The Neighbourhood Hive is a new community space spread across the 1600 sq metres of an industrial shed in the heart of Hervey Bay.

The space provides a safe environment for learning and sharing new skills and knowledge and nurturing new talents.

This ambitious project required dismantling the indoor skate park that previously occupied the shed and creating a multi-use space that will host activities as diverse as 3D printing design; creating music; hosting a toy and baby equipment library, sharing stories and fostering learning and social activities to encourage connection across the community.

When the Stocklands Shopping Centre offered to donate their indoor playground to the new space, the Neighbourhood Centre turned to Rotary Hervey Bay Sunrise to undertake the logistics of transporting and then rebuilding it. From a 5.30 start one morning to dismantle and transport the playground, through several weeks of reassembling and finding the ‘right’ place for a myriad of nuts and bolts, the project involved about a dozen Rotary Hervey Bay Sunrise members and culminated in the playground receiving its safety certification.

These members continued their involvement with The Hive project by painting, cleaning, gardening and assembling flat-pack furniture and are looking forward to the official opening on 7 May, where they will be ‘doing the BBQ’.

The project continued the long association Sunrise has with the Neighbourhood Centre, and showed that Rotary is definitely ‘more than just great sausages’!

Kirstee Kee