Town Of 25 Has 500 For Dinner
Sun Herald
Sunday June 20, 1999
THIS year's NSW Tidy Town awards dinner will be no junket for the 500 or so council delegates and MPs expected to attend.
To be held at Byrock, a tiny speck on the map 80km south of Bourke in the red soil country of far western NSW, there's no five-star accommodation.
In fact, there's no accommodation at all.
The delegates will have to take their own tents or swags and camp under the stars.
Byrock, population 25, has a hotel called the Mulga Creek, a post office-store, six-pupil school, a few houses and not much else.
For years it was a base for fettlers who looked after the Bourke rail line until the Greiner government shut down country trains.
But it's NSW's tidiest town and that gives it the right to host this year's awards dinner in October, which, for the lack of any sort of hall, will be held in a giant marquee.
Byrock Tidy Towns president and local publican David Creenaune said the awards weekend would certainly be different.
"It could be a sort of culture shock for some who have been used to going to these dinners in big town halls on the coast at places like Ballina and Kiama," he said.
"We have a spot ploughed up in the mulga scrub at the back of the pub where delegates can pitch their tents or sleep under the stars in the million-star hotel.
"And I think most are looking forward to it."
Byrock has been in Tidy Towns for five years and has won 16 awards - more than any other town in NSW.
The village has developed bushwalking tracks, restored its old pioneer cemetery, reintroduced native western coolabah trees and trialled sustainable ways to live off a harsh environment.
Mr Creenaune said locals had turned Byrock around into a little tourist town and people were pulling up again.
"And we've won so many awards for what we've been doing, Tidy Towns organisers just had to give us the annual dinner," he said.
Byrock has a proud heritage. Of 23 World War I volunteers, five local men won a Victoria Cross, Military Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross and two Military Medals.
All grew up within 20km of the Mulga Creek Hotel and all came back alive.
Byrock has the smallest school in NSW but last year it won an Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation award.
© 1999 Sun Herald
