Auction to keep Bamawm Recreation Reserve from "going to ruin"

Secretary Nigel Riordan said the money had been slowly decreasing but this was the first year it had completely dried up, leaving it up to the locals to keep the reserve afloat.

“The council say the service level of the town is not high enough for funding, so not enough members, but we’ve got a pretty good cricket club with probably 300 to 400 members and around 120 players,” he said.

Home of the Bamawm Lockington United Cricket Club, the reserve has two ovals, cricket nets and its indoor stadium has tennis, badminton and basketball facilities.

“Our bank account is getting to the stage where we get a couple of big bills come in and you’re sort of scratching around for money, and we don’t want to be in that situation — we want to be able to grow,” Nigel said.

“Our basketball ring is a glass backboard, spring-loaded ring, it’s better than any in Echuca, so there are good facilities here.”

“If there was a target of members we needed to hit (to regain funding), well that’s what we would go and do.”

Committee member Jo Holloway can see no reason to move.

“They say we should go to Lockington but there’s only one oval in Lockington, there’s no cricket pitch, if they wanted us to shift there it would cost a lot of money to set us up over there.”

Back in the 1980s, the auction was set up to fundraise to build the indoor stadium.

Tom Davis was in the founding group of the auction and has been involved in the committee for 40 years.

“We had those auctions going for about 10 years and it was built in 1991,” Tom said.

“It was pretty popular, I tell you,” he said.

The reserve is used all year round and is available for hire.

“Every year in the off-season Premier League cricket clubs from Melbourne come here to train because it’s still dry enough up here and it’s a good-quality turf pitch, so this place gets hired out a lot — it’s not just a one-use club,” Jo said.

The importance of the reserve to locals cannot be understated.

“It’s our life,” Tom said.

“If all this closed down it would be devastating, I’ve been here all my life, I was born up on the corner — to do away with this oval here, it’s a meeting place.”

“It’s the community hub, there’s no pub in town and there’s nothing else here,” Jo said.

Jo, Nigel and fellow committee member Michael Dobson all have young families nearby and it is important to them to have a place for their kids to play sport locally.

“Even to drive past cricket training, seeing the young fellas running around here, it does make you think of, well, my kids are getting to the stage where they’re going to be old enough to play sport, and you want these things to be there,” Nigel said.

While at this early stage the committee is just hoping to cover running costs, members eventually hope to raise enough to make some improvements.

“One of the next things we want to do is put a picket fence around the main oval,” Jo said.

“If we could raise enough money to fund that over the next couple of years that’d be our goal, to make it a designated cricket oval.”

The auction will be held on Monday, March 9, the Labour Day public holiday, from 10am.

Jo said they have already got tractors, utes, caravans and motorbikes on offer.

The auctioning agents are Maddison Livestock and Real Estate and there will be a sausage sizzle and coffee cart.

For more information and to get involved find the Bamawm Recreation Reserve Auction event on Facebook.