Residents have been urged to embrace new pop-up eating zones, installed across the municipality to help local eateries recover from the pandemic. 

Twelve of the ‘skiplets’ will be located in parking spaces in Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale - including busy Hesse Street and Point Lonsdale Road retail precincts - for the next three months. 

The modified skip bins, produced in Jan Juc, are fitted out with recycled timber flooring and benches and provide additional seating for 10 patrons.  

“Some businesses have done well during COVID and some haven’t, and we don’t know what the next three months will bring when the Jobkeeper program ends and people leave after the summer holidays” said Mayor Ross Ebbels.

“We want to make sure businesses are sustainable and can get through the next few months, and these skiplets can help with that. A lot of them are playing catch up now and we need them to be really busy this summer period. 

“There’ll be some people who say they want their car parks back and there will be some who really like the skiplets,... I just ask everyone to show some patience.

"We might find that after three months, a bit like Geelong where they were trailed for five months five years ago, that not only traders but customers also want them to stay,” he said.   

The Borough of Queenscliffe has fast-tracked the initiative after receiving $250,000 to progress outdoor dining, under a State Government initiative aimed at assisting businesses hard hit by COVID-19.

The first of the skiplets was installed outside the Queenscliff General Store. 

“It has some sort of novelty value I think and is going to be a really fun little space and something bit different for people,” said business owner Garreth Jones.   

The cafe managed to trade through the pandemic, despite being forced to remove tables and chairs.
“It was a bit scary there for a little while, it was unchartered waters. 
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“I have to say you’re only as good as your customers and ours were really supportive,” Mr Jones said.  
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Queenscliff's Senior football coach almost upstaged a team of  "legendary"  local cricketers by taking a hat trick in a friendly match between the Queenscliff Football Netball  (QFNC) and Queenscliff Cricket clubs (QCC). 

But the three wickets came at a cost, with Steve Clark appearing to sustain a leg strain, requiring him to use a runner during his batting innings.

Clark was playing in a 'Legends' game - a curtain raiser to the annual Couta Bowl Clash between the two clubs, held on Saturday December 2.

And while no player will be expecting a call-up to the Australian first X1 after the two matches, they did deliver some spectacular catches and big hitting in front of a crowd of upwards of 100 club members and holiday makers.  

The QCC won both matches. However, dubious umpiring decisions and generous scoring made it hard to know by how much. 

Unsightly power poles have been removed from the South end of Queenscliff’s Hesse Street, as part of a $1.5 million project to beautify the sector. 

The project, jointly funded under the Victorian Government’s Fixing Country Roads and the Commonwealth’s Roads to Recovery programs, is nearing completion. 

It includes underfunding of power lines to improve beach views, the creation of 16 extra parking spaces, improved street lighting, drainage, re-surphacing and tree planting.   
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“Hesse Street South now looks modern and bright at both day and night, and with our new outdoor dining Skiplets being added further up the road for expanded hospitality options, there’s no better place to spend your summer than in the Borough of Queenscliffe, said Mayor Ross Ebbels.

Public consultation has opened on what is being described as one of the Borough of Queenscliffe’s most important documents. 

The new Coastal and Marine Management Plan (CMMP) will guide decision-making on almost all matters related to foreshore and coastal planning.

The existing document has not been updated since 2006.

Mayor Ross Ebbels said the new plan would go the heart of everything residents valued about living in Queenscliffe and would ensure coastline assets were safeguarded for future generations. 

“For so much of what we’ll do in the the future, we need to have this plan in place.  

“I know how much of a privilege it is to have such world-class coastlines on our door step – from the simple pleasures of walking your dog on the beach, to surfing at Back Beach,” Cr Ebbels said.

“I also know how much our community values these landscapes, which is why I’m calling on anyone who utilises our coasts to provide input into our Coastal and Marine Management Plan.”

The Council manages and maintains numerous bayside and ocean reserves and assets including the Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale Lighthouse reserves. It is thought to be the highest proportion of land in foreshore reserves in any municipality in Victoria. 

The new  CMMP, to developed in line with requirements of the Marine and Coastal Act 2018, will provide a blueprint on how these areas will be managed into the future. 

Consultation opens with the Borough hosting an interactive webinar at 6:00pm on Thursday 14 January, where residents and ratepayers can ask questions of the planning team.

An online survey is available to be completed by navigating to queenscliffe.vic.gov.au/coasts, where
visitors can also learn more information and read a detailed issues paper.
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Consultation on the plan closes at 11:59pm on Sunday 31 January.
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For those who subscribe to JOMO - the Joy of Missing Out - 2020 was not such a bad year after all! 

One of that group’s notable practitioners is acclaimed cartoonist, writer and artist Michael Leunig. 

While acknowledging the hardship some have experienced, the National Living Treasure says he was able to divorce himself from all of the clamour that came with the COVID-19 pandemic and do what he normally does - find the whimsical and lightness in events around us. 

“It’s obviously been a very peculiar year but I think the peculiarity has been massively over-inflated and exaggerated and everyone was expected to feel terrible,” he said. “Just to take it in your stride is the best way I found to deal with it. All years are pretty peculiar in their own way, but of course I recognise that some people have been alarmed and distressed in ways that I haven’t I guess.

“There has been a good side to it all. I liked the slowing down and the quiet roads… but anyway, who knows what next year’s going to bring and the year after and the year after that.” 

2021 will bring Leunig to Queenscliff. 

Queenscliff Gallery will this month host Humour of the Heart, a selection of paintings that have no particular theme, according to Leunig, but rather reflect his approach to creating a picture - a process he’s described as ‘messy, mystical and primal.’

Fittingly for the year just gone, one of the paintings, a joyous coloured canvas, is titled ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ (Pictured).

“For me it’s a playful thing to do, to make a painting, and it’s almost prayerful if you like. I don’t mean to sound earnest, but it’s an interior state and it’s engagement with colour and form.”

“It’s such a lovely antidote to the woes of the world. It’s a bit like those who make a garden, you know it’s always there for you. To have your canvas and your solitude and your peace and materials, you can do this until you die,” he says.  

“I never went to art school or anything, I’m just one of those self taught painters and that’s all it it, there’s no grand theme or narrative to my pictures,” he says.

“It’s think it’s important to be able to not have and to be content with more simple things. We are a society consumed with consumption and doing things and getting things. It’s good to make a bit of a stand against those things.”

It’s not Leunig’s first local show. He has a fondness for Queenscliff born out of his long friendship with former resident and fellow cartoonist Ron Tanberg, who died in January 2018.

“I came down to see Ron a few times. Me and Ron worked together for a long time and when I say together, I mean the next desk. We shared a lot of deadline panic together and we were pretty close,” he said.

“What’s good about Queenscliff is it’s not exactly out of the way but it is out of the way. It seems to be it’s own little neck of the woods,” he said.  
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Leunig’s exhibition will run until January 25.

COVID-19 encouraged many people to look inwards and find new perspectives of home and surroundings. Queenscliff-based artist David Beaumont used the time to forge new relationships with the natural landscapes that he is continuously drawn to.

In his latest exhibition ‘Here And There’, Beaumont reinvents those landscapes that frequently inspire his work. Through a new found perspective, he re-captures the beauty and power of his local Swan Bay and the Rip, and one of his favourite destinations, Lake Mungo. 

His signature style of boundary pushing abstraction invites viewers to embrace their imagination, while his chosen palette encourages recognition of the silence, subtlety and nuance of the environments.

“It really wasn’t until covid came along that I started to stalk the Rip more intently - early mornings and late at night… particularly during autumn, winter and early spring,” Beaumont said. 

“During those darker months something opened up and the paintings that will be in this show, they’ve got a streak, a moodiness to them… this hardship beauty that the Rip has.”   

‘Here and There’ also features new sculptures that beautifully compliment his latest collection of paintings. 
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‘Here And There’ will officially open at Salt Contemporary on Sunday 27th December from 2pm and the exhibition will continue through to the 7th January.