🏍️ Replace the Moto GP with what?

Plus: Mount Baw Baw ski field pioneer.

Author

Jacob Wallace
May 13, 2026

⏱️ This edition of our newsletter is a six-minute read. Love what you’re reading? Forward to a friend! Every share helps.

👋 Hello Gippslanders, it’s Jacob here.

🚗 I’ve been on the road again this week. Yesterday I spent the day working from Cowes after visiting the Bass Coast Winter Shelter in the morning. You can have a read of my story on the preparation for the refuge’s second year here.

🔋Last week, I published a story on how TAFE Gippsland is preparing young apprentices for the influx of clean energy jobs in the region.

  • As well as teaching younger electricians, the Head of the Department for Emerging Industries and Trades at TAFE Gippsland, Alex Terranova, told me the institution is working closely with Energy Australia to help upskill workers at the aging Yallourn coal-fired power station before it’s planned closure in 2028.

❝

We understand that there are people with a lot of experience that work in the coal power stations. We're helping them to gain new skills to be able to transfer them across to clean energy.

Head of the Department for Emerging Industries and Trades at TAFE Gippsland, Alex Terranova.

👀 Looking ahead. In this week’s newsletter we’re talking about:

  • 👷 The young, tech-savvy Gippslanders preparing for clean energy jobs;

  • 🎿 Franz Reiter, the man who introduced thousands of Victorians to snow;

  • 🏠 The second year of the Bass Coast Winter Shelter;

  • 🏍️ What event Cowes locals think should replace the Moto GP, and;

  • 🪵 Whether we should prop up the native forest logging industry.

🎊 WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK 🎟️

🧺 FARMERS MARKETS 🥧

🚀 Alright, let’s jump into the Monitor’s latest yarns!

🔍 HEARD THIS WEEK👂

Adam Stevens is part of a new generation of Gippsland apprentices.

The 21-year-old student and apprentice at Sharper Electrics is coming to the end of his four-year course and getting ready for his final exams at TAFE Gippsland.

“Once I finish my exams, I'll be a qualified electrician. After that, I'm hoping to come back and do some further learning here,” Stevens told the Monitor.

“There are so many different aspects to electrical studies at the moment … wind turbines, batteries, solar. I just want to get a vibe of everything.”

He reckons “more households will have solar” and “a lot of businesses are going to get batteries on top of that. It’s a market that's going to develop more in the next few years”.

The head of Department for Emerging Industries and Trades at TAFE Gippsland, Alex Terranova, told the Monitor Stevens isn’t an outlier.

“We're seeing a lot more younger people coming through, 20 to 21 years of age, who have got a real plan of where they want to go. They’re saying, ‘By the age of 25, I want to run my own business, and I want to be doing this’. They've got a hunger for the latest technology.”

What happened: As Gippsland’s offshore wind industry ramps up and more clean energy projects are established in the designated Renewable Energy Zone (REZ), young Gippslanders are seeing opportunities to forge long-term careers in renewables.

In late April, the federal and Victorian governments announced a $50 million investment into renewable energy training in the state. 

  • The package includes $15 million to build a new renewable energy digital training facility at TAFE Gippsland’s Morwell campus.

Read the full story here or watch a video I made about it below.

For more than 50 years, Franz Reiter helped generations of Victorians experience snow for the very first time on the slopes of Mount Baw Baw.

The German immigrant was a fixture of life on the ski fields of the Gippsland mountain. He was instrumental in drawing visitors to the snow after he set up a ski-school and hire business on the mountain in the 60s and 70s.

A retrospective: Reiter passed away in March this year, at the age of 92. The Monitor spoke with one of his daughters, Trudi, about her father’s legacy and how Mount Baw Baw has changed since she was a child.

Franz carrying Trudi in front of his Mount Baw Baw ski-hire business.

From the war to Baw Baw: Reiter was born in Germany in 1934 and immigrated to Australia around 1958 to join his sister, who was already living and married in the country.

Trudi, who was Reiter’s second daughter, told the Monitor that Reiter wasn’t a very experienced skier when he arrived.

“He had skied a little bit [growing up] but the second World War was going on, so it wasn’t until he was a teenager that he’d go into the mountains, hike up and ski down.”

Phillip Island local, Linda Livett, has noticed an increase in rough sleepers across Gippsland, so she decided to sign up to the Bass Coast Winter Shelter in Cowes to support locals experiencing homelessness.

“Having shelter and having meals shouldn't be a luxury in our country,” Livett told the Monitor during a media day for the winter shelter attended by volunteers, council representatives and community members at a church in Cowes.

What happened: The Bass Coast Winter Shelter in Cowes is preparing to open its doors for the second year in a row, aiming to provide overnight refuge for people experiencing homelessness during the coldest months of the year.

Last year the shelter raised $26,000 from the community, giving them the opportunity to hire Livett for one day a week as a Project Coordinator.

“My job at the moment is mainly to try and get the ball rolling, so that when the shelter opens on June 3, we're ready to go,” Livett said.

LOOKING NATIONALLY 👀

Each year, roughly 715,000 rugby fields worth of native forests are chopped down in Australia. The majority of that is turned into wood chips, paper pulp, box liners and packaging.

My colleague Archie Milligan from the National Account looked into the differences between the native forest logging industry compared with plantation logging.

Take a look at his video on the topic below.

🎥 Watch: What event would you like to see replace the Moto GP?

While on Phillip Island last week, I asked Cowes locals about a bunch of local topics. One of the questions I asked them was what event they would like to see replace the Moto GP.

Take a look at what they had to say below.

🙌 Thanks for catching up with us this week at the Monitor. I hope you enjoyed this issue of our newsletter.

I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday morning with more chats with locals, informative interviews and Gippsland updates.

Cheers,
Jacob & the Gippsland Monitor team

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