Truck Show brings many benefits to city: Mayor
AFTER meeting with organisers of the Golden Oldies Truck Show, Dubbo Regional Council mayor Ben Shields said the city needs to support these community groups as much as possible, and for a range of reasons.
Cr Shields met with Golden Oldies president Jon Mancer and vice-president Brian Little for a debrief on their most recent event and said he was impressed.
“Dubbo people really do like their grease monkeys and their old machinery and their old cars and, in this case, their old trucks – so it’s something to really support and get behind,” Cr Shields said.
“I couldn’t show more appreciation to these guys for what they’ve done and how they’ve really put Dubbo on the map when it comes to trucks.
“Golden Oldies has been growing each and every show and the thing about them is it’s organically grown. We’ve got a volunteer group of blokes, they get together, they put on an event and it keeps getting bigger.
“What’s very special about them is that they give a heap of money back to community organisations – it’s a fantastic event and it really works with Dubbo.”
Jon Mancer said the debrief was vital so Council could understand just how important events like Golden Oldies are, not just for the boost they bring to the city’s economy, but for the broader community benefits as well.
“We gave the mayor a debrief of the truck show, the numbers, postcodes of where the people came from, and we gave him an overview of where we donated some money too,” Mr Mancer told Dubbo Photo News.
“One of the things we wanted to do this year was buy at least one defibrillator for the city of Dubbo; that was something we wanted to do early in the piece,” he said. When the club got to the point of distributing the money raised, they were actually able to buy two defibrillator devices at a total cost of just over $6000.
“A large amount of money went to a drought relief fund, the Geurie Lions Club which looks after a local drought relief fund here in Dubbo and we gave some to other various charities as well – Lions is all-volunteer so no money goes in administration and the money stays local,” Mr Mancer said.
Brian Little said the show itself was a huge success with people travelling to Dubbo from Victoria, Queensland and South Australia as well as from all across NSW to the city known as a traditional transport hub, which is part of the reason the show attracted almost 400 trucks as entrants.
“Dubbo is the centre of NSW, it’s the hub for transport and many people want to come here for a casual weekend. People find Dubbo easy to get to being roughly in the centre of the state,” Mr Little said.
“We’ve had really good feedback from visitors to the show, everybody was happy with the event, we had no complications and everything went well, and it also helps other community organisations.
“We had Dubbo’s Volunteer Rescue Squad doing our car parking, the Dragon Boat ladies did our gate takings, and the Volunteer Rescue Association from Narromine doing our first aid, plus all the local clubs like Lions and Rotary who like to come up with their food vans,” he said.
Mayor Shields believes councils needs to get behind these sorts of events, with the city a destination centre but needing to grow that reputation.
“Big events are already starting to pop up here and we’ve got to start helping them get more people through the gates,” Cr Shields said.
“Council needs to get behind this, there’s no doubt about that. (The Golden Oldies Club) has put in so much effort over the years and have grown this event in to being something special by getting thousands through the gate, and that money they get gets put straight back into the community.
“We need now to get behind them, this has got the potential to be something huge in Dubbo, there’s no doubt about that – it’s iconic,” he said.