Agenda 21 Report
Agenda 21 Report (Whyalla, AUS)
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Report done by: Francisco Coucelo Francisco Quaresma
Thomas Jusek
Whyalla: Where Outback Meets the Sea
The seaside city of Whyalla (population 22,500) is the north-eastern gateway to Eyre Peninsula. Blessed with more than 300 days of sunshine every year, Whyalla is home to OneSteel (formerly BHP) and is renowned as a steel and ship building hub. Whyalla has also become a popular tourism spot, thanks to its proud industrial history and natural wonders including the annual spawning of giant, luminescent cuttlefish.
Divers and snorkelers from all over Australia and the world converge on Whyalla between May and August each year, when thousands of giant cuttlefish gather to spawn in and around the rocky shores of Black Point and Point Lowly. These amazing ‘chameleons of the sea’ are one of the largest species of cuttlefish found in the world and can reach up to 60cm in length and weigh up to 5kg.
89916028521Whyalla is located 396km northwest of South Australia's capital, Adelaide.
The city is the largest in the Upper Spencer Gulf region, and is located on the western shores of Spencer Gulf.
Whyalla Points of Interest
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Ada Ryan Gardens
Whyalla’s most popular park, Ada Ryan Gardens has extensive and well-shaded lawns and gardens, a collection of birds and parrots, duck pond, free barbecue, tennis courts, picnic and playground facilities and public toilets. The gardens have paved paths throughout providing easy wheelchair access. Located between Cudmore and Watson Terraces and linked to the Whyalla foreshore.
Whyalla Marina
The marina provides a four-lane launching ramp and all-weather marina, together with a floating service jetty, boat wash-down area and undercover fish cleaning facility. There’s also a safe swimming enclosure within the marina and wheelchair access to the jetty is available via a concrete path from the car park. As well as being the home of the local yacht club, Air Sea Rescue, Whyalla Sportfishing Club and Whyalla Boatowners’ Association, the marina has its own resident dolphins.
Mount Laura Homestead Museum
Housed in a former sheep station homestead, the National Trust Museum and grounds contain a restored and furnished cottage, an engine shed with 60 plus stationary engines and an old steam locomotive, once used to haul iron ore from Iron Knob to Whyalla. A telecommunications display showcases the era of the Overland Telegraph (circa 1872) through to modern-day satellite communications. There’s also a collection of horse- drawn vehicles and agricultural implements in ‘Barber’s Barn’ and a heritage rose garden incorporating the Women’s Memorial Sculpture. Located in Ekbolm Street, the museum is open 10am to 2pm on weekdays and 2pm to 4pm on Sundays and by appointment – phone (08) 8645 4213.
Middleback Arts Theatre
Enjoy theatre productions, concerts and entertainment, the latest movies and art and craft exhibitions. On permanent view in the theatre foyer are five leadlight windows depicting aspects of Whyalla and a mural tracing the pioneer history of the Middleback Ranges. Ask the Whyalla Visitor Centre for the latest ‘what’s on’ information.
Flinders ; Freycinet Lookout
These abstract life-size statues commemorate the bicentenary of the charting of Spencer Gulf coastlines by English and French explorers, Matthew Flinders and Louis de Freycinet, in 1802. Located at the intersection of Farrell and Elliott Streets, they have magnificent views of upper Spencer Gulf, the Southern Flinders Ranges and Middleback Ranges.
Wilson Park
At the northern entrance to Whyalla, this park has views over the OneSteel Whyalla Steelworks and, in the distance, Port Bonython and Point Lowly. There are free sheltered barbecues, picnic facilities, a playground and 24hour toilets, and plenty of parking for cars, caravans and coaches.
Scenic Drives ; Walking Trails
Fitzgerald Bay, Port Bonython ; Point Lowly
Just 20minutes north-west of Whyalla, this coastal drive between Port Bonython and Point Lowly takes in Fitzgerald Bay, home to stunning gulf views framed by the picturesque hills of the Southern Flinders Ranges. Dolphins and birdlife can often be seen, and the rocky shoreline is popular for fishing, sightseeing and walking. Fitzgerald Bay was once home to a Yellowtail Kingfish aquaculture enterprise – look out for the farm cages from the lookout. At Point Lowly there are toilets, cold showers and barbecue facilities.
Freycinet Trail
A heritage and nature trail suitable for hiking, cycling and driving that follows the coast for 12km between the Point Lowly Lighthouse and Fitzgerald Bay camping area. Interpretive signage along the trail gives visitors an insight into the Aboriginal history, early European exploration, flora, fauna and marine life of the area. Trail information available from Whyalla Visitor Centre.
Whyalla Heritage Trailways
These three heritage walking trails were developed to commemorate the centenary of Whyalla in 2001. City Walk takes in many historic sites and Hummock Hill and the Education and Cultural Walk showcases Whyalla’s main education and cultural precinct. The Wetlands Walk utilises an ingenious water-harvesting scheme and this major development is located on the site of the City’s first aerodrome. The walk includes pedestrian paths around the lakes, a viewing and parking area with a barbecue, shelter, picnic benches, lawn and virtually waterless hybrid toilets (with baby change facilities and disabled access). Sightings of birdlife such as the reed warbler, native hen, herons and cormorants are common. Located on the corner of Playford Avenue and Broadbent Terrace.
Whyalla Key assets
Eyre Peninsula is one of South Australia’s most productive regions generating over $4 billion in revenue annually. The region is highly export oriented with product valued at
$4.144 billion being exported to domestic and overseas markets in 2014.
The regional economy is primarily driven by the agriculture, manufacturing, fishing, tourism and mining industries. While these industries are well established, aquaculture, food, renewable energy, and health and community services are fast developing as major sources of employment and revenue generation. The City of Whyalla is unique having a substantial industrial base, providing mining, engineering and steel manufacturing services.
The region has many competitive advantages including well established industries, premium food and agricultural product, magnificent natural resources, high quality mineral resources, vibrant communities, and a quality lifestyle second to none.
These collective characteristics provide significant export and domestic growth opportunities.
Key Sectors
Health and Community Services
Manufacturing
Agriculture
Small Business
Tourism
Mining
Fishing and Aquaculture
Renewable Energy
MANUFACTURING
Manufacturing, which includes the production of metal products and food processing, was the region’s second largest industry in 2013-14, providing 2,932 (11.3%) of the region’s jobs. Manufacturing contributes 5.5% of GRP valued at $229 million and generates exports of $792 million.
Whyalla is the largest industrial city in regional South Australia and the principal center for manufacturing, steel production and resources processing in the Upper Spencer Gulf. The manufacturing industry was the biggest employer in Whyalla providing 2,027 jobs in 2013-14, and over two-thirds (69%) of the region’s manufacturing jobs. Port Lincoln provided 729 or 25% of the region’s manufacturing jobs.
Most of Whyalla’s manufacturing jobs (87%, or 1,755 positions) in 2013-14 were provided in the iron and steel production sector.
Whyalla’s reliance on iron ore mining and steel manufacturing makes its economy extremely vulnerable to commodity price variations. Falling commodity prices for iron ore during 2014-15 led to a substantial reduction of Arrium’s workforce.
SMALL BUSINESS
The region is well serviced with a comprehensive range of retail, trade, finance and other businesses.
The Cities of Port Lincoln and Whyalla are the main regional centers with major supermarkets, specialist retail outlets, banking, financial and professional services; along with tourism operations, hotels, restaurants, automotive, trades and other businesses.
In the west, Ceduna is the main commercial center providing a broad range of retail, finance, tourist, and trade services, along with State and Australian Government agencies. The smaller rural centers of Tumby Bay, Streaky Bay, Cummins, Wudinna, Kimba, Lock, Cleve and Cowell have well developed shopping and agricultural service precincts.
Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) employing less than 200 people are the backbone of the regional economy. Many small businesses have been established to directly provide support services to the region’s major industries, and this ongoing provision is critical to SME sustainability.
In 2013, the region had 5,338 businesses, with the largest proportion (1,957, 36.7%) in the agricultural, fishing and aquaculture sectors. Approximately 60% of SMEs are owner operated, non-employing businesses; and 85% of these are micro-businesses employing less than 5 people.
Retail trade is the region’s fourth largest industry, providing 2,536 jobs and 9.8% of regional employment. In 2013-14, most of the region’s retail trade employees were based in Whyalla (941, 37% of jobs) and Port Lincoln (919, 36% of the region’s retail jobs).
The retail trade industry contributed 3.6% of GRP in 2013-14, valued at $150 million.
MINING
Mining is the region’s fastest emerging industry, with over 76% growth in employment during the last decade. The Eyre Peninsula is located within the Gawler Craton and Eucla Basin provinces. These provinces are regarded as the most promising mineral frontiers in Australia, and contain large resources of high quality magnetite, graphite, kaolin gypsum and mineral sands.
In 2013-14, mining ranked as the region’s seventh largest employer providing 1,526 jobs and 5.9% of employment. This growth can be attributed to high levels of minerals exploration by companies such as Centrex Metals/Eyre Iron (for the Fusion Joint Venture); Iron Road Limited (for the Central Eyre Iron Project); and graphite resource exploration by Valence Industries, Lincoln Minerals and Archer Exploration Limited.
Most (95%) of the region’s mining jobs in 2013-14 were in Whyalla (1,076), Ceduna (202), Tumby Bay (91) and Franklin Harbour (87).
Mining is the region’s main contributor to GRP providing 29.2% of GRP in 2013-14 valued at $1.22 billion. Mining is also the region’s main exporting industry, providing 30.5% of exports worth $1.263 billion.
The mining industry is expected to have additional growth in future years when developing mines and prospects progress from exploration to operation. This will create numerous employment and business opportunities and further diversify the regional economy. However, this growth will be subject to improved commodity prices, and is very much dependent on significant government and private investment in major port, road, rail, power and water infrastructure.
BIOFUEL PRODUCTION
Australian company, Muradel, has developed a commercial scale demonstration site at Whyalla to produce sustainable biofuel from microalgae in saline water.
Muradel was formed from a joint research project by the University of Adelaide, Murdoch University and SQC Pty Ltd. The research project was funded by the Australian Government from 2009 to 2011 as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate program.
Muradel has developed efficient, high recovery, and low energy harvesting technology which enables the sustainable production of green crude biodiesel from marine microalgae. The crude can potentially be refined to produce liquid fuel equivalent in engine performance to fossil-derived diesel, petrol or jet fuel.
RDAWEP has also been assisting the University of Adelaide, Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls to investigate the use of alternate feed stocks (such as agave, wheat straw and weedy plants) for biofuel production. This project includes the integration of solar thermal energy in the production process.
The proponents plan to establish agave and other trial sites in Whyalla. Stakeholder consultation has been undertaken with industry, however the project implementation has been hindered by uncertainty regarding Australian Government policy for renewable energy funding programs.
RDAWEP is providing ongoing assistance with these projects.
BRANDS Characteristics
BRAND EYRE PENINSULA AUSTRALIA’S SEAFOOD FRONTIER
Brand Eyre Peninsula is a dynamic marketing initiative designed to secure Eyre Peninsula’s position as one of the world’s premium tourism and culinary destinations. By reinforcing the region’s competitive advantages in both the domestic and international markets, and by promoting a unified, collaborative approach, the brand aims to maximise the tourism growth potential of the Eyre Peninsula.
Products branded with the Australia’s Seafood Frontier logo will be recognised by the tourism industry and consumers as an authentic Eyre Peninsula product that has met quality standards.
The council of Whyalla began a rebranding process in November 2015, engaging experienced consultants Algo Mas Marketing to undertake the extensive process involved with developing a new city brand. This included extensive public consultation, city profiling and the development of imagery representative of the city.
A recurring theme that came through powerfully throughout the engagement process was the incredible, natural environment and uniqueness of Whyalla, and its caring community that values diversity and a strong history and culture.
Inspired by Whyalla’s creative and arts community, the brand developers visualised the significant attributes of Whyalla as paint strokes coming together to encapsulate in the form of a sphere. The colour palette of the new brand was inspired by colours from Whyalla’s landscape which were taken directly from its sea, sunset sky and land.
‘Unearth’ has been adopted as the city’s rejuvenated strapline, which will be used to promote Whyalla’s tourism and economic development activities.
Looking to both Brands we can say that the main goal of the region is to be more and more attractive to the tourism but at the same time remain eco-friendly, since this area has a lot of value for that exact reason, the beauty of the nature. Brad Eyre focuses more on having already an excellent service to provide to their customers. So, when
costumers arrive they know they have already one excellent restaurant to choose with a good reference.
In the second brand we can recognize the effort that the Council is making to make Whyalla even more visible for the international market doing a new city brand, where they hire an external company to help them.
Tourism Indicators
215900162125Looking at the tourism businesses we can see that most companies are micro companies and Non- employing ones.
Looking to the International visitors
, the most are from New Zealand, then United Kigdom and Scandinavia in the third place. New Zealand is obvious since it is the closest country and United Kingdom because of Common wealth.
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Looking at those statistics we can recognize that the ALOS of the domestics is not very big which could be changed with promotions and special offers to domestics and a better marketing plan to attract more and more clients. The average spent per night could also be raised to fight seasonality. Special programs during the other months could also contribute.
Agenda 21
Negative Impacts
There is a strong demand in modern competitive tourism market for people with knowledge on new technologies, marketing, and management of tourism business. To deal with this weakness, the local tourism companies attract specialized human resources from abroad, a measure which has many multiple negative effects in local economy.
The increase of urbanization of the population of ex-rural areas is considered to be one of the most common social effects of tourism development. So, many locals seek occupation in the tourism sector. The increase of tourism flows has a great impact on local customs particularly of remote communities. Many cultural events, practices or local products transformed into commodities and relations between hosts and quests eventually commercialized.
Because of tourism development many of the economically active members of the local population engaged with tourism and service sector. The total dependence on tourism led many local economies to neglect other sectors of production.
The fast and unlimited tourism development is associated with many negative matters such as, the deterioration of the environment, seasonality, excessive use of natural resources, high cost of land and steady decline of the allure of areas of natural beauty.
Benefits from Implementing Agenda 21
It is now generally recognized that the implementation of local agenda 21 in tourism destinations has many advantages. Therefore, not only will it limit the negative impacts of tourism development such as pollution, traffic, carrying capacity of the place or capacity of natural resources but also it will help the local community to integrate the quality of life and embrace sustainability.
The most important benefits from the implementation of local agenda 21 include:
The establishment of dialogue spirit among the members of the local community.
The participation of local community to the public affairs.
The cultivation of relations of trust between the local citizens and municipal authorities as well as among the citizens themselves.
The agreement on strategic plans or actions.
The avoidance of any reactions or objections that might be caused by the implementation of actions without the participation and consent of the local community while.
The best use of the know-how and innovative ideas coming from local stakeholders, independent agencies or individuals who are involved in the program.
The collaboration with all local collective schemes, organizations, agencies or associations.
The search for funds to support new projects.
The participation in the international forum for local agenda 21 where the two municipalities interchanged experiences with the local authorities of other countries.
Role of Local Institutions and the Community
The Whyalla Local Environment Plan Committee (WLEPC) was created in order to control the progress of the program. The commission has 6 community representatives, 2 council staff and 3 elected members from the community.
Trying to involve locals in the development of the program, through campaigns, and by encouraging people to elect the committee and to participate in it, was the way to get the community to get involved in the process of the Program.
The State Government and the Local Government Association started a partnership in order to mutually help the program. Although the involvement of the State Government was quite low, due to lack of State Government offices in the city of Whyalla. The actions of the state representatives were only as a consulting role in the committee, without any important contribution.
Several departments and officers of the council also had an important role on the contribution for the program. All of them, with different backgrounds, responsibilities and duties, worked together towards with the same objective, the implementation of the plan.
Conclusion and Discussions
From this work we could see that Whyalla is a small city on the outskirts of southern Australia, it’s main economic strength is Steel and mining, being one of the main resources of the city.
Based on the research provided we can also see that it is thriving in the tourism industry, although they currently are having troubles with having oversees tourists instead of domestic, based on the graphic in page 13 I can assume the majority of tourists inbound to Whyalla are mainly domestic and this is something of a concern if they are investing so much in tourism. It is mandatory for them to have an increase of oversees tourists otherwise they won’t be able to self-sustain themselves and create problems later on.
So, based on everything in our Situation analysis, we can conclude that tourism in Whyalla can be sustainable but for now it certainly isn’t, and the main cause of this trouble is lack of advertising, what I mean is, Whyalla is unknown to foreigners, and the city council of Whyalla should invest in marketing and create a worldwide known brand for Whyalla.
Regarding the implementation of the program Agenda 21 in the city of Whyalla, we discussed how the Agenda 21 benefits the sustainable development of the city. Before the Agenda 21 program had been implemented there was lack of expertise and management of the city in terms of sustainability of environment and economy.
The Agenda 21 brought an increase in environmental awareness and protection, as well as an increase in economy and helped to increase jobs positions and it had the contribution of local institutions and the local community.
In conclusion, the Agenda 21 in Whyalla helped to identify numerous key components of Whyalla´s operational actions and strategies regarding the strategic planning, environmental policy and risks that might be in management. This way and with a constant monitoring of the program, makes it able to act before there is a big negative impact that might be undoable.
References
Map Of Whyalla | My Blog. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2018, from https://www.greendalerawmilkcheese.com/map-of-whyalla.htmlWhyalla Tourist Map – Whyalla South Africa 5600 • mappery. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Whyalla-Tourist-MapHome | Eyre Peninsula – Australia’s Seafood Frontier | Official Tourism Website. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://eyrepeninsula.com/Our Economy – Regional Development Australia Whyalla ;amp; Eyre Peninsula. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://www.rdawep.org.au/our-region/our- economy/
Home – Regional Development Australia Whyalla ;amp; Eyre Peninsula. (n.d.).
Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://www.rdawep.org.au/South, T., ; Experience, A. (n.d.). A LOCAL AGENDA 21 PROGRAM LOCAL AGENDA 21.
Plan, T. S. (2018). CITY OF WHYALLA TOURISM STRATEGIC PLAN 2015 The
City of Whyalla is committed to creating a sustainable tourism industry that preserves and promotes our environment , culture and lifestyle .
