Muckatah Recreation Reserve fight heats up over pony club area
We’ve all had our share of dysfunctional committees and factional powerplays, but this one — which is arguing about padlocked dunny doors and who gets to meet in a shed — is a doozy.
WATER tanks, light towers, even clubrooms. Hardly the most mobile of fixtures, but they have been deemed “portable” by a belligerent group at loggerheads with the local community over control of northern Victoria’s Muckatah Recreation Reserve.
In one of the most extraordinary battles over a public reserve ever seen, the Cobram and District Pony Club — whose membership has dwindled to just a handful — looks set to strip the Muckatah Recreation Reserve of most of its infrastructure if it gets booted off the 40-hectare site between Cobram and Katamatite.
As reported in The Weekly Times last week, Cobram and District Pony Club president Tony Johnston and vice-president Barbra Clarke took legal action against the reserve’s committee of management in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on October 31 last year, claiming pony club ownership of the clubrooms, water tanks, floodlights, cross country jumps, fences and other infrastructure at the public reserve.
The VCAT action was filed a month after the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning replaced Mr Johnston, Ms Clarke and other members of the Muckatah Recreation Reserve committee with a skills-based committee.
And it came just two days after DELWP demanded — unsuccessfully — former committee members hand over all its records, bank accounts and keys to the reserve.
Whichever way VCAT member Holly Nash rules on who owns the infrastructure at the reserve, community pressure will soon mount on Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio to force the C&DPC on to another less onerous licence for the greater good of the 136-year-old reserve or kick them off altogether.
And if they leave with the infrastructure, surprisingly, it might not upset the locals.
As one source said: “Their club is done with and I think they know that.”
“We just don’t care if they take their s--t and go and we’ll start again because we won’t have these people in our lives,” the source said.
Yarroweyah residents Donna Irvine and Helen Fleming said the community had complained to DELWP for years the former MRR committee refused to share reserve facilities with potential users, including other horse riding groups and the local scout troop.
Even the proverbial brick dunny was not sacred, with Ms Fleming saying the committee padlocked its doors, claiming it was owned by the C&DPC and directing people to the nearest public toilet at Woolworths in Cobram, about 6km away.
Legal documents obtained by The Weekly Times show that, aside from the ownership of assets on the reserve, Mr Johnston and Ms Clarke wanted VCAT to rule on whether a special clause in a 10-year licence dated January 1, 2016, gave the C&DPC exclusive use of the shed it uses as clubrooms at the reserve every day of the year, rather than the first and third Sundays of each month as set out in a general clause of the licence.
But questions have arisen as to how the licence was issued to the pony club by the former reserve committee in the first place, given a major overlap in the executive of both.
New MRR committee chairwoman Amanda Herezo told a VCAT hearing in February the 2016 licence was granted to the C&DPC by the former reserve committee when both entities were controlled by largely the same people.
In an affidavit to VCAT, Ms Herezo said there had been “a pattern of controlling behaviour from Barb Clarke and Tony Johnston during their time running the committee”.
“Prior to their replacement in 2019, they (Ms Clarke and Mr Johnston) were running the committee at the same time as being members of the pony club,” she said.
“I believe a conflict of interest existed for them to act in both capacities over the years.”
But Mr Johnston told The Weekly Times he did not see any conflict in the former reserve committee awarding the licence to the pony club.
“I don’t see a conflict of interest because you declare it,” he said.
“Everything is declared.”
Mr Johnston and Ms Clarke have already won the first battle, with Ms Nash ruling in April the pony club had exclusive use of the clubrooms for storage of its equipment.
Ms Nash is yet to rule on the issue of ownership of assets at the reserve.
On October 29 last year, DELWP regional manager Gini Harris wrote to former reserve committee members Ms Clarke, Mr Johnston, Robyn Bosco and Heather Du Vallon — all pony club members — thanking them for their work in looking after the reserve.
“You are advised that all fixed assets (i.e. buildings, cross country jumps, etc) on the reserve belong to the Crown and fall under the management and control of the committee through delegation from the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change,” Ms Harris said.
She said if no agreement could be reached on shared use of the reserve’s facilities, the new committee had the right to negotiate a new licence, given the 2016 one never received ministerial approval as required.
In an affidavit signed on February 11 this year, Ms Clarke said all fixtures on the reserve were paid for by the pony club, “through its own funds, through a grant or through donations”.
The infrastructure was mostly funded by grants from the State Government, the Bendigo Bank and local private companies, with the Moira Shire also providing equipment.
Ms Clarke detailed 19 sets of items such as clubrooms, water tanks and light towers cemented into the ground as “portable”.
She said the insulated clubroom was a shed “secured to a concrete slab with bolts” and built with external grants and club funds.
“The bolts can be removed easily and the shed deconstructed and removed,” she said.
The pony club removed a large amount of equipment from the reserve late last year, including two ride-on mowers, tiered spectator seating provided to the reserve by the Moira Shire, floodlights off the lighting towers, shade sails — but leaving the poles — and all the horse jumps.
Mr Johnston told The Weekly Times they were “trade fixtures” that belonged to the pony club and were being stored in a shipping container at an undisclosed location.
He would not be drawn on whether the container was on Ms Clarke’s property about 8km from the Muckatah Recreation Reserve.
The warlike attitude of the pony club against the local community is best evidenced by the club locking the gates on three pony arenas, rendering them unusable by other parties.
Mr Johnston said that was to prevent damage to the pony club’s designated areas and theft of the show jumps.
But the club had already removed its show jumps from the arenas.
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