AROUND 40 people mobilised at Kow Swamp last Friday in a show of frustration at inaction on the Kow Swamp picnic area.
Erosion is continuing to eat away at the popular picnic ground, where toilets have now been decommissioned and are due to be removed, along with the barbecue, this month.
Former Leitchville Lions Club president Geoff Behrens has been involved for the past decade in the fight to preserve the area, which was set up by the Lions in the 1980s.
He told the Gannawarra Times on Friday that the group was “trying to get the Campaspe Shire to sort themselves out.”
Mr Behrens said the erosion, which has been a problem since the retaining wall was washed away in the 2011 floods, was advancing rapidly and the council had refused several solutions to the problem proposed by the Lions.
In a statement released last week, Campaspe Shire said “a proposed plan to address the erosion has been drafted and covers the area from the corner of Taylors Creek to the end of the Lions Park,” which it said was “a Goulburn Murray Water project”.
The council considers Kow Swamp to be a site of high Aboriginal cultural significance, which is “located within the footprint of the area now registered to the Yorta Yorta National Aboriginal Corporation.”
The swamp is believed to be the largest known burial site from the Pleistocene era, with remains dating back more than 20,000 years, and a multi-agency group has been formed to oversee its management, for which Goulburn-Murray Water has developed a strategic plan.
The shire’s statement said the toilets had been decommissioned due to “the condition of the waste water system and an inability to meet the conditions required for a new facility.”
“This is due to current environmental health legislation and building code legislation which prohibit waste water systems close to waterways,” it said.
“Waste water systems must be more than 60 metres from the water so there is no possible position on which to rebuild a toilet block at the same location.”
However, following talks late last year in which the council undertook to consider the long-running community concerns and try to relocate the picnic spot’s amenities, there has been little progress.
Mr Behrens said “the way the erosion’s going, two of the tables aren’t far away [from being lost]”.
The Lions and their supporters are tired of watching on as the “magic area”, many of them grew up swimming at, continues to deteriorate.
They are calling for at least the barbecue, which the Lions provided and installed, to be left in place at the important local site and tourist attraction.
