For decades, the Mole Creek Progress Association has worked quietly behind the scenes, shaping the town in ways that are easy to overlook on a casual drive through.
In the 1960s, the group decided to clean up the Mole Creek streetscape. Desley McCall, the president of the Mole Creek Progress Association, says the town centre was “basically blackberries bush and not very appealing”. The association formed a committee, cleared out the weeds, established gardens and transformed the main street into a space the community could take pride in. “Council keeps it mown for us now, but it turned it into a really nice streetscape.”
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That early focus soon translated into recognition. In the 1980s, Mole Creek was “very prolific in winning tidy towns in different categories for small towns”, McCall says. “Then one year we won our best overall in Tasmania Tidy Town. And that’s due to the efforts of a lot of good people.”
Those efforts have ebbed and flowed with volunteer numbers. Today, meetings are held monthly, often drawing around 10 people, though more lend their support when specific projects demand it.
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Over the years, the association’s work has extended beyond beautification. A historic mountain hut, once used by hunters and trappers in the surrounding ranges, was relocated into the main street in the 1980s. Today, visitors can walk through it, read about its history and gain “a feel for these huts that are up in the mountains that we used years and years ago”.
Next door to the swimming pool, a playground stands on land that was once housed by the nursery school. “They leased the land and then purchased it, I think for a dollar,” McCall says. “Now there’s a playground and that was also put in by the Progress Association. So we’re always trying to do improvements to the town.”
More recently, the association secured a grant to install solar panels on the building it owns, which houses the local takeaway and café. “We received a grant and now the cafe building has solar panels to try and offset some of the power costs for our tenants,” McCall says. Financial support in recent years has come from Bendigo Bank and Graymont, she adds.
The group also supports Bytes, the town’s online access centre, which has become an unofficial tourist information hub. Staffed by volunteers, it provides facilities for locals and face-to-face advice for visitors seeking local knowledge. “There’s still quite a significant percentage of people that want to actually have that one-to-one face to face contact with someone that lives in the area,” Wake says.
While the association’s best-known asset is the community swimming pool, it represents just one chapter in a much broader story. The pool itself was born from a public meeting in 1979, when a committee was formed to construct it on Education Department land at the old Mole Creek Area School site. Incorporated in 1982, the committee secured a lease in August 1983 and began site works and fundraising. The pool opened in March 1985, with later additions including a cover, solar heating and shade areas. The land was eventually purchased by the association, which now faces annual maintenance costs of about $10,000 to $12,000.
After a period of closure in recent years, volunteers mounted what McCall describes as “a momentous effort” to reopen it, with “a lot of working bees, a lot of scrubbing the pool and a lot of grants”.
Even so, Wake is clear that the organisation’s purpose reaches further. “The Progress Association is really much more than being interested in promoting the pool. We would really like to be promoting much more about the community and looking towards supporting any projects that will contribute to improving Mole Creek.”
