Letter to the editor

It was good news to read that the Recreation Ground has received a grant from the State Government, with matching funding from the Onkaparinga Council, for the much needed change room facility.

As a resident of Cherry Gardens for 40 years, I and my family have been beneficiaries of being able to use the Recreation Ground for a variety of activities. These days when our grandchildren visit us, one of the first things we hear is “Pops, can we go over to the oval please”. They enjoy flying kites, kicking footballs, throwing Frisbees, searching for golf balls, and of course using the swings and playground.

For my part, my connection with the “Oval” was in the 1980/1990s as a member of the Cherry Gardens/Ironbank Cricket Club, where I opened the batting for the club along with Bob Evans (brother of MP Stan Evans), for the best part of a decade I think. In one match I managed to score 86 runs in the first innings, including a “six” over the south-eastern fence. If there are any cricketers reading this article I would be interested to hear how many other “sixes” have been hit out of the “Oval”?

All that aside, it was in the mid-1980s that I and 3 other parents in Cherry Gardens, sought a grant from what was then our local Council, Happy Valley Council, which swallowed up Meadows Council, and has obviously been swallowed up subsequently into Onkaparinga Council. The Council gave us a grant to build a children’s playground at the Cherry Gardens Recreation Ground (I don’t remember the monetary amount), which we did, about where the Oval’s football change rooms are today. I may be wrong, but I think the existing swings at the back of the club rooms, are the swings that we built as part of that project, the remainder of the playground, has been superseded by the new, and improved, current playground facility, which our grandchildren enjoy immensely.

The motive for writing to the Cherry Chatter is to plead to those managing the proposed new sports change rooms at the “Oval”, to remember that it is a community recreation ground; and while I wish all concerned every success in the management of the project, and with the successful outcome for the benefit of the sports clubs, I sincerely hope that the “little people”, who get so much enjoyment from visiting the Recreation Ground, are not forgotten, and that first class playground facilities will continue to be available for their use long into the future.

Kind regards,

Mike Deare, J.P.,
648, Cherry Gardens Road, Cherry Gardens.
2nd. July, 2020.