Farina since 2008
Contemplating Our First 10 Years
It is ten years since a “tag-along-tour” group of Harding’s Caravan Services (Vic) customers arrived for an overnight stop at Farina and saw the prospects of the townships revival. It was sufficiently clear to inspire them to do a whip around and present the proceeds ($850) as a challenge to me, Tom Harding, to do something about it.
Fortunately, there was a Project Officer (Leith Yelland) at Outback Communities Authorities in Port Augusta who thought similarly and had been agitating his boss (Mark Sutton) accordingly for some time.
It required a $15,000 private guarantee to gain a matching grant (total $30,000) for each of two years to gain approval in addition to the original $850 stimulus money!!.
The rest is history - 897 volunteers have since contributed 62,541 direct labour hours to the site, with vast uncalculated administration hours per year off site.
Maps have previously bracketed Farina as (ruins) or (ghost town). This may have been appropriate in the year 2000, but not to the 9300 plus visitors who checked us out during the 2017 May - June - July work program.
We ARE achieving our aim of representing Farina as an Historic Inland Township of the 1850 to 1960 period.
Farina was an ABANDONED township. However, in its revitalized state it now represents many more such townships across the inland, which were also abandoned and are now just heaps of rubble.
Feel proud, all of you who have participated in any way. From the original Tag Along Group, to the bloke who dug the sullage holes for Kevin, or the “never been there before” folks who trusted us sufficiently to invest cash in the project and the Adelaide builder who transferred his business (four employees) from Adelaide to Farina for one week to do the special parts of Patterson’s house. PLUS>>PLUS>>PLUS>> so many others!
It is a special feeling for all to look around and say “I HAVE BEEN PART OF THIS.”
One visiting sponsor was overheard to say “It is great to see something I have contributed to ACTUALLY HAPPENING !!!”
Farina is firmly embedded to continue into the future.
Our most recent outcomes to ensure this are:
The 2015/2016 establishment of our OPERATIONS CENTRE.
This houses an admin centre, kitchen, medical centre , dry and frozen goods storage for the bakery, mechanical workshop, joinery shop , electrical and mechanics work cribs, a 12KVA power installation, underground water distribution from a 45,000 litre storage, planned storage for a vast amount of tools and equipment accumulated over 10 years to assist volunteer efficiency.
pajeroclub.com.au
Vol 35 No.1 - Jan/Feb 2018
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