Friends of the Old Bega Hospital Newsletter

Dear Friend of the Old Bega Hospital

On Friday 13 December the Reserve Land Manager (the community group that manages the Old Bega Hospital for the owner, Crown Lands) received a letter with very good news:

Dear Ms Jones

I write regarding the NSW Government funding commitment for the Old Bega Hospital Reserve Trust's Old Bega Hospital Restoration project.

I am pleased to confirm that the above project has been allocated $3,000,000 from the Regional Communities Development Fund.

Funding for this project will be granted in accordance with the Regional Communities Development Fund Deed. A draft copy of the Funding Deed, with details of the next step in the process, will be emailed to you next week.

Thank you for spending the time and effort on your application and congratulations on receiving funding for this important project.

Chris Hanger
Executive Director
Regional Infrastructure and Programs
NSW Government Regional NSW

Which means that we will probably be able to start restoration work in 2020. Still a bit of work to be done on the development application, then a lot of detailed design work followed by tendering and issue of a construction certificate, before work can get under way.

The thank you list for getting this result is a very long one, and gives some idea of the effort that has gone into it.

So thank you to all the people who wrote to Andrew Constance to support the funding bids. Politics is the name of the game, and it takes people power to get it moving.

Thank you to everyone who has come along to the Spring Fair, the Trivia Night and bought tickets in the raffles. Even bigger thank you to the people, the small band, that organise those events.

Thank you to the makers of hundreds of cakes and cups of tea. To the donors and sponsors and stall holders.

Thank you to the groups who have kept using the Old Bega Hospital since the fire - weavers, potters, radio station, Men's Shed, beekeepers and many many more. You pay the rent and keep the place going.

Thank you to the pollies and their staff - Andrew Constance, Mike Kelly, Peter Hendy and Leanne Atkinson; and to Ministers and shadow ministers further afield. Particularly to Andrew who got the first offer of $500,000, even though we never got that money.

Thank you to the public servants, some we know, many we don't, who run the funding programs, especially in the Office of Environment and Heritage who got us the $100,000 Heritage Activation grant which really got the process rolling again.

Thank you to the tradies, architects, planners and consultants who have done the professional work to bring plans to reality.

Thank you to the Men's Shed and the volunteers who keep the grounds looking amazing.

Thank you to Cayce Hill for the inspiration of the Fun House, showing how a community centre can be done in Bega. Thank you to SE Arts and Iain Dawson at the Regional Gallery for arts ideas and support.

Thank you to the Reserve Trust, the people who have met on the first Tuesday of every month and many times in between for years, who organise and do repairs, collect the rent, negotiate with Crown Lands, lobby politicians, talk to Council, apply for and administer grants, evaluate tenders, engage architects, write letters, newsletters and reports, organise meetings, buy the toilet paper, find tenants and stick with it through thick and thin; and have generated thousands of pages of paper and thousands of emails in the process.

And thank you to the Aboriginal people who have been custodians of the land for thousands of years and continue to care for it. Who have welcomed us to Country and cleared the legal hurdles re Aboriginal Land claims and Native Title.

Best wishes for the remainder of 2019 and the beginning of 2020

Regards

Richard Bomford

President, Friends of the Old Bega Hospital

www.obh.org.au

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