By Callum Ludwig
Residents of the Karinya Community Retirement Village in Yarra Junction are making the most of a newly-completed community project.
A newly-paved footpath can now be found alongside the freshly-graded road at the entry of the village, improving the safety and access for residents to head into town.
President of the Karinya Community Retirement Village Committee of Management Rick Houlihan said it’s all about the safety of the residents.
“We get more and more traffic on our road now with all the deliveries and carers, and it just wasn’t safe before,” he said.
“We’re getting more and more residents that don’t have licenses anymore as well and are having to walk up to Yarra Junction, and we were getting worried about them walking omn the gravel next to cars.”
Mr Houlihan and the committee approached Yarra Ranges Council at first, who were unable to assist with funding as it’s a private road, before asking the Upper Yarra Community Enterprise (UYCE), which runs the Yarra Junction and Warburton branches of the Bendigo Bank.
Mr Houlihan said they were able to secure 50 per cent of the funding for the project from the UYCE.
“It’s been a long haul doing this because once we got the grant, we had to do all the earthworks first, get the site ready and then we had to then get a concreter and then get them up here which is hard at the moment because they are all tied up in Melbourne, but we got a good one and are really happy with the job,” he said.
“We did have one problem that when we dug out the path, we found the sewer pit which we didn’t know was there, but Melbourne Water were able to come up before the concrete was finished, took out the old pit and put in a new one so we were able to finish the whole job,”
“Finally, we really want to thank the bank franchise for coming to the party and helping us complete this.”
The Karinya Community Retirement Village is an entirely volunteer-run community providing an affordable place for elderly residents to live with easy access to the Yarra Junction township.
Chairman of UYCE Rodney McKail said it was great to be a part of the project and the Karinya residents were a great group to work with.
“We’re really pleased with the outcome, it’s improved the quality of life for the residents here, providing accessibility and the ability for residents to get local shopping and do it in a much safer way with much more freedom,” he said.
“We’re really pleased to be able to be involved in this particular project, Yarra Junction has been a relatively new venture for us, so we’re really keen to support local groups.”
