August 14, 2008
A major recreational and environmental project that celebrates the great outdoors beauty of the local riverbank has been officially launched at Manilla.
The Manilla Riverwalk was unveiled with a special opening ceremony on Wednesday August 13 with a starring cast of community collaborators.
Tamworth MP Peter Draper said the riverwalk was a great example of how partnerships worked and Manilla was a better place to live because of those project partnerships.
The riverwalk project was begun about seven years ago and has involved hundreds of schoolkids, community volunteers, and government agencies, under the umbrella of Tamworth Regional Council planning.
Tamworth mayor James Treloar, MP Draper, the Namoi Catchment Authority, the Department of Corrective Services, local volunteers and supporters from the Manilla Matters and Manilla Community Economic Development committee, and schoolkids from St Michael's and Manilla Public School were all involved in the opening launch.
It also included a barbecue lunch and a stroll along the riverbank so everyone could see just what's been achieved when the Manilla community gets its hands dirty.
There are about 800 new trees, new picnic tables, chairs, bench seats and a freshly-laid gravelled pathway that takes walkers, cyclists and even horse riders along a one kilometre river route down the back of the Manilla showground.
The riverwalk project was a key plank in the priorities plan put together by the local group two years ago under the TRC small towns community economic development (CED) program.
According to Manilla-Barraba main street coordinator Robyn Fletcher, it's a great example of a collaborative project that really has seen many hands making light work of some hard physical yakka."
Ms Fletcher said the joint project had a wide collection of partners and the end result was that a popular part of the town's outdoor landscape had been spruced up and was attracting so many locals now that it almost needed traffic lights.
The $16,000 beautification project has involved funding and physical support from about 70 school students from St Michael's Catholic School and Manilla Public School, Corrective Services inmates, Manilla residents, TRC parks staff, the Namoi Catchment Management Authority and the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal.
Manilla Matters Committee Chairman Ivan Turnbull said the project was a "mammoth effort" and the committee's biggest to date but it would have been impossible without funding from the project partners.
The riverwalk starts from near Market St and ends behind the showground about one kilometre later and takes in the junction of the Namoi and Manilla river systems. It has long been a town favorite as a piece of paradise close to the main street. It also attracts its fair share of fishermen.
Namoi CMA education officer Col Easton said the Namoi CMA had strict guidelines for maintaining and improving water quality and landscape in the community and the Manilla Riverwalk project "had helped achieve some of these targets".
He said the CMA hoped more people would get to appreciate the Riverwalk and that more work or projects would follow to improve the area even more in the future.
Also there for the launch was local nurseryman Colin Gyorgy.
Mr Gyorgy was instrumental in the selection of native plant species that now grace the riverbanks. He based his selections on a scientific basis, opting for trees that would be beneficial to the area and were local species.
Two of the species in particular, Callistemons and Melaleucas, performed this task effectively because during flooding they 'lie over' and can bounce back rather than be ripped from their roots.
Among the species are calistemon, melaleucas, river she oak, coovea Wattle. hickory wattle, river red gum, yellowbox and Blakleys red gum.
Mayor James Treloar told the launch that he could remember the riverbank from his days as a boy rider at Pony Club meetings at the showground, which backs onto the riverwalk area.
In those days, he said, you could hardly even glimpse the river through the jungle of bush and introduced species that clogged the river.
Mr Treloar said anyone who could remember its condition before the first works began in 2001 as a Centenary of Federation project could appreciate the importance and magnitude of what had been achieved.
He paid special tribute to the work of the 70 kids involved from the two local schools, they had put in an enormous effort in helping to plant nearly 800 native trees and much to their delight he told them that he regarded the trees as theirs - and they should make sure that everybody looked after them.