Muswellbrook Comes Under Eye of Tidy Towns Judge
BY JEM ANSHAW
Following the recent Tidy Towns success of Singleton and the Upper Hunter Shire, Muswellbrook is hoping to see some of the same following a visit from the judge last week.
Doug MacDonald has been judging Tidy Towns projects for 27 years, so it is fair to say he knows what he is looking out for.
“Some towns are strong in say environmental conservation and others are stronger in litter reduction and resource management, so it’s a matter of just blending them all together to find out who does the best with what they’ve got, that’s the bottom line,” he told The Hunter River Times.
“There are some towns that are well endowed, say, with support from the agricultural sector, others more so from the business sector, and so you’ve got to understand what they do with what they’ve got.”
Scone will host the annual awards in November, having won the State overall title last year, and that will be where the projects get to hear how they faired in judging.
Muswellbrook South Public Schools Green Team, the Muswellbrook Sustainability and Landcare team, The Great Cattle Dog Muster, and Warrior Disability Service were the focus of Doug’s visit, which was part of a 10 day trip around New South Wales.
“What I get out of it, personally, is to go out and see startup projects and then a couple of years later I might come back and visit the town again on another trip and you see things that have grown, literally grown if they are plants, and developed into even more and more projects. So over the period of time you see amazing projects just blossom into something fantastic,” Doug shared.