A local group of river users will be able to bring more people up to industry standard when it comes to supervising river activities, thanks to funding from the NSW Government’s Local Sports Grants Program.
Member for the Dubbo electorate Dugald Saunders announced recently that Western Paddlers NSW Inc have been granted $2000 from the program to facilitate the provision of a flatwater leadership course and assessment.
“Our local waterways are wonderful recreation facilities, and it’s quite common to see people in kayaks making their way down the Macquarie River,” Mr Saunders said.
“This funding will allow Western Paddlers to run a seminar that will teach correct procedures for paddling. The more people that know the safest ways to utilise the river the better it is for the entire community.”
Western Paddlers president Bron Powell said the program will be available for the entire community.
“It means we can get more people in our own club, and in the community, trained up to be qualified kayak guides or canoe guides and that means more people in the Dubbo electorate will be able to go kayaking because there will be more people qualified to take them,” she said.
“We have a lot of requests from different groups to take clients paddling and we do what we can, but we all work full time, so the more people that are qualified in the community hopefully the more we can do.”