“This park is a disgrace,” read a cardboard sign hastily tied onto a pole in front of Gilgai Park last week.
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“Please tidy it up so people can use it safely.”
Intended to shame the Gilgai Trust, the note has instead spurred an open meeting, and the call for more community involvement in the group.
“I was upset by this nasty little note,” chair person Diane Marlow said.
“I’m disappointed. More disappointed than anything, that they didn’t come and approach the trust.”
She said the complainer could have called the Inverell Shire Council as the Gilgai Park sign suggests, or left a message for the trust at the local shop.
“If someone would have come and approached me, I would have come down here personally and mowed it,” she said.
“The thing that hurts me most - this area is used for school kids. That was at a height that a kid could have scratched his eye out, because they used wire to tie it to the post.”
She said the grass in the park had not been mowed for four weeks due to a misunderstanding between the trust and the Inverell Shire Council. The new members of the trust were unaware of a previous agreement with the council to maintain the area in exchange for mowers and free fuel.
“If the grass looks a bit long, come and offer. Don’t just put nasty notes out there or backstab the council or run us down. Come to us,” she said.
With two of the trust’s five members struggling with health issues, and one only just having joined, Ms Marlow said much of the responsibility fell on her family.
A volunteer, she spends an hour each day working on paperwork for the trust and, along with her husband and 10-year-old son, mows the town oval and other pieces of Crown land every weekend. The park has now been added to that list.
“They (the town) need(s) to come and help. I’m burning out, my husband’s burning out. We have a family of our own as well. We have a little boy that needs that love as well.”
Passionate about improving her town, Ms Marlow has big plans to restore the war memorial, put the tennis club back into working order and even look into local children’s request for a skate park; but she knows she can’t do it alone.
“If I don’t have the manpower or the volunteers to come and help, the grants I go for sit there and if it’s not done within a certain amount of time, we’ve got to hand the funding back,” she said.
Anyone who would like to learn more about the Gilgai Trust or volunteer their time to the cause is invited to an open meeting at the Gilgai Hall on Friday evening, December 1.