By Callum Ludwig
As one of the Yarra Ranges’ fastest-growing townships, there’s set to be plenty of people invested in the future of Yarra Junction.
As such, it’s only going to become more important that residents get their say and a Yarra Junction Community Planning event is set to discuss the formation of a new township group.
Function Venue manager at Bulong Estate Winery, which is hosting the Yarra Junction Community Planning event, Monica Blanchfield said it started with a group of residents who met during consultation on the Yarra Junction Place Plan.
“While we were there working with Michael from the Council (Yarra Ranges Council’s Community Development Officer for the Upper Yarra Michael Goodrich), we started to talk about township groups and decided that we’d be interested in having one for Yarra Junction,” she said.
“We hope it would be able to represent the people of Yarra Junction when things come up in Council such as the Place Plan so that we have a representative voice for what the people of Yarra Junction want for their township in the future.”
The Yarra Junction Place Plan project went out for engagement in late 2023 and Community Reference Group workshops were held over the last two months.
Yarra Ranges Council has recently released an Engagement and Direction Paper that recaps the Place Plan and shares what they’ve heard from residents before the anticipated release of the draft plan in early 2025.
Ms Blanchfield said they hope the Council will be able to refer to the township group to represent the broad cross-section of the Yarra Junction community.
“That’s why we need a diverse group of people involved to make sure that everyone in Yarra Junction gets a voice and gets to be represented,” she said.
I would encourage people to come along to our meeting just to see what it’s all about, even if they are unsure if they want to participate, just to come and see the other people that are there and find out what we’re all about,”
“Don’t assume that it’s just business people or leaders in the community, we need everyone who has an interest in Yarra Junction and the future of Yarra Junction to come along, even if you think you might be representing other people, such as your own children or grandchildren.”
There’s a total of 17 township groups in the Yarra Ranges, including the Millgrove Resident’s Action Group (MRAg), Warburton Advancement League, WHYLD Community Group, the Reefton McMahon’s Action Group and the Little Yarra Valley Community all in the Upper Yarra.
Yarra Junction community members have also met representatives of Monbulk And District Community Opportunities Working Group (MADCOW) who shared some of what they have been able to achieve.
Ms Blanchfield said both MRAG and MADCOW were inspirational in showing what a township group can achieve.
“Yarra Junction is uniquely diverse in a lot of ways because we are a service centre, a lot of people come to Yarra Junction for the high school, for the swimming pool, for the football field, for Woolworths,” she said.
“We have a diverse range of people involved in Yarra Junction so all those people should have a voice in what it’s going to be like in the future, otherwise our future decisions are made by the Council or other people trying to find out from all sorts of different people what we really need,”
“Whereas if we can come together and talk amongst ourselves first and work out how we want to work as a community that we can enjoy and gather and share our values, then it’s really important that we can come together and be a collective voice to be heard for important future decisions.”
Anyone interested in attending the Community Planning event is required to RSVP to Ms Blanchfield at monica@bulongestate.com.au .
The event will be held at Bulong Estate Winery on Thursday 6 June from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.
