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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-10-29 Daily Xml
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Finniss Electorate

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (15:19): I rise to talk about some exciting announcements and openings that have occurred in the seat of Finniss over the last couple of weeks. The first was the opening of the Mount Compass playground on Sunday 13 October, after a great announcement was made during the election campaign of 2018 that the Marshall Liberal government were going to put $300,000 towards a playground in Mount Compass.

Mount Compass had not had a playground for its community, ever. The only playground they had was in the school itself. There were no playground facilities at the town oval or in any of the parks in the town, so this was an important feature that was lacking within the town. It was a great honour to be there to open it officially with the mayor, Keith Parkes, from the Alexandrina Council. The total investment into this playground was $1.15 million.

It is an amazing facility with an amazing skate park and an amazing BMX track for the kids of the community to play on. It will be one of those playgrounds that people will come from miles around just to have a go. It was fantastic to watch the people enjoying it on the day of the opening. They were certainly doing things that I would be too scared to do on a pushbike or on a skateboard. It was amazing to watch them doing their tricks as they played on this new playground.

There is also a nature playspace and swings and slides. There are so many things there for the community to do. Probably one of the things I was most intrigued by was the toolkit there for the kids to fix their bikes. It is a pole that has a bike pump to pump up tyres and there are spanners, hexagonal keys and all sorts of things that kids can use to tighten the bits and pieces on their bikes if they become loose on the tracks. It is a minor piece of infrastructure, but an amazing one, to go with the playground.

I then had the opportunity on the same day to attend the opening of the Goolwa Surf Lifesaving Club, a new facility that has been built at Goolwa. The club has really only been in operation for about nine years. They went from operating in nothing, to having a shed donated to them by the CWA to operate in, to now operating in a fantastic facility. We saw the new facility opened to the public to enjoy as well. There is a bar to sit at, which would have to have one of the best views of any building I have ever sat in in South Australia, if not Australia. It looks over Goolwa Beach and sits within the sand dunes themselves. You feel like you are part of the dunes, sitting in this beautiful environment, looking out to the Southern Ocean.

It certainly has meant the club has gone from strength to strength. The number of members has grown dramatically, from the original handful through to several hundred members now involved in that facility, and that is on top of a previous upgrade at Chiton Rocks Surf Life Saving Club a year or so ago. They have recently received an award for the improvements they have made at their club.

I would also like to mention an event that occurred yesterday. It was an event organised by SteamRanger Heritage Railway to celebrate the opening of an upgraded bridge, which they received some federal government money to do. This bridge was in such disrepair that it was actually shut down for a very short period of time while an assessment was done. It actually stopped the train from being able to go past the town of Middleton, which would have been an utter disaster just before last summer. Luckily they were able to negotiate to put a speed limit on the bridge and keep operating. However, with the federal government investment, that was able to continue, and we have seen a great piece of infrastructure and a great tourism asset continue.

The work the volunteers did and how they actually turned that $200,000 into a delivered bridge and then had money left over to go and buy an engine for another locomotive was amazing. They actually turned it into a win-win situation for everyone, so well done to those volunteers.

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