No surprise from council over club
BOWLS clubs are a staple of most Aussie towns, their manicured greens a soothing oasis of order and tradition. The Townsville Bowls Club, at the end of The Strand, should be the jewel in the region’s bowls crown.
It’s not though; this primo piece of real estate has lain empty since 2015, a year after the club’s 100th anniversary, when due to falling membership and “increased costs”, the club requested the council take over the lease from the Department of Natural Resources and Mines.
The lease costs $2500 a year, that’s right, per year, so at $48 a week, it’s the steal of the century until it ends in 2024.
When this happened I wrote about a visit to a bayside bowls club in St Kilda, Melbourne, which due to dwindling membership and a younger population, had been transformed into a funky “barefoot bowls” and bar venue, with live music and events.
A few years later I heard of another repurposed club, this time in NSW, that had turned its clubhouse into a bar and restaurant, and its green into a market garden that provided the produce. As it turned out, mates moved to that suburb during Covid and raved about their neighbourhood success story, ‘Camperdown Commons.’
So when our council called for ideas in 2020 for our almostwaterfront site, it was a little exciting, yet despite two submissions neither “progressed”.
Then with no notice to the community, two much-loved fig trees were cut down, that cynics might recall just happened to block the view from the bowls club to the sea.
Next, Local Law No.8,
Unsightly Buildings, was passed by the council in January.
A council spokeswoman denied the law applied to the bowls club, as it wasn’t unkempt or unsightly but while 100-year-old buildings transformed by sympathetic architects into modern facilities while retaining their heritage appeal are a priority for other councils, not so here – exhibit one: The Criterion Hotel.
All in favour of the easier option – “demolition?”
Aye, aye, Capitane.
Then, surprise – the Bulletin featured the Australian Festival of
Chamber Music chairwoman suggesting the bowls site as the perfect place for, did you guess right, a concert hall? FYI, concert halls are specifically designed for one thing – acoustic concerts. With no stage, wings, or proscenium arch for sets their use is limited.
Here’s what I wrote back in July – Back in 2015, entities from the Barrier Reef Orchestra, the Australian Concerto and Vocal Competition and the Townsville Community Music Centre collaborated on what the city’s performing arts community required, and local design gurus Troppo Architects drew up plans
that added a small theatre, a concert hall and an outdoor amphitheatre to the existing Civic Theatre, enabling shared use of expanded backstage and front of house facilities, with an impressive foyer, bar, and carparking, all in the one location.
The council responded with only an “acknowledgment of receipt of the plans”, then three years later commissioned the Bott report, which ignored this amazing local concept and suggested a “concert hall within the muchvaunted Hive project”.
So try to act surprised when the site is finally “announced”, OK?
Well that’s it, it won’t be long before Annastacia Palaszczuk wants to appoint herself to be the PM, the last Premier who thought he could do that was a lot smarter than her and he failed. RON KELSO
YWAM youth precinct sounds great – except for the location! How many troubled youth live in/around there? How are kids getting there? This precinct needs to be in a more central suburb.
MACCA, RASMUSSEN
It looks pretty likely the $300m taxpayers funded for the quarantine facility in Toowoomba will go down the drain as it may never be used, another white elephant just so the Premier could score cheap political points against the PM.
REB KELSO
In the week that the Nobel prize in physics was awarded to renowned scientists for their climate models, the denialist brains trust of Chesney, Campion and Gibson write in with a farrago of furphies and conspiracy theories. The difference in quality between the two sides is vast, the latter three only capable of winning a Darwin Award. STEVE, BELGIAN GARDENS
Please everybody wake up to how badly Premier Palaszczuk has
mismanaged our hospitals. While federal funding has increased 101 per cent, the state increase has only been 53 per cent. The current hospital crisis has nothing to do with federal funding or with Covid. Don’t let Covid conceal her incompetence. Code yellows have got to stop. BARNEY BELGIAN GARDENS
When Covid does come to Townsville, and it will ... the people who contract it who are unvaccinated should not be allowed entry into our public hospital. If they need intubating they should be made to go a private hospital and pay through the nose for it. A written, legitimate exemption from a GP would be the only reason to enter the public system. Why, after all this time and scientific advice, should they have the luxury of clogging up our hospital system? Not to mention the effort that the poor exhausted medical staff who have been busting their guts to keep Covid at bay.
KERRY WEST END.
Steven Miles, the Minister for Health and Ambulance Services, who wasted 300K on the botched Lady Cilento name change now becomes deputy premier and insists the feds cough up more money for Queensland hospitals. How entitled can this fool be? The federal government has no business in funding this incompetent government’s reckless wastage. These fools couldn’t run a raffle in a pub. Miles out of their depth.
DEAN AITKENVALE.
Debra Gibson & Peter Campion (TB, 8/10) to add to your letters, why don’t politicians and climate alarmists say man-made climate change? Never called that in the media either. Blaming humans for it all but only refer to it as climate change. No one denies that the climate is forever changing. MG4812
Good news: (TB Headline Oct 8). YWAM to tackle youth crime problems in Townsville. We wish them success in their mission. May their work become a benchmark for others in Qld and around Australia. Cheers, SHALOM, KIRWAN.