Duck Creek Races gives thanks

Following its super successful race meeting in July, the Duck Creek Picnic Race committee will donate another $25,000 to the new cancer accommodation wing at Macquarie Home Stay.

By Abigail McLaughlin

Alex Mclaughlin, Bruce Cleaver, and Will Boag.

Last Sunday afternoon, the Duck Creek committee invited the race day volunteers to drinks at The Nyngan Hotel.

The Duck Creek Races committee has now donated a total of $65,000 to Macquarie Home Stay (MHS) and will have a room named in its honour. Macquarie Home Stay board member James Cleaver thanked the committee for the donation and spoke of the benefit it would have.

Mr Cleaver said MHS was built to provide accommodation for people and their families who travelled to Dubbo to access medical care, and was currently in the process of expanding to meet the demand. “About three-years-ago we realised the rooms we had were not meeting the need,” he said. “The home stay seemed to be always at capacity and turning away people from places like Nyngan, Bourke, Warren, and Cobar which was a pretty shocking situation especially when the vacancy rate in Dubbo is very low.

“The board knew it had to expand but with construction costs being what they were, it was going to be $7 million which was a very tough ask for a charity. They lobbied government and business and eventually the NSW coalition government gave us $2 million to start us off. The next challenge was trying to get the remaining funds and to be honest there was a time where we actually thought we might have had to give the $2 million back because we couldn’t even see how we were going to pay the interest on a loan.

“The next thing we knew a very, very generous $40,000 just turns up in our bank account, unconditionally, from Duck Creek and from then on we started receiving donations – but that first donation was the catalyst for us to start construction.”

Duck Creek Races president Rowen Cleaver thanked the many volunteers who make the races possible. He also thanked the Nyngan police for its assistance and Bogan Shire Council. Around 60 volunteers toasted the success of the races at the newly-renovated The Nyngan Hotel.