A place for our community. Eight years of loving service.
BY DERMOT COTTULI
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can!
When our church bought the old Rokeby Tavern in November of 2015 we used up every cent we had and then promptly decided that we’d somehow turn our pub into a gift to our local community. People would ask me if we were going to hold church there and I would tell them, “No, this is our gift to our community.” We wanted people to “see” that we genuinely cared with no strings attached.
The first few winters working from the rundown old building were brutal as the original heating wasn’t legal and the space was huge and draughty. Panel heaters between legs was how we held off hypothermia. But we’re Tasmanian’s and what we lack in intelligence we more than make up for in pure grit and determination.
We decided we wouldn’t start up any programs ourselves because there were already dozens of great projects being run within our community and we felt our energy would be better spent supporting those projects rather than running our own. And anyway, who better knows what a community needs than the community itself. We opened up our space to anyone who wanted to use it and with more faith than substance, started where we were, used what we had and did what we could. We rolled up our sleeves and starting transforming the old pub into a beautiful community centre for Clarence Plains.
Fast forward 7 years and we now host a social enterprise in our brand new kitchen that’s currently producing 2500 meals a week for Tasmanians doing it tough and providing traineeships for 6 local young people from our area. We have a lovely meeting room that hosts various community functions, celebrations and meetings throughout the year. We turned the old bar into an amazing office space which not only gives me a warm place to work during winter but also hosts One Community Together, the MAH Community Chaplain, the CEO of Olive Road and the GM of Loaves and Fishes. And let’s not forget our amazing foyer and the best toilets in any public building in Clarence Plains (you’d understand why I’m mentioning the toilets if you ever visited us when the old toilets were still in operation).
We’ve come a long way but I feel like we’re only just now moving out of the starting blocks. There’s so much more to do, which can be a bit overwhelming at times, but if we’ve learnt anything over the past 7 years, it’s that a group of people with a heart to serve others can achieve things that don’t make sense in the natural. Why let facts get in the way of helping others 🙂 If any of us did that, nothing would ever get done.
