THERE will be no Cohuna Bridge to Bridge next year after the long-running event failed to attract new volunteers.
The annual charity event celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and attracted hundreds of people to its foot and cycling legs.
Outgoing event director Kirstin Nicholson told the Gannawarra Times the most recent committee had been involved for the past five years after taking the reins from the Lions club.
“They had put a call out at the time to get people to come on board, otherwise the event would be lost. Our group were the ones to answer that call, because we really wanted to keep it alive,” she said.
Ms Nicholson said the event had been a tradition in Cohuna, starting as a practical joke between local men Straw Ely, Mick Farrant and Ron Stanton.
“A pair of them had put an ad in the paper that said the third man was going to swim from Dalton’s Bridge to the town bridge. They had a date and time all set, and had even had said that it would be for charity, so the man thought that he should probably do it anyway.
“From there they started to think that they could get other people, and it all started to snowball from there.
“They had built it up so it would have a number of water-based events, things like swimming and kayaking.
“But when we took over we unfortunately had to drop all of those events, partly because of insurance issues but also because we really just didn’t have the manpower to continue to run those.”
The new committee brought in trail-running events, with their own “spin on things”.
“We wanted to bring in new participants every year, and build upon what had already been built,” Ms Nicholson said.
“In the very early days, the proceeds were split between the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Cohuna hospital. It’s an amazing amount of money, really.
“It’s usually nominated to particular projects.”
This year funds had been put towards upgrading an outdoor area in the Cohuna hospital’s aged section.
“The previous two years, the money had been used to purchase two cardiac monitors for their new theatre. We’ve bought dialysis chairs and a colonoscopy camera.
“These are things that you hope you’ll never have to use personally, but they are important things, and sometimes they are things that are items that the hospital would love to have but their funding may not be able to cover them.”
Since 2019, more than $68,000 had been contributed to the local hospital, bringing total donations to $173,000 since 1994.
Ms Nicholson said the committee initially comprised 17 people, but more than halved in the past five years.
“As we couldn’t replace a lot of those committee members, a lot of the workload had fallen onto me as event director,” she said.
“It had just gotten to the point where it was getting too much with my full-time work, and study and also my role with the Cohuna Show.
“We just needed a few new people to come in, but unfortunately we didn’t get that.
“We’ve made the call that we couldn’t continue, but if a group of community members could come together to take on the organisation of the Bridge to Bridge, then obviously it can be resurrected.
“We’ll probably wait between 12 months and two years to fully cancel the organisation … we still have money that we hold onto each year as start-up funds and expenses, so once we know for sure that it won’t be resurrected, then we can donate that to the hospital as well.
“Over the 30 years of this event, there have been way too many people to mention that have put in the hard work to make it a success, and without any one of those people the event wouldn’t have been as successful as it was.”
