Saving Badgers Park

It's interesting to read about parks and their value to a community. Badgers Park, Old Bar isn't a city hub full of runners and readers. It is a very natural respite from the built landscape, frequented by Kangaroos and other wildlife. It's a free corridor to our magnificent beach and holds no signs of neglect or vandalism. This in itself if a sign of how residents with the help of our council value it.

The following is quoted from Understanding the Contribution Parks and Green Spaces can make to Improving People's lives.

"While well managed parks and green spaces can encourage visitors, and enhance social inclusion and cohesion, poor quality spaces, scarred by the evidence of vandalism and neglect, dominated by single groups and anti-social behaviour, can be a blight on any community. It is a measure of peoples‘ commitment to green spaces and belief in their importance that there are so many examples of communities working together to transform their local space."

And then this -  “Perhaps more significantly, the acts of improving, renewing or even saving a park can build extraordinary levels of social capital in a neighbourhood” This is our invitation.

Saving a park is an opportunity for this generation to reassert it's value and work to build new ways of community and commitment with what Council is trying to provide.  Old Bar already has many community groups who work well within their focus. But our natural environment which has been handed to us as generational heritage, such as the parks, have only us to defend it as it can't defend itself.

Our beautiful Old Bar Parks

Our beautiful and much enjoyed, long standing street parks are currently under threat of sale by Greater Taree Ctiy Council.
This sale process will close off the land and it will never be available for community use again. Most of these parks are held in older subdivisions where the land is highly sought after. Originally, the land was allocated by the developer in accordance to rules on what constituted a good mix of open space and housing by Greater Taree City Council at the time. Since this time two and three dwellings are now allowed on individual blocks thus increasing the general density of housing. These parks are now even more important to the life quality and benefit of the residents than before.
I support the retaining of all parklands in Greater Taree City Council. Here I am focusing on Badgers Park, Old Bar as this is the one I use every day and my children and now grandchildren use. It has a special place in our life in Old Bar.

Read the draft of the Open Space Improvement Plan offered by the Council for community feedback. It is easy to offer feedback and have a say here or give the Council a call/letter.
This isn't the first time that this plan has been offered to residents. But the irony in parkland discussions is that most of us aren't activists and don't know how to 'fight' or present our protest. For my part I can only call upon a #quietactivism which is rather like the 'passive' social and healthful benefit I get from the open park land.
Part of the issue is the inability of our council to continue to maintain the space. It is expensive to mow the grass and they may need community maintenance groups to do this until better times. The most important thing is to keep the land, even in a reverted bush state until things get better. It is irreplaceable.
On the upside, looking at our parks and their enormous social and health value to our community is encouraging. We take for granted their enormous value because we never thought it possible that they could be taken away. Old Bar is a very unique place. It has great un-touched natural beauty, clean waterways and a mix of people from all walks of life and social situations living in the same place.

Food for thought

Understanding the contribution that Parks and Green spaces can make to improving peoples lives.

Making the invisible visible: The real value of park assets.