Goornong beach to stay put

A SANDY oasis set up in the middle of Goornong’s Goldfields property will remain a permanent fixture after the success of the Australia Day beach party last week.The bushland area was transformed into a beach, complete with sand, a pool and waterslides brought in for Australia Day celebrations.Vanessa Hawkins, the vice-president of the Goornong district planning committee, said the beach would stay in place for future events.“The site looks brilliant and it was great to see it come together for Australia Day,” Mrs Hawkins said. “It’s definitely got the potential to have future events.”Mrs Hawkins said the sand-filled arena had been set up on an area that could be used for equestrian activities. “There’ll be night events on for show jumping competitions and there’ll also, hopefully, be dances and other events on the sand,” she said.The Australia Day beach party was a free community event organised with support from the City of Greater Bendigo via the flood recovery community infrastructure fund.Mrs Hawkins said the event attracted a large cross section of the community from all ages and helped restore social networks in the community, a year on from the 2011 flood disaster.City of Greater Bendigo councillor Bruce Phillips said it was a great event that would hopefully be repeated.“A lot of organisation had gone on from the local committee and it was good to see. It was a very good concept and will hopefully become an annual event,” he said.