Organisers of the Mullumbimby Gateway project are feeling more optimistic about its future after spending more than an hour with North Coast Nationals Ben Franklin MLC at the Gateway site on Friday.
Project organiser Richard Mordaunt called the meeting ‘to update him on the Gateway’, adding ‘he couldn’t have been more receptive and helpful for our Stronger Country Communities funding application’.
‘This is a Mullumbimby and Byron Shire Community Project and Ben was very encouraging and appreciative of what we had originally done in 1987 and the need now to rescue and refurbish
this important site at the entrance to Mullumbimby,’ Richard said.
Mr Franklin told the group, ‘I wholeheartedly support the Mullumbimby Gateway project as an important community and cultural site and I encourage them to keep applying for grants, especially NSW Cultural Grants’.
‘This is an important site and I will do everything I can to help in its refurbishment,’ Mr Franklin added.
The group has also launched a new website to explain the project and encourage tax deductible public donations.
Richard said the aim of the project is to ‘bring the whole site back to life, repair the totems and the town sign, restand the standing stones with new plantings across the site.’
‘There will be interpretive boards with local history, linking it with the town.
‘It is public safe space for youth and locals waiting for pickups and ride shares and there will be a new pathway from the bus drop off to the gazebo.
‘We’ve invited Delta Kaye and the Aboriginal Corp to be involved and have suggested they could paint all the posts of the gazebo.
‘We also hope that Bharat and Tonu’s nature carving will become part of the Gateway,’ Richard said.
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