News & Information

Winchelsea Celebrates Games Funding

11 March 2005

Locals are celebrating a $70,000 grant to conserve and restore the Winchelsea and District Soldiers Memorial Grandstand.

Commonwealth Games Minister Justin Madden announced the grant this week, as part of a $100,000 allocation for local celebrations of the Melbourne 2006 Games.

$30,000 will go towards celebratory activities around the shire closer to the Games themselves.

Surf Coast mayor Cr Keith Grossman said that it was good news for the shire.

"Surf Coast was only one of three municipalities in the State that received maximum funding of $100,000," he said.

'This means that our residents can join in celebrating the 2006 Games and there will also be a lasting legacy in Winchelsea."

"Council staff and our community work hard to prepare good quality grant applications and I am very pleased with this result," the mayor said.

Barney Parsons is the chairman of the Eastern Reserve Committee, where the memorial grandstand is located.

He said that obtaining funding to conserve and restore the grandstand had been a "long and exhausting saga" for a small committee formed in 1998.

This group contained members of the RSL, Legion of Ex Service Men and Women and the Eastern Reserve committee.

"The Winchelsea Lions Club nominated now Cr Roly Livingston to work with the committee in mid 2004 and we approached the shire for assistance," Mr Parsons said. "Council's recreation officer, Peter Bromley, prepared the successful funding submission."

Mr Bromley said that secretary of the Winchelsea RSL secretary Joe Axon and Kevin Bennett of the Legion of Legion of Ex Service Men and Women were "over the moon" when told the project had at last been funded."

Mr Bromley acknowledged the help of local people in preparing the submission, including members of the Winchelsea Historical Society, "especially Shirley Leake who dug into her vast collection of photographs, some of which were used in the application".

The funds will be used to improve drainage, repair, replace and paint timberwork, repair the concrete knitlock blocks making up the building fabric and to return to building as near as possible to its original appearance.

Council expects the work to be completed by March 2006, in time to be part of the 2006 Commonwealth Games celebrations.

For further information contact Cr Keith Grossman on 5261 2091 or Peter Bromley on 5261 0660.

Source: Surf Coast Shire Media Release