Page 432 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 February 2013
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Activities for visitors in the arboretum include walking; school education programs; cafe and restaurant services; guided tours; bike riding; a visit to Australia’s premier bonsai and penjing collection, which I was talking about; interactive interpretive experiences; and general leisure activities in an open space environment.
There are three main areas for events at the arboretum, including the village centre, a space for receptions, formal dinners, functions and ceremonies, catering for up to 500 guests; the pavilion, which provides a unique facility for wedding ceremonies, meetings, cocktail functions and dinners for approximately 120 guests; and the amphitheatre, which has the capacity to hold outdoor events for up to 4,000 people.
The arboretum will be a great revenue generator in future. Over time the aim is for the revenue generated by activities and events held there to cover the venue’s operating costs, making it revenue neutral. It will create jobs and provide an economic boost as the trees mature and it becomes a tourist attraction in its own right.
The operational costs for the arboretum are funded through a combination of government appropriation, product sales, fee for service and lease and hire revenues. Most prices will be fixed, generally matching the prices of other competing institutions. However, we acknowledge that flexibility needs to be considered for larger functions and events, to allow better negotiations. Food and beverage prices will be set by the arboretum caterer, Ginger Catering, a famous catering institution here in the ACT. Charges for the hire of outdoor venues will be on a flat fee basis; other charges will vary depending on the day or time.
It is envisaged that in the next 12 months a detailed master plan will be developed that will set the future direction for the arboretum’s living and built assets. The next 12 months will include consolidating existing infrastructure and landscape assets, delivering a capital works program to complete works that enhance and support the existing asset base and monitoring and managing visitors and their interaction with and use of the site.
I want to go back a bit to some of the formal plantings that I talked about earlier and discuss some of the people that have come and planted in that area. One of the important plantations in the arboretum was the cork oak plantation. We have had quite a bit of work done on those cork oaks as well as the formal plantings I talked about.
But the one I want to mention is the formal planting by our previous Chief Minister, Mr Jon Stanhope. On Saturday, 10 December 2011, the former Chief Minister joined our current Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher, in planting a kurrajong tree in the central valley of the National Arboretum. He was joined by Dr Kris Klugman, the national president of Civil Liberties Australia, and Charlotte Withers, who was born on 1 July 2004, the day the ACT government first brought the Human Rights Act into place. The kurrajong tree is known as the liberty tree, and was chosen as a significant acknowledgement of Mr Stanhope’s role in establishing both the first human rights act in Australia and the National Arboretum.
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