20 year battle to revive Clarence Community Hall pays off in spades
Residents of the communities of Bell, Clarence, Dargan and Newnes Junction came together recently to celebrate the launch of their new Clarence Community Hall which has been a significant victory for the residents in what has been a hard-fought, 20 year battle to restore their only community facility.
The hall was destroyed during the 2019/2020 summer bushfires however the community’s battle to revive it goes far beyond that.
Many long term members of Clarence, Bell, Dargan and Newnes Junction have beautiful memories of meeting friends and neighbours at the Clarence Community hall in their younger years, however a lack maintenance over years led to the condition of the hall deteriorating to a point where it became permanently disused.
Although community members tried many times \ to revive the hall, their efforts were in vain, until recently.
The hall was lost in the 2019/2020 bushfires, after which the community once again expressed their desire to see the hall re-instated.
As ABCD Inc (a community group which represents the residents of Bell, Clarence, Dargan and Newnes Junction) President Kat Boehringer explains; “After the 2019/2020 fires we had a big community consultation where we looked at what the top priorities were to make our community stronger and more connected, and the hall was at the top of the list for a lot of people”.
“We have population of fairly isolated people in our community, we have a lot of single households, and the average age of our residents is about 60, so there’s a lot of people who’ve lived here and have brought their kids up here and have fond memories of the hall but now feel really disconnected from their community.”
It was at this moment that ABCD Inc community group was born with the aim of advocating for their community in the wake of the fires. However, with the goal of reinstating the hall at the top of the community’s wishlist ABCD Inc group then faced another Herculean challenge when there was move from Council to sell the community land that the hall had been on.
A group of local residents wrote a petition to oppose the move and Council resolved to give the community a one year reprieve from the sale, however this came with a sizable catch –the community needed to secure funding for a new hall themselves within one year.
The group set about desperately trying to secure bushfire funding for their region, however despite having suffered the worst per capita loss of any area in New South Wales during the 2019/2020 fires, submissions for bushfire funding were knocked back.
As Kat Boehringer explains; “We applied for some of the Black Summer Bushfire funding but we weren’t successful. Then COVID hit and we were all sitting around and feeling pretty depressed wondering how we were going to help our community recover. Then we had a HUFF meeting (Heads up for fire and other emergencies), which was attended by HUFF founder Mina Howard, who is also now the District Governor of Rotary. Mina heard us talking about the hall and worked behind the scenes to help us secure an International Rotary grant of $140,000 to kick start the build.”
With that money, a local architect has designed the new hall and Lithgow City Council has just now approved the development application.
However, there is still much fundraising work to be done as Kat Boehringer explains, “At the moment we’re trying to raise money to finish the building as well as to pay for landscaping or maybe even a playground to install on the land around the hall.”
With still a way to go until they see their vision for the new community hall realised, the ABCD Inc group and communities Bell, Clarence, Dargan and Newnes Junction have indeed much to celebrate as a community that has demonstrated extraordinary strength and resilience through great adversity to set itself on a path for a brighter, stronger future.
To find out more about the work of the ABCD Inc group go to: abcdinc.org.au.