The Hunter River Times

BY DI SNEDDON

The NSW Tidy Towns Trophy and celebratory flag won’t be travelling far between towns this time around with Singleton passing on the coveted title to Scone at the weekend.

Scone was named the overall winner of the Keep Australia Beautiful NSW 2022 Sustainable Communities Tidy Towns Award and will now go on to represent NSW at the Australian Titles at Tasmania’s King Island later this year.

The Upper Hunter was hugely successful across the board from Branxton through to Murrurundi winning nine awards in their population categories and a further six highly commended.

Scone and the Upper Hunter Shire Council area had a significantly strong entry and the win reflected a diverse range of projects from community gardens to Belltrees Public School’s Regenerative Agriculture program.

Given Scone Tidy Towns was only established three years ago, the results have thrilled the local committee.

Scone Tidy Towns chairperson Lynda Posa said she was flabbergasted, delighted and amazed at the win.

“We started during covid and was put on the backburner for a year and suddenly we decided to enter the awards with a ‘why not’ motto, and it certainly paid off,” Lynda said.

“I believe Belltrees Public School should be a showcase for school education in the environment, we could have schools from Sydney coming here to see what can be done,” Lynda said.

She added that environmental awareness was contagious and people want to be more environmentally aware and Tidy Towns is a great formal for people to feed off each other’s ideas.

Scone wins included the Habitat and Wildlife Conservation category won by Scone District Garden Club’s Highways and Byways Healing the Land project and the Heritage and Culture Award won by Scone Literary Festival’s Patrick White Oration.

Belltrees Public School won the Communication and Engagement Award with its Regenerative Agriculture Project and was highly commended in the Young Legends and Waterways and Marine awards with their Dirty Dusty Paddocks to Water Wonderland project while Blandford Public School was highly commended for its Bush Tucker Native Garden.

Upper Hunter Shire Council’s Hall Crawl won the Community Spirit and Inclusion Award with Murrurundi Landcare and Tidy Towns Committee awarded highly commended in this category.

Murrurundi was also recognised with a win in the Heritage and Culture with the historical society winning their category for their 150^th Train Festival and highly commended in Community Engagement with its Seed Library and Adopt a Spot programs.  These awards combined saw Murrurundi win the top award for NSW for towns with populations up to 1500.

Further down the Valley and Muswellbrook  won the Habitat and Wildlife Conservation award for its Muscle Creek Rehabilitation Project, Singleton Council won the Resource Recover and Waste Minimisation Award for its recycled water system that utilised two decommissioned 50kL water tanks saving 20,000kL in potable water and $25,000 annually.

Branxton Community Hall’s Remembering the Past program was also highly commended in the Heritage and Culture award.

Visitors travelled from across New South Wales to attend the award weekend that included a meet and greet at Singleton Showground on Friday night, an award presentation at York Street Diggers on Saturday morning, the main presentation on Saturday night at Singleton Civic Centre and a farewell breakfast and ceremonial flag hand-over at Rose Point Park Sunday morning.

Singleton hosted the event after winning the overall state award back in 2021.

Singleton Tidy Towns chairperson Lyn MacBain thanked the volunteers, community groups and sponsors who helped make the event a huge success.

“I congratulate Scone and am absolutely delighted we have so many wonderful projects happening across our region, they are all very worthy of celebration,” she said.