Friends of Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Parkrecognised for efforts
Between them they have notched up 120 years of service and hundreds of hours voluntary work, but a love of the Yorke Peninsula has been the common motivation for a group of eight Friends of Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Parkrecently presented service awards for their efforts.
Among the recipients were Val and Trevor Lloyd (20 years each), Joyce and the late Peter Yeomans (20 years each), Geoff Leech (10 years), Wendy Marshall (10 years), Sam Zefara (10 years) and Brian Thomson (10 years).
The group were presented with the service awards at the Friends of Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National ParkAnnual General Meeting on February 10.
Natural Resources Northern and Yorke ranger-in-charge Mark Davison said the work undertaken by the Friends group is invaluable.
"The work this group do is absolutely paramount to the successful running of Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park," Mr Davison said.
"As well as their programmed works such as maintenance, propagating, revegetation and planting, and continuing restorative works on buildings such as Shepherd’s Hut, they always make themselves available to help if required."
Mr Davison paid particular homage to the work undertaken by the group to enable the implementation of the online booking system now used at Innes NP.
"Before we could even start booking out campsites we had to put a lot of infrastructure in place and the group were instrumental in this, from numbering each of the 100 campsites to manufacturing and installing post and rail fencing and revegetating between the campsites."
Outgoing Friends of Innes NP president Trevor Lloyd has been right there amongst it for the past 20 years, but he says the decision to become involved as a volunteer was an easy one having been born and bred at Inneston, the former gypsum mining village within Innes.
"It’s in my blood, I was born and bred in Inneston and went to school at Stenhouse Bay. I moved away from 1965-2000 – always coming back to visit during that time – but moved back to Marion Bay with my wife, Val.
"I just love the ruggedness of the coastline, the beautiful beaches, and good fishing.
"There’s been some hard work over the years as part of the Friends group, but some of it has been enjoyable too and the comradeship, and seeing the outcomes of our work makes it worthwhile."
The Friends of Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Parkmeet on the third Tuesday of every month and Mr Lloyd says with the 12 members all now in their late 60s and 70s, they are keen for some new members to get involved.
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