Rich prize for writing
One of Australia’s richest writing competitions, the Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction, is on again this year with people having until September 4 to submit their entries.
The inaugural competition last year attracted 42 entries by writers from throughout Gippsland covering fields ranging from memoirs to public adventure, biography, natural history and local history.
There is $10,000 prize money at stake - $5000 for the winning entry, $3000 for second and $2000 for third – donated by Phillip Island writer Phyllis Papps.
Another writer living at Phillip Island Christine Grayden took out the top award last year with her entry “Jobs That No Longer Exist: a memoir”.
The competition has been brought forward this year to take advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown during which many writers may have a bit of extra time to devote to their works.
People living, working or studying in Gippsland and those that have a strong connection to the region can submit entries in prose or poetry to a length of between 4000 and 10,000 words.
Judges will be Bass Coast Post editor Catherine Watson, Waterline News editor Geoff Ellis and local writer Anne Heath Mennell.
More information and entry criteria is available at basscoastprizefornonfiction.weebly.com/ or by emailing p.m.papps@waterfront.net.au
Cutting edge technology is being used to track native fish movements in the Tarago and Bunyip rivers.
Claiming it as an Australian first, Melbourne Water and the Department of Land, Water, and Panning’s Arthur Rylah Institute for Environment Research is tagging and tracking fish including the endangered Australian grayling with innovative technology.
Melbourne Water’s environmental water delivery lead Sarah Gaskill said the Passive Integrated Transponder Technology would allow better understanding of the migratory behaviours of a number of fish varieties.
Fish in the Tarago-Bunyip system have been studied for 12 years.
Mr Gaskill said three listening stations had been installed in the Tarago and Bunyip rivers to track about 150 migratory fish that have been tagged, including the grayling, tupong, common galaxias and short finned eels.
Signals emitted as they go past listening stations can be linked to water conditions at the time to help understand what flows they need to move, and when,
This information can point to when extra water flows need to be released from the Tarago reservoir located upstream to support the fish life cycles, Ms Gaskill said.
The team is currently collecting its first data of autumn flows and observing downstream movement of the fish.
Ms Gaskill said Australian grayling can travel as far as 50 kilometres downstream to spawn before making the return trip upstream.
The new technology is enabling every part of their swim and their extraordinary life cycles to be monitored, she said.