WA government takes control of land next to children's hospice to allow development of 'a beautiful park'
The WA government has moved to take control of land next to the new children's hospice in Swanbourne from the City of Nedlands, after the council opposed plans to turn it into a parkland for terminally-ill children.
The Perth Children's Hospital Foundation's plans to transform what it called a 'dust bowl' into a green oasis were blocked by the council, which owns Allen Park.
The Lands Minister John Carey has moved to excise 3,000 square metres of land at Allen Park from council control, pending a motion in state parliament in the middle of this month.
That would pave the way for the PCH Foundation's $4million plans to create a green space next to Boodja Mia, a $34 million respite and palliative care centre for children, due to be completed later this year.
The City of Nedlands Council opposed the proposed park development, saying it wanted to build its own park on the A-Class reserve.
A-Class classifications are used to protect areas of high conservation or high community value, but Mr Carey argued the council had not been maintaining the land in "any meaningful way".
"It is a dustbowl. The Nedlands council have done nothing with this land and then right at the last minute they've said they do have a plan," Mr Carey said.
"For the City of Nedlands to make some sort of claim that this land is of any significant or extraordinary value is simply false."
The project will include the planting of up to 10,000 native plants, boosting tree canopy at the site to 62 per cent.
Mr Carey said the park would be open to the public while also catering to patients and their families at the nearby hospice centre.
The City of Nedlands has been contacted for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Snake bite victims urged to seek medical help regardless of what type they think it is
Australia is home to some of the deadliest snakes in the world and with a bite not always obvious to the untrained eye, experts warn any suspicion of a puncture warrants immediate action. A Queensland coroner is examining the public awareness of snakebite symptoms and first aid treatments after Tristian Frahm, 11, died from a snake bite at a Murgon property, three hours north of Brisbane, on November 21, 2021. The Toowoomba Coroner's Court heard evidence earlier this week about the hours leading up to Tristian's death. His father, Kerrod Frahm, and two other adults at the property told the court they had not found any sign of a snake bite on the child and ultimately did not seek medical treatment for the boy before he died. Medical experts have told the inquest that the physical appearance of a snake bite was not always obvious to the untrained eye. Forensic pathologist Christopher Day, who performed Tristian's autopsy, told the inquest "two small scratches like lesions" were at the site of the snake bite. He said the puncture marks appeared more like scratches and could be hard to identify as a snake bite if a person was not aware it could present that way. Mark Little, a Cairns Hospital emergency physician and toxicologist, told the inquest that a bite site was commonly "insignificant or just a mark". "Everyone thinks you if you've bitten by a snake there will be two fang marks," he said. In February, the Queensland Ambulance Service reported it had responded to more than 50 snake bite-related call-outs within a 10-day period. Dr Little said more than 700 snake bite cases presented to the Cairns Hospital annually, with about five or six envenomation cases on average. "It's exceptionally rare to have a death in Australia due to a snake bite," he said. The inquest was told Tristian had died from hypertension brought on by envenomation from a brown snake, which led to blood pooling in his abdomen and cardiac arrest. The director of Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital's clinical toxicology unit told the inquest that snake bite-related deaths were likely caused from early sudden collapse, which could trigger a cardiac arrest or bleeding of the brain. Associate Professor Katherine Isoardi co-authored a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia in April that found early collapse almost always occurred within 60 minutes of the bite. The study analysed data from the Australian Snakebite Project involving 1,256 envenomed people between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2020, across 200 hospitals in Australia. Dr Isoardi told the inquest it was important for people to seek medical attention immediately, even if they were not sure if a snake bite had occurred. Dr Little agreed, stating that even he sometimes had difficulty being certain whether a snake bite had occurred or not. "Don't underestimate a snake bite. Even though it's rare, the potential complications — as we've seen in this case — are lethal and people do die from this," he said. "I know emergency departments are [busy] but we'd much rather keep them for a night and observe them." Coroner Ainslie Kirkegaard is expected to hand down her findings within months.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
WA family shocked as healthy 13-year-old diagnosed with cancer of the thymus
Almost six weeks ago Kobi Jones's life was turned upside down when he was diagnosed with an extremely rare type of cancer almost unheard of in people his age. It was an ordinary day at football training when the 13-year-old from Collie, Western Australia, felt early signs of the thymoma — a tumour that develops on the thymus gland. Kobi's mother Charli Rowden said that was the start of a life-changing and terrifying journey. "The coach was concerned because the chest pain came on so randomly — he didn't get any hits or anything like that," she said. Initial check-ups failed to find anything unusual but a couple of days later doctors contacted the family about a mass visible on Kobi's X-ray. He was taken to the hospital in Bunbury for additional tests. "I just kept telling Kobi, 'Oh it will be nothing, mate — we have to check what it is and make sure everything is OK," Ms Rowden said. "And then to be told, while I was standing up, that it could be a cancerous tumour on his thymus — it was horrible. "[It's] very scary … he was such a fit, healthy kid. "The scariest part is that they don't really know [much about it] or where it could go … they have actually gone and contacted doctors in other countries that may have seen this, all over the world." Thymomas impact less than 1 per cent of cancer patients each year and are typically detected in people between the ages of 40 and 60. Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre oncologist Tom John said it was a "very, very uncommon" condition that affected the organ responsible for training the immune system. "Most medical oncologists wouldn't see a thymoma in their lifetime … and it's very uncommon in young people," he said. "[It] sits very close to the heart and some of the big vessels in your chest, and that can certainly cause some symptoms like pain and shortness of breath that [it's important] you don't ignore." Dr John said he had seen a lot of "success stories" over the years when it came to treating the condition. "If you do find a cancer like this early, it's usually curable," he said. "We've had many patients who are cured just with surgery or in some cases we've given chemotherapy up front followed by surgery, and in some cases we have given radiation combined with chemotherapy and they have been cured. "If they're detected early and can be cut out, they're curable — we've certainly had quite a few success stories with thymoma. Kobi is recovering in hospital after a long but successful surgery this week to remove the mass. He has several months of recovery ahead but stepfather Tayler Leadbitter said he was feeling positive and keen to get back home. "It's been bloody horrible," Mr Leadbitter said. "We do a lot of hunting, fishing, four-wheel driving – anything to do with the bush and outdoors – to now the complete opposite, stuck in Perth. "There's not a lot of people to talk to — it's quite isolated and quite hard." Mr Leadbitter said he was already planning a family trip for when Kobi was healthy again.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Meagan White chose surrogacy in order to become a mother, and now has two children
Maree Arnold has an extra special connection with her three-year-old grandson Winston and his newborn sister Phoebe. Ms Arnold carried and birthed both Winston and Phoebe — or Princess Phoebe as Winston calls her — as a surrogate for her daughter Meagan White and her husband Clayde. "You want to trust the surrogate that's carrying your baby with everything and who do you trust more?" Ms White said, while smiling at her mother. Ms White has a rare condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, which has prevented her from carrying her own children. "I was born without my uterus," Ms White said. "So [surrogacy] has pretty much been my only option." While Ms White has ovaries and produces eggs, she does not have the uterus to carry a baby. She and her husband, from Lilydale in northern Tasmania, started creating embryos through TasIVF in 2017. They also travelled to Canada where they created more embryos and pursued surrogacy. "We got to 23 weeks and the baby's kidneys didn't develop," Ms White said. When the Whites returned home, they looked into uterus transplants — which at the time was in the very early trial stage in Australia. "We were going to look into uterus transplants, as in mum transplanting her uterus to me," Ms White said. The mother and daughter flew to Queensland to investigate the transplant option. "They said that the operation would be simple for me but reasonably extensive for mum to make sure they removed the uterus with all the vessels intact, and that's when mum said, 'it might be easier if I carried'." Ms White and her husband, along with Ms Arnold and her husband Leigh, had to go through the altruistic surrogacy agreement process of counselling, contracts and IVF. Then on January 13, 2022, Ms Arnold birthed Meagan and Clayde's son Winston. After getting settled as a family of three, Ms White began to look again into uterus transplants in the hope of growing her family again. Then surrogate gran stepped back in. Ms Arnold, who has also had five of her own children, said the pregnancy process was different — not only a surrogate, but as a grandmother. "I'm a lot more careful," she said. "And the technology — the scans are different and all the apps that you get — it's different. "It's amazing that we could help and carry and make a family. "I think it's more common for an auntie or uncle to carry their nephew or their niece because it's that generation younger, but not grandparents so much." There weren't many surrogate options for Ms White, especially given Tasmania's surrogacy laws. In Tasmania, intended parents and their surrogate need to live on the island state at the time the surrogacy agreement is entered into. Anna McKie, from Surrogacy Australia, described the law as "archaic" and a "form of discrimination" against intended parents in Tasmania. "For a state that's already a bit more isolated, to have that as an extra, is just ridiculous," Ms McKie said. "You're the only state that says intended parents must have a surrogate in the same state. Whereas if you're a surrogate in Tasmania, you can carry for anyone, anywhere in Australia." Tasmania's Births, Deaths and Marriages registry has registered six parentage orders due to surrogacy in the past five years. Ms McKie said she believed the state restriction was from decades ago when IVF laws were first set up and the government wanted surrogates and intended parents to be close "for the best interests of the child". Both Ms White and Ms Arnold agreed the law was "unfair" and that it made surrogacy options harder for Tasmanian parents. A state government spokesperson said the government would continue to work with stakeholders to determine if changes were required. Surrogacy Australia is also one of three fertility groups calling for changes to Medicare rebate restrictions. As the law currently stands, Australians using assisted reproductive technology for surrogacy are excluded from Medicare rebates — even if, like in Ms White's case, it is the only way to have children. TasIVF medical director Dr Manuela Toledo said it meant those going through surrogacy had to pay thousands more for IVF services than those not using a surrogate. "Someone who's using IVF with a Medicare rebate would be paying a third the cost of someone who's going through surrogacy and having to pay for everything," Dr Toledo said. Dr Toledo said the IVF Group and the Fertility Society of Australia and NewZealand, which she is a board member of, were calling for the Medicare rebate exclusion to be changed. "Any Australian person with a Medicare card should be able to access fertility treatment based on their needs, not on their indication of medical treatment," Dr Toledo said. "We're not producing enough offspring to sustain our growing population and it's self evident that we need to help individuals and couples have families if that's what they'd like to do." Ms White said Medicare rebates were supposed to be there "to help those that medically need the help". "It would be fair to have it changed." A Senate committee that recently enquired into universal access to reproductive healthcare, recommended the Australian government implement the recommendations of the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review to remove the exclusion of IVF services for altruistic surrogacy purposes. The Australian government supported the recommendation in principle in February. A federal government spokesperson said the regulation of IVF was on the agenda for the next health ministers' meeting, to be held on Thursday.
