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Council inaction may force one of the state’s premier skateboarding facilities to be closed down for good, users of Eaglehawk’s McKern Skate Park fear.
Bendigo Old School Skaters founding member John Ilott, whose group regularly uses the park, said what was once one of the top 10 skate parks in Australia has been rendered unsafe due to groundwater rising through cracks in the bowl.
“Over time it’s leaving residue on there, algae’s growing, it’s damaging the concrete and we have seen over the last two years quite a bit of change with it, it’s getting worse and the concrete’s getting worse and it’s spreading around the park,” he said.
“It comes and goes with the weather, but seeing that we’ve had a wet winter, we’ve got more groundwater to start with and then all through summer these parklands and ovals are watered every night for a long time.
“We come here in the morning and it takes till the afternoon sometimes for what we believe is the water from the watering to make its way down there and start coming up, because you can be in the middle of a 35 degree day and all of a sudden it starts leaking.”
Mr Ilott said BOSS members had raised the issue with the City of Greater Bendigo more than a year ago and in that time the facility had gone from a popular destination for skaters from across the state to one to be avoided at all costs.
“We’ve had feedback early on that the bowl’s stuffed, it’s always had problems, there’s no point going because you don’t know if you can skate it – why travel 200 to 300 kilometres if you don’t know if you can use it when you get there,” he said.
The city’s public space design co-ordinator, Aaron Lindsay, said staff had met with local skaters who voiced their concerns about water pooling in the skate bowl “late last year”.
"Since that time the city has commenced investigations to determine the drainage issues at the skate park and this work is ongoing," he said.
But BOSS member Albert “Skip” Skipper said it was only after he took to Facebook in frustration last week that the group had seen any action from the council.
“Time and time again I’ve had council members come down and people who work for council have looked at it and scratched their chin and go 'Oh OK', and once again it’s the same story, 'Oh we’ll get somebody to inspect this or get a price on how we’re going to get this fixed’, or ‘What’s the solution?’ – same story over and over, I feel like I’m getting run around in circles,” he said.
“I hadn't heard from them in ages and only yesterday I get an email saying this is what we’re going to do, a temporary fix, blah blah blah.”
Mr Skipper said if a permanent solution was not found soon it was only a matter of time before someone was seriously injured and the park shut down for good.
“I'm concerned that we could possibly lose it when the concrete is not fixable,” he said.
“I've seen it time and time again, kids will just go in there, and if they hit that water that comes up, those wheels get very slippery and I’ve seen children get knocked out here before.”
Mr Ilott said he had been meeting with council staff about the issue for months, with numerous promises for action amounting to nothing during that time.
“As soon as Skip put up his Facebook post about coming here all of a sudden we’ve had phone calls, emails where Aaron Lindsay’s talked to me about having temporary solutions to stop water coming out of the cracks, but that in itself shows they don’t have the knowledge because if they do that the water’s still going to be there,” he said.
“Having a temporary measure just so we can skate isn’t going to work, water will will come through higher in the cracks and what that water will do is it’ll start lifting the bowl.
“I have a background in construction and especially working with concrete works and waterways and stuff so I’m very familiar with hydronics issues so to have that information passed to them, and then with their own knowledge, I find it hard to see that they haven't had any action up to now.”