Sport
28 February, 2025
Leaping for joy after refurbs
AFTER nearly a decade of planning and two years of renovations, South Cairns Gymnastics in Bentley Park is kicking off the year with new equipment to finalise the last stage of their expansion project.
As the first weeks of gymnastics classes roll in, five new pieces of equipment are now available for members to train on, including the final stage of the expansion project of the gym.
The project, which started in 2022, has cost about $2.4 million, covered mostly by grants and funding from federal, state and local governments. It included an expansion of the area of the gym to fit the growing membership, addition of new state-of-the-art equipment, grandstands and more.
“Although the expansion of our building started in 2022, the process of looking at that and getting building designs and looking for funding actually started back in 2015,” said club president Bronwyn Von Gool.
“Our gym was quite small, so space was very limited. We hit a point back in 2007 where we reached capacity but numbers stayed about the same for quite some time, and then around 2015 we started to see some increase.
“It took a little while to get everything together, but everything was ready by the end of 2019 to start applying for grants. We received funding of just short of a million dollars from the Australian government.
“We also received funding from Cairns Regional Council, so the building extension cost about $2.2m, and that was funded through a $400,000 loan that the club took out.
“This tripled the size of our building so we can now expand up to about 1000-1200 members. We also got a foam pit, spring flooring and all we had left was additional equipment.”
Late January the gym finally received the last pieces of equipment through a $35,000 Queensland Government gambling fund grant and a minor infrastructure grant of over $70,000, while the club contributed $17,655 more.
“We used the first grant to purchase equipment for a ninja gym program. So we have two warped walls and a ninja rig and we kicked in $17,655 towards additional fixed equipment and grandstands,” Ms Van Gool said.
“So now we’ve got two viewing areas, and they both have grandstands. We also received a beam, uneven bars, high bar, parallel bars and a ring frame, which is fantastic.”
Ms Van Gool said they were already seeing a boost in numbers.
“Before this expansion, we had a lot of waiting lists because we couldn’t meet demand. We’ve now been able to put additional classes on. We used to be very cramped and we’ve spread out. With the additional equipment we can have multiple groups working on the same apparatus and, because it’s better quality than some of the equipment we had, it enables us to host competitions in the region,” she said.
“We have seen a boost in numbers, particularly in our recreational classes. We have a ninja program, which has been quite popular, we also have classes for kids who just want to do gymnastics without having to do competitions and these have also seen a boost. It’s fantastic to get to a point where we’re looking more at maintaining equipment and we can actually focus on growing the club as the demand grows, it just makes all the difference.”
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