Success for Moama Bowling Club at ClubsNSW awards

Moama Bowling Club sales and marketing manager George Santos said he was delighted the club was acknowledged for the team’s hard work and community contribution.

“They had record entries for awards this year,” he said.

“There were nine awards, and we were successful in being finalist in two, and won one of the awards.

“That’s for our work with the community in terms of arts and culture.

“Certainly, we do sponsor a number of events that could be coupled with the arts, including music like the Winter Blues and Riverboat Festival.

“Last year we sponsored 80 organisations, which encompasses a lot more than just arts, culture and entertainment.”

Mr Santos is especially grateful given Moama Bowling Club’s size and location.

“It is terrific, especially being so far from the big smoke,” he said.

“Typically, you’ll find there’s some big clubs that are Sydney-centric that get recognised because obviously they have the biggest impact on the community and are instantly recognisable.

“It’s good — you couldn’t be more remote from Sydney — and we’ve got the recognition, which is tremendous.”

The club nominates annually, and has been a finalist in previous years, including in 2023 in the ‘Fostering Grassroots Sport’, ‘Mental and Social Wellbeing’ and ‘Sustainability’ categories, and in 2020 for the ‘COVID-19 Community Assistance’ category.

The club’s application, titled ‘From Floods to Festivals: A Community Rises Again’, showcased its post-flood contributions to uplift the region.

“Every year we put something together and enter it,” Mr Santos said.

“It’s great for us to actually promote what we do in the club.”

There is a wide range of arts, culture and entertainment initiatives and groups that Moama Bowling Club supports.

This includes its $100,000 contribution to the Bridge Art Project, sponsorship of the Winter Blues Festival, Moama Lights and the Archie Walker Indigenous Round with Echuca Football Netball Club.

“Some people will recognise, ‘that’s us’,” Mr Santos said.

“But things like the Bridge Art Project — around five years they first came to us looking for funding to start the work, which they couldn’t have started without a significant amount of funding, so we’ve given them $100,000 to go and do the research, do the project, do the business plan, which they did.

“We sponsor all the festivals in town ... we sponsor EMTC (Echuca Moama Theatre Company), community radio, we are involved with EMAI (Echuca Moama Arts Initiative).

“There’s many examples.”

Mr Santos said many of the organisations Moama Bowling Club was drawn to relied on the contributions of volunteers.

“We tend to gravitate towards supporting volunteers,” he said.

“We know how hard it is to get out of bed at six in the morning, or at six o’clock at night, you finish dinner, and then you’re off with the kids.

“There’s a lot of work that goes in that’s unpaid.

“From our perspective, we want to make sure that we do assist those who put in so much effort.”

Although the award recognised Moama Bowling Club, Mr Santos said the entire community should be proud of the region’s contributions to arts, culture and entertainment.

“It’s been a great year for us,” he said.

“It’s good to be recognised on that front, and it’s great that we’ve been able to put something together to showcase our community.

“The message now is for the community to be proud.

“We can showcase the fact that we’ve been highlighted in a forum that’s normally reserved for those within the much larger communities.”