Safety and other regulatory and compliance issues. Their motto is powering business potential and they hold regular city-based training and seminars.

Entry fees depend on the number of employees and start at $360 a year for companies with less than four employees.

The Brisbane City Council offers a range of services to small business, including the Lord Mayor’s Business Forums and the Digital Brisbane hub to help business in Brisbane take advantage of online services. Lord Mayor Quirk has outlined a range of services provided by the Council for business, but there is not a single point of entry into council for business services. The various Chambers of Commerce offer a valuable service in providing this interface.

The Queensland Government operates a portal business.qld.gov.au which provides a neat interface to its range of services for business. One of the services available here is an Australian Business Account which provides a one stop local, state and federal government advisory service for business. This is a real boon for business and well worth the rather small amount of effort required to get on board.

Clive Palmer ran his election campaign on a Mister Nice Guy platform that failed to mention one of the biggest environmental battles of our time, the coal miners versus the farmers and environmentalists in the Galilee Basin.

Palmer’s vast China First coalmine was given clearance to go ahead by the Newman government during the election campaign. Now the federal environment minister has the right to sign off on the project.

It is only one of a number of coal mines in the Galilee Basin, however.

Gina Rinehart’s Alpha Coal is in court this week to argue against Coast and Country Association of Queensland’s objections that the impact on water has not been properly assessed.

Local farmers and community group Coast and Country Association of Queensland claim that the evidence for impact on water has been swept under the carpet and only  the “best case scenarios” presented as likely outcomes of the mine impact. The objections will be presented to the court by a Melbourne-based QC, who has given his time for free (no Queensland barrister was prepared to put their neck on the line opposing coal mining companies).

You have the chance to get involved in this court action along with hundreds of other opponents of the expansion of coal mines at the expense of farm land and water this Wednesday,

When: Meet 9AM sharp, Wednesday the 18th September. Stay longer to hear landholders giving evidence in the court room from 10AM.
Where:  Meet Outside the Land Court of Queensland, 363 George St, Brisbane CBD
What: A respectful but playful act of solidarity with the landholders and other objectors to the Alpha mine to help attract media attention and show landholders our support.
Dress smart. Whether you’ll be attending the court hearing afterwards or not.

Who: Lock the Gate Alliance is coordinating the event with support from a number of groups. Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/235457349938248/

You can hear local environmentalist, Jo Bragg on the ABC Radio discussing the challenge at http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2013/09/cost-of-appealing-planning-decisions.html

Many Westenders are actively involved in the case, or in groups that have been mounting long term opposition to the ripping up of the Bimblebox Nature Reserve to build the world’s biggest coal mine, but the action comes right to the middle of Boundary St this Sunday with a fundraiser at Lock ‘n Load.

When: 4.30pm, Sunday 22 September 2013
Where: Upstairs at Lock n Load, 142 Boundary St, West End
Cost: $10, including a free drink
RSVP: via the facebook event here:https://www.facebook.com/events/163939023803661/?fref=ts or email bimbleboxactionbrisbane@gmail.com

Coles West End at the West End markets has just undergone a revamp.

Ice under the veggies, self-serve nuts and pulses, an olive and a fish display and lots of timber shelving in the fruit and bakery all conspire to appeal to the healthy, fresh vibe that we West Enders love.

Manager Mark Van Den Boogaard with all the staff unveiled the new look at Coles Marketplace at 7:30 on Wednesday morning. The veggie and the deli staff have the most dramatic changes in their area though the layout of the supermarket as a whole has changed to accommodate the focus on fresh food close to the entrance with the toilet and laundry gear at the far end.

Mark thinks that the olive and the fish bar will mean the most to the West End customers, giving them a market-like experience in keeping with the area.

Acutely aware that lots of West Enders view the major supermarket chains as a predatory  competitor to small business and minimize the amount of shopping that they do there to support the locally owned business, I asked Mark about the local purchasing policies of Coles.

He quoted the official press release, showcasing Maleney Dairies as a local provider. “We want to promote as much local food as possible.” Given that Maleney is a couple of hours drive away, I thought, I’d check … there are no metropolitan fresh food producers that Mark buys from.

Mark is aware that some people are angry that Coles has driven the price of milk down to $1 a litre, driving many farms off the land. “The reason that we have suppliers like Maleney Dairy, is so that those customers have a choice,” he said.

Mark has not heard any criticism of the increasing appearance of Coles brand products on the shelves and feels the criticisms of supermarket trading practices are beyond his capacity to change. They are clearly beyond his authority to comment on, as well.

They are also beyond the scope of a short news report. Suffice to say that you can run into prominent figures in the local traders and community associations, national figures fighting for the rights of farmers and organic food suppliers in the aisles of West End Coles any day of the week.

Mark and the team have put in the effort to present their food in a manner in keeping with what they see as the ethos of the area. As long as we keep shopping there, they know they are onto a winning formula.

We hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet we let the greater criminal loose
Who steals the commons from the goose

The fight by the rich to take the common assets of the people and control them for personal gain is as old as money itself.

High profile examples in Australia include the gift to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation of the Sydney Showgrounds. Clive Palmer’s current request to turn the Bimblebox Nature Reserve into the vast China First coal mine represents a similar challenge in our own time.

Not all examples of the encroachment of private ownership onto public land are so visible, though. The alienation of the public from riverbanks, for example, happens gradually and steadily. What is, in law, a public asset becomes inaccessible and enjoyable only to a few.

The recent victory by Gully Watch over an attempt to have the river end of Sankey St closed and passed into private title is one victory against this general encroachment. Well done to the team that fought that battle and to Helen Abrahams who lobbied so effectively on behalf of the residents.

In some cases, private owners simply want to keep the public away from public land near their property so that they can enjoy exclusive access to the natural assets which they believe that they should have privileged access to.

This certainly seems to be the case at the end of Boundary St where some “unallocated public land” (read The Commons) is to be closed off because of complaints by neighbours that it was being enjoyed by the public.

Newman forbid!

Disclosure of interest: I am the publisher of Westender and a resident of Riviera Apartments at 5 Dudley St (known to the locals as Rancho Relaxo)

Westender is interested to explore community views and the legal basis of this enclosure. Obviously we all want to ensure that the public have access to a public asset. The question appears to be is that best served by having it open, or closed?

We welcome your views and expertise.

Here is the letter I sent to my neighbours asking for their support.

Hello neighbour,

In addition to our citizenship, our humanity and many hopes and fears, you and I share the commonwealth of this nation. Some of this is managed and provided by the government – roads, running water, well managed parks, sewage, fire and police services. Many things, though, are simply ours to enjoy: the sea, the air, the river that runs past our homes. This common wealth is part of the environment that nurtures and supports us. We must cooperate to preserve these common assets.

There are two blocks of land, known officially as no.s 1 and 3 Dudley St which are part of this common wealth and that you and I, as neighbours, share.

• Some of us have used this space to develop a community garden so that all of us might enjoy shade, free food and access to heirloom seeds.
• Some of us have used this space to park our cars.
• Twice in the last six months, ex-residents of number 5 Dudley St have used this space to celebrate a 21^st birthday and a graduation.

Apparently these uses of the common land have offended some of you.

• Someone has been pulling plants out of the community garden.
• Someone else has registered an official complaint and caused the land to be locked up so that it will be no longer commonly accessible.

This makes us a poorer community.

There are many things that neighbours may not like about each other.

• Renovations that wake us all every morning at 6:30am for 6 months
• The Labrador that poos every day in the most inappropriate places.
• Fertile tom cats that spray, fight and kill wildlife
• The boat shed wedding parties that broadcast bad music

Unpleasant as these things are, we take them in our stride as part of the awkwardness of being members of the human family. We respect each other’s right to be annoying. More bureaucracy controlling more aspects of our daily lives does not help us get along.

I will be fighting this closure of the commons. I invite you to join me in maintaining this public asset and working together to make it wonderful.

Geoff Ebbs.

As my wife and I enter the newly opened Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant ‘Sing Sing’ in West End we are greeted by Loan, a member of the family who runs it.

She grew up in West End and spent the first fifteen years of her life here, attending both West End State School and Brisbane State High School.

Loan’s family migrated to West End from Vietnam in the late 1980s and still has close ties with the community. This is why they decided to relocate Sing Sing to Hardgrave Road, where the old Kim Thanh Restaurant was, when the opportunity presented itself this year.

Their new location in West End is nicely renovated and has a lovely, bright and open interior — making it feel very spacious and pleasant.

Sing Sing Restaurant has been in operation for 25 years and has a well-established reputation in Annerley, known for its dedication to authentic Vietnamese and Chinese food and friendly customer service.

Sing Sing is still a family business and have the same staff from their old location in Annerley, with her mother and a brother as chefs, and her many siblings working at the front of the house.

The first dish that was served was their Prawn and Meat Rice Paper Rolls with Hoisin sauce on the side. It might sound like an odd combination, meat and prawns, but their individual texture compliments each other wonderfully. You can taste the freshness of the ingredients and the crispiness of the vegetables inside, making this dish the perfect entree to start with and share. The hoisin sauce is freshly made there and blends beautifully with the ingredients of the rice paper roll.

As a second entree we were served their Signature Beef Noodle Soup, which is a Vietnamese national dish. It is slow-cooked for twenty hours and prepared by Loan’s mother. The recipe is a family secret — a dish her mother has been making for the last twenty years. You can smell that it is packed with many different and exciting herbs and spices which creates a very interesting and delicious aroma.

The first taste of this soup is very discreet the first few seconds, but suddenly the flavours explode in your mouth. Each spoon of soup has a wonderful and unique taste. The noodles gives it that extra, light texture. As the beef that has been cooking with the soup for all those hours, it has become very tender and has a very delicious and enticing flavour after absorbing the deliciousness of the soup.

It is a dish best enjoyed between two people if you order it as an entree, as the serving is quiet large. Yet easily consumed if you are very hungry, as it is so very delicious. The soup is served with bean sprouts, sliced chilli, basil leaves and hoisin sauce on the side. The chilli will make it a bit spicy, but mixed with basil the soup will take your taste buds on yet another amazing journey of new flavours.

Our main course was Vietnamese Pork Spare Ribs with Egg and Rice. Served on a bed of rice and sliced cucumber and tomatoes, topped with a fried egg, and with a nuoc cham sauce on the side to bring out the flavours. Another combination yours truly is not accustomed to, but found to be absolutely perfect. Each ingredient compliments each other.

What truly amazed me was the taste of the pork spare ribs. The seasoning was again discreet, but so very tasty and delicious. And it was the first time I have had the pleasure to eat such tender pork spare ribs. A simple, yet very tasty meal that is very filling.

My belt buckle was ready to burst, but I had to try their Deep Fried Ice Cream, as that was yet another dish I have never had before. How this is done absolutely amazes me. It has a thick and crispy shell which blends very well with the ice cream inside. Served on a bed of thickened cream with a beautiful decoration and topped with caramel sauce and whipped cream. The perfect desert to end a perfect meal.

Sing Sing is one of those restaurants that not only offer interesting dishes in regards to combination of ingredients and authenticity, but more importantly, their flavours are truly unique and wonderful, leaving you with the desire to want more. And if you find yourself a bit clueless with what to get, as we were, then their wonderful staff will gladly give you some suggestions to suit your palette perfectly.

On Saturday 21st Sing Sing will host Lion Dancers from the Hock Chong School, one of the oldest Kung Fu establishments in Brisbane, to celebrate the 2013 Lantern Festival. Be sure to make a booking in advance by calling 3844 4954.

• Mains meals ranging from $9.9 to $21.90. The meals we enjoyed were Prawn and Meat Paper Rice Paper Rolls $9.90, Signature Beef Noodle Soup $9.90 and Vietnamese Pork Spare Ribs with Egg and Rice $12.50.
• It is a licensed venue with beers starting at $4. Their drinks are priced for their customers enjoyment. BYO wine only with a $2 corkage per person.
• They offer free karaoke on Friday and Saturday nights.
• If you are keen to learn how to cook Vietnamese food, they also offer cooking classes.
• Parking is located at the rear of the building.

Visit their website here to view their full menu: www.singsingrestaurant.com.au
Receive updates on events and specials here: www.facebook.com/pages/Sing-Sing-Chinese-Vietnamese-Restaurant/146739942034158
Located at: 93 Hardgrave Road, West End, 4101.
Phone: 3844 4954

Disclosure: Sing Sing is not affiliated with the restaurant located at their old location in Annerley.