Eurobodalla Welcome Park proposed for the whole Eurobodalla community, residents and visitors
By Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group
The Eurobodalla Shire Council has announced it will discuss the draft Batemans Bay Master Plan at its next meeting on 28 October 2025. Included in the draft Master Plan is a proposal for the community’s land to the west of the Princes Highway between the Clyde River Bridge and the Bay Pavilions to be sold off with permission to erect buildings of up to 100 metres in height on this land.
The Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group (EWPG), which is made up of a broad cross-section of the Eurobodalla community, believes our community owned land should be retained in the community’s hands.
The EWPG proposes a Eurobodalla Welcome Park be established on the community’s land as a park for the enjoyment by the whole Eurobodalla community and as a place to welcome visitors to the Eurobodalla Nature Coast.
The land has a very long history of use by Aboriginal people and of use for community purposes following European settlement. The land is part of a larger area initially taken by settlers around Yangary (Batemans Bay) and Bhundoo (Clyde River), and was later gifted to the Eurobodalla community by Duncan Forbes Mackay in 1918. The European immigrants called the land, the Presentation Recreation Park.
Over time, parts of the land gifted to the community were developed as a cricket pitch, football fields and an outdoor 50-metre Olympic swimming pool. From 1949, the land was the site of the Batemans Bay Bowling Club for around sixty years.
The Catalina Club bought the land from the Bowling Club in around 2009 under the condition the land would be retained for community purposes. The Eurobodalla Shire Council bought the land from the Catalina Club in 2016, and reclassified the land from community use to operational use, enabling the Council to sell off the land to the private sector. The Council gave an undertaking to the community that it would not sell the land “without comprehensive and transparent community engagement”.
The Council has been trying to sell the land to the private sector since 2016, although the sales process now appears to have been suspended. The land is included as one of the sites in the draft Batemans Bay Master Plan, which proposes buildings of up to 100 metres in height to be built on the land.
So far, there has not been any community consultation on the future of the site, except as part of the draft Batemans Bay Master Plan.
The Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group believes the land gifted to the community, and still owned by the community, should remain in the community’s hands, in keeping with its location as the gateway to the Eurobodalla Nature Coast and its long history of community use.
The Eurobodalla Welcome Park would provide additional community open space in the heart of Batemans Bay, with opportunities for active and passive recreation, enjoyment of the natural landscape and potentially a beautiful outdoor area for community events and a boardwalk to Smoke Point.
The Eurobodalla Welcome Park would provide a welcoming environment for visitors to the Eurobodalla, with tourist information, natural shade, picnic, barbecue and toilet facilities, and information on the Eurobodalla’s Aboriginal heritage and post-colonial history.
The Welcome Park’s proximity to the Mackay Park football field and the Bay Pavilions and Aquatic Centre would create an indoor-outdoor recreation and community hub.
Keeping the land in community hands in this way would preserve its environmental value, create relaxing and healthy waterside surrounds and ensure the protection for the endangered saltmarsh and Swamp Oak floodplain forest, which adjoin the site.
The Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group requests the Council to reclassify the land back to community use, as it was prior to 2016, to retain the land for the whole Eurobodalla community. Following this reclassification, the Welcome Park Group recommends the Council undertake a comprehensive, open and transparent community consultative process on options for the future use of the land to benefit the Eurobodalla community.
Members of the Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group will be presenting this initiative publicly to the community and the Council at Public Forum at 12.30pm immediately prior to the Council meeting on 28 October 2025. The Welcome Park Group encourages community members to attend or watch the Public Forum. Community members are welcome to contact the Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group for more information at ewparkgroup@gmail.com
Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group
Authorised by Neil Gow, Convenor, Eurobodalla Welcome Park Group.