Wheels fall off

By MARA PATTISON-SOWDEN
A POPULAR car event has been unable to grow in Wandin because the only community space big enough has been earmarked as “sport only”.
The Wandin Custom Car Show has been a hit for the last three years, with as many as 280 owners bringing their cars from across Melbourne to show off to other enthusiasts.
The event has become a family and community gathering, once a month for six months of the summer season, and the entry fee has gone back into the community and to support the Royal Children’s Hospital.
But the car show has outgrown its space that it uses in the Wandin Shopping Centre car park and Union Road, and organisers have reached a wall with the council when it comes to finding a large non-sporting community space.
Yarra Ranges Council says conditions have been applied to the use of recreation reserves, including no vehicle access onto the playing surface, to preserve the investments being made for upgrades.
It says these conditions were reinforced after a car show event held on the Wandin North Oval in February and March 2011 damaged the playing field, forcing football clubs to relocate the early rounds of the 2011 season.
The council says it has met with the organisers to discuss a variety of options for the event, including using the areas of open space alongside the field for the show.
Wandin trader and car show organiser Sindy Vitale said it was ratepayer money that fixed up the oval, “why take the only community area we have left and make it a sporting venue that can’t be used for anything else?”
“Under these rules, the only community area that will be left in Wandin is the little park in the shops and the little park behind the shops, but no community space,” she said.
“At the end of the day I can’t understand why the council is telling us that public areas that we pay to maintain, can’t be used for a public event.”
Ms Vitale said she started the car show to raise awareness about the Wandin CFA and other community initiatives, but also for farmer friends who have hot rods tucked away in their shed that never see the light of day.
“The council tells you, you can use the car park and clubrooms of the reserves, but they say you can’t put anything on the oval,” she said.
“They said that my cars wreck their drainage – I said ‘you don’t think it’s the 7000 adults and kids running across the oval? Not your slasher that runs across the oval?’ ‘No your cars’, they said to me.”
Ms Vitale said people who had never heard of Wandin were appreciative they were being given a venue and an event to show off their cars.
“A lot more people know about Wandin in the last three years than ever before, other than the field day, Wandin has nothing to turn around and say this is our annual event,” she said.
Yarra Ranges Council director of engineering Mark Vermalis said excessive vehicle traffic on a playing surface would compact the surface and compromise the council’s investment in subsurface drainage and irrigation systems as well as its efforts to maintain a high standard grass surface.
“Over the past 18 months the council has invested in excess of $600,000 in facility developments between Wandin North and Wandin East for the benefit of the community generally,” he said. “Wandin East is currently being used six to seven days a week for junior and female sports training and competition being shared between the Wandin AusKick, Wandin Junior Football Club, Seville Ranges Youth Girls Football Club, Monbulk Ranges girls soccer and the Wandin Football Netball Club.”