greenfields for st thomas mores

report from the roundtable – 24 nov

At this week’s council meeting we had to consider the demolition of the Austral Hall at St Thomas Mores Primary School. The hall was included in a recent request to the Minister to apply interim heritage controls.

The school want to construct a grassed area for their students to play which has been funded by the “Building and Education Revolution”. The application was referred to the local historical societies and no objection had been put forward by them or any community member.

The hall, originally built by the community in a day in 1920, was gifted to the local Roman Catholics in 1938, who used the building as a church until the modern day St Thomas Mores church was built. The building has become very dilapidated and for some time has not been used by the school or the community.

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Approximately 200 students attend St Thomas Mores Primary School, they have to go off site to play sport because they don’t have access to a grassed area in their own school.

I was happy to move the motion to approve the construction of the oval and demolition of the Austral Hall. When balancing up the pros and cons, providing open space for children to play figured far more highly to me than a hall that really was separate to the historically significant ‘beauty bend’ and was in a derelict state. The motion was supported unanimously.