Friday, 29 March 2024
122 Nicholson Street, Orbost, VIC 3888 - P: (03) 5154 1919

Local News

Pony club’s brighter future

Pony club’s brighter future

Mallacoota Pony Club’s facilities were decimated during the summer bushfires and the small club was looking at what could have been a very bleak future, but a grant of$50,000 has brightened its outlook no end.

The club has been announced as one of the CommBank Bushfire Recovery Grant recipients and will receive $50,000 to rebuild its much-loved pony club and replace vital clubhouse resources.

Mallacoota Pony Club secretary, Cate Tregellas, said the club was “blown away” by the generous grant.

“I was pleased when I got a call from CommBank to say we’d received money, and when she said we hadn’t just received some money, we’d received the full $50,000, I was lost for words. I was still numb after the fires and had cried very little, but there I was about to walk into a shop down the street and I broke down and cried,” Cate said.

The pony club consists of a small but highly dedicated team that has worked hard in recent years to improve and maintain the club’s facilities and expand its sporting and educational horsemanship programs.

“The club has a long history in the town and is highly regarded by the community,” Cate said.

“Five years ago it looked like folding though, with a generational turnover including two of the older girls leaving to go to uni. I wasn’t a member at that point – we didn’t even have a horse – but I put the SOS out to save it. We managed to get some numbers and somehow I walked out as secretary,” she laughed.

Since then the club has built a closeknit community with 14 riding members aged from three years to their mid-40s and a number of other riders in the community who utilised the club’s facilities before its destruction.

“It means so much to the kids,” Cate said.

“Unless you’re into surfing or fishing, there’s not a great deal around for teenagers. Horse riding is a great option.”

Despite seeing its membership rates quadruple over the past three years, the club was in desperate need of financial support following the 2019/20 bushfires that destroyed the clubhouse, office, round yard, jumping area and cross country course, as well as the club’s holding yards, fencing, gates, maintenance tools and all horseriding equipment.

“After the fires had come through I just knee before I even went down to the club that it would have been damaged. I didn’t let our girls come up with me knowing it would be bad,” Cate said.

“We lost literally everything – except for the battered long drop dunnies, that are as old as hell, and two gates left swinging off completely destroyed fencing that was only months old. They were the only things left standing. Even the grounds themselves are ruined with divots that could break a horse’s leg.

“In October members had pulled together and worked dawn to dusk for three days to do a heap of clearing and build the boundary fence as we could only afford the $5000 for the materials and not the labour. We were so proud of it and our efforts. It was all gone just months later.

“We’d had a fair in November to help pay for the boundary fence with great displays of historical pieces. It had rained towards the end of the event so we’d bundled everything up and stored it in the office temporarily. It’s heart breaking all that has gone. Forty years of history with photos, medals, all gone, with a lot on loan. All irreplaceable.”

A firm believer in ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get’, Cate spent the weeks inside away from the lingering smoke in Mallacoota thinking of ways to get funding to rebuild.

“I tend to reach for the stars with this sort of thing, but we would have been happy to receive $5000 from anywhere,” she said.

“We lost our fundraising season due to the fires. We were known for our bacon and egg rolls at the summer markets; people would search for them, and we certainly couldn’t ask the local community for help after the fires. So I applied for assistance wherever I could.”

In response to the grant application, CommBank selected the club to receive a much-needed grant of $50,000 that will help rebuild infrastructure including the construction of new boundary fences and gates. It will also fund much needed clubhouse resources such as chairs, tables, uniforms, teaching manuals, saddles and saddle racks.

“It will be at least 12 months before we can use the grounds again, but it would have been a lot longer without the CommBank grant,” Cate said.

“There are no words to describe how challenging these past few months have been, and the only thing that has got us through it is our wider community.”

“The support we’ve received is what kept us going after the total devastation of our club and we’re incredibly grateful to those who helped us or simply offered a shoulder to cry on during these painful times.

“CommBank have been incredible. We’re not CommBank customers but they have been so supportive, no questions asked. We could not have raised $50,000 in 10 summers of market stalls.

“Now we can look to the future with this $50,000. It will go a really long way in rescuing our club, bringing it back to life and open for business again once we’re past the coronavirus.

“It is a once in a lifetime opportunity, one where we can now take our time and build a club with facilities we can once again be proud of and will last generations.”

IMAGE: This summer’s bushfires destroyed everything the Mallacoota Pony Club had worked hard for, but a $50,000 grant means it can rebuild a stronger club that will last generations. INSET: Mallacoota Pony Club’s club mascot, a brown rocking horse named Brownie, miraculously survived the fires when everything around him was destroyed. (PS)


Print  

Snowy River Mail

122 Nicholson Street
PO Box 272
Orbost, VIC 3888

P: (03) 5154 1919
F: (03) 5154 2099

Publication Day: Wednesday
Circulation: 3,531

Yeates Media

Cnr Macleod & Bailey Streets
PO Box 465
Bairnsdale, VIC 3875

P: (03) 5150 2300
F: (03) 5152 6257