Both Councillors Jeff McConnell and I have asked the General Manager of Infrastructure to find a solution to and rectify this new work which has been carried out, encroaching onto the main oval playing field, limiting the possible width of the field, and therefore rendering it unplayable for A grade competition.

I took some measurements last weekend. There’s up to 120 metres in length possible, with a five-metre runoff, but now at the northern end, the maximum width with the bollards in place is just 50 metres of playing field, with a five-metre runoff on both sides. Most A grade sized ovals require 68 metres, plus a five-metre runoff on both sides.

The aim of various football codes is to have a full-size playing field, achievable with the current removal of the cricket practice nets, and with the lights positioned back off the oval to accommodate the full field. Council recently upgraded the toilets and added a canteen to facilitate A grade competitions, at a cost short of $500,000. The change rooms were retained to facilitate home and away games.

This is a repeat of the mistakes at Staffsmith Park, where the transpiration trenches, surrounded by bollards, took away nearly a third of the park’s open space for active recreation.

Once again, without consulting either Cr McConnell or myself, a decision was taken to place bollard trenches encroaching on the playing field on Geissmann Oval.

The Mountain has a deficit of space for active recreation for the current population. During the years prior to 2005, when the population was just 5,500, studies were commissioned by the Beaudesert Shire Council, using ROSS planning consultants to determine the right amount of active recreation land needed for the Mountain community population and the available land that could be purchased. Taking into account all the existing recreation land at the time, which included St Bernard’s Oval, Geissmann Oval and Staffsmith Park, the figure was 40 acres of land. That was the basis of purchasing the 50 acres of land, now the TMSA site. The population is now 8,500, and we cannot afford to sacrifice our existing active recreation land for other purposes when there are still other active recreation groups in search of suitable land.

Our swimming pool is recognised as being totally inadequate for our population, and land at the TMSA is set aside in a new master plan for a new aquatic centre, one additional oval, indoor sports centre and room for sports to have their own club space.

I am often reminded that not one sports code on the Mountain using the TMSA grounds has a clubhouse to call home. This is a major problem, and after nearly 14 years of the development of the site, it is a disappointment to me that this clubhouse stage of the site’s development, proposed at inception as stage 2, has not been achieved. This has in my view, hindered the realisation of the ground’s full potential. It’s a lost opportunity for the social development of our sporting codes, the socialisation of participating families, and for our children’s shared history.

We have lost St Bernard’s Oval, which is now fenced off from the public, which was once the home of Australian rules and was developed with funding from the Beaudesert Shire Council, Education Queensland, (when Kevin Lingard was a Shadow Minister), and the community who did all the design and construction at cost price, including $25,000 of rock blasting.

All of this means we are several ovals short of our required recreation infrastructure requirements based on our population increase, and we cannot afford to lose more facilities because of what has occurred at both Staffsmith Park and Geissmann Oval.

We await a response from Council as to how this is going to be rectified.

Derek Swanborough
Councillor. Division 1
Ph 0436 351 567
derek.s@scenicrim.qld.gov.au