President's Report at the AGM 2004

Our final event of the 2003/2004 year was Clean Up Australia Day. Working alongside neighbours picking rubbish out of the river mud was a little like how it all started thirty years ago…

In 1974 the mud covered almost everything on our estate and the rubbish we were sorting through was often the cherished belongings our friends and neighbours. A group of residents realised that it was going to be difficult to control the development of our estate when people were selling out at any price. You could buy a block of land for $400 and one almost completed house for a few thousand dollars.

We formed a progress association and quite soon after the cheap buildings started going up on estate – “Fibro boxes” as somebody called them.

In our first major win, we blocked substandard development and slowly land prices went back to normal. Other major battles included the cement works and the sewerage outlet across the river from the boat ramp. [We didn’t win that one but we did manage to get two million dollars worth of additional safeguards installed and these have so far prevented raw sewage getting into the river].

We did win the battle against the development of an inexpensive housing estate on what is now pony club and Montessori school land. Actually we have had to win that one more than once.

Smaller lobby activities provided the estate with things we now take for granted but some were very difficult to obtain. Our bus service, the mail box, road widening programmes and regular park mowing are just some of these successes.

Development of our central park into what it is today took more than twenty five years of negotiations.

More than any other estate, Mandalay has been developed by its residents. We have moulded it into what it is today. Still not perfect but a unique and really nice place to live.

The outgoing committee has started on plans to celebrate the thirty year milestone and hopefully this will be a really good year.

One thing that could spoil that is the possibility of very low flying passenger aircraft flying over our rooftops.

This would be a disaster for Mandalay and other Western suburb areas.

We have to stop it.

That battle begins in earnest tonight.


Warren Fletcher
President
Mandalay Progress Association

24 March 2004
 

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