November 1, 2021
The Murgon community has been invited to attend a public consultation meeting this month to discuss upgrade plans for QEII Park.
The meeting will be held near the park’s rotunda at 5:30pm on Wednesday, November 10, to discuss a proposal by the South Burnett Regional Council to carry out a multi-stage upgrade of the CBD parklands over the next few years.
The first phase would focus on the area from Gore Street (opposite the War Memorial) to the eastern edge of the town’s Visitor Information Centre.
Former MBDA president Leo Geraghty said he thought it was important any upgrades were made in a uniform way because the parklands run for several blocks through the town’s CBD.
This meant that to get a consistent result, it was important to get the project correct from the outset.
Ideas for possible upgrades were advanced at an initial public consultation meeting held at the park with South Burnett Mayor Brett Otto and Cr Kathy Duff on September 29.
The topic has also been discussed by the Murgon Business and Development Association.
Since then, Mr Geraghty and Murgon Show Society president Alan Trim have been collecting upgrade ideas to inform the next consultation meeting.
Last weekend, they also posted photos of several of these ideas on an information board in the park near the Visitor Information Centre so the public can view them.
Upgrade ideas include:
- Installing wide, coloured paths through the parklands to provide wheelchair access for the disabled
- Ensuring the park has a sound system that can be used for the many community events held there throughout the year
- Ensuring the park is fully covered by the town’s CCTV system to improve safety
- Installing solar-powered fairy lights to illuminate the parklands after dark
- Removing obsolete signage, poles and notice boards from the parklands to free up more space for community use
- Installing bicycle racks near the Visitor Information Centre to make the CBD more attractive to South Burnett Rail Trail tourists
- Planting new trees that don’t have destructive root systems, and ringing their bases with hedges of hardy flowering plants
- Installing new seating areas with greater shade coverage
- Installing walls around several sides of the park’s rotunda to improve sound transmission
Mr Geraghty and Mr Trim said they wanted to make it clear these were ideas they had developed themselves to help prompt community discussion.
Council officers would use feedback at the November consultation meeting to draw up a draft design for the first stage of the upgrade.
This draft is expected to be released in December.
Cr Kathy Duff – who has seen the draft ideas – said she was looking forward to further discussions about the project.
She said many of the ideas Mr Geraghty and Mr Trim proposed would greatly improve the parklands, but felt certain there were others that could be looked at as well.
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QEII Park Through The Years
Murgon’s QEII parklands were little more than fenced paddocks for the first 50 years of their life.
They were the result of a town plan that created an extra-wide street through the town’s CBD area, and they were eventually turned into proper parklands by the former Murgon Shire Council.
These photos – gathered by Leo Geraghty and Alan Trim – show how the park looked for most of its early life.
