Colleen Miller says Gympie Netball stays homeless after $289k funding

Frustrations have boiled over at Gympie Netball, which has been grossly short-changed in state funding which showered hundreds of thousands of dollars more on other clubs less impacted by floods, including $1.4m to Noosa netball.

Gympie netball president Colleen Miller says she is frustrated the club remains the only one in Queensland unable to return to its courts following the February floods, a situation “no closer” to being fixed.

The club’s 500 players remain in limbo and “homeless” despite $289,000 in help from the state government in November, a figure well below what the club needs and what it sought to rebuild after the February floods.

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The courts were inundated by more than 2m of floodwaters in February, and left coated in mud so thick a bobcat was needed to scrape it off.

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The disaster caused extensive cracking and subsidence, rendering the courts unplayable.

Gympie Netball president Colleen Miller said the club was frustrated it remained the only one in Queensland to have not returned to its facilities nine months after the devastating February 2022 floods, with no sign of it changing soon.

“We’re extremely disappointed,” Mrs Miller said.

“All through this whole process we were told we were a ‘priority’ because we weren’t able to operate from our facility.

“Out of a $2.2m EOI (expression of interest) we expected maybe a little more than what we received.”

A Department of Tourism, Innovation and Sport spokeswoman said the funding was awarded to the Gympie council “to bring the facility back to the standard it was before flooding”.

She said the DTIS, council, Netball Queensland and industry experts were further assessing the courts “to determine the viability of building back better at the facility’s current site to ensure Gympie Netball is resilient to future extreme weather events”.

Mrs Miller said the latest grant, even combined with a $20k donation from The Gympie Times and News Corp, and $100,000 from the Gambling Community Benefit Fund, still fell well short of covering even the bare minimum of rebuilding the courts.

The Gympie netball courts next to the Mary River were inundated under 2m of floodwaters in February which left them covered in mud and cracked.

“Initially we were hoping just for money to do the courts, which was around $500,000,” Mrs Miller said.

“If we could get the courts done, we could survive without the rest.”

It was particularly frustrating given the amount of funding other netball groups received across the state – some clubs received five-times what Gympie was allocated.

Gympie Netball received about 5 per cent of the $5m that was handed out.

Brisbane netball clubs were given the biggest slice at $1.6m, and Noosa netball received $1.4m.

“We were the only netball association in Queensland that never got back to its facility.

Gympie Netball president Colleen Miller said the latest funding of $289,000 was still far short of the $500,000 needed to repair the courts, and well below the $2.2m it was seeking when it applied for the grant.

“All the rest have come back; it might have taken a little while but they’re all back.”

Instead the club is now faced with continuing to hold its competition at Gympie State High School and Victory College.

Mrs Miller said this unfortunately meant they were still left two courts down, with games played across two nights and members sometimes forced to travel between the two locations on the same night.

Mrs Miller said the council had advised her and the club it was “going to apply for more funding from the next round”.

“I think this was a two-tier funding round,” Mrs Miller said.

“I don’t know what a timeline is on that.

“But here we are nine months later and we’re still no closer to getting back on court.”