Groups find home as hub opens

A group of Karratha community organisations finally have a place to call home after the opening of a purpose-built share facility on the former Millars Well Child Health Clinic site.

The Millars Well Community Co-op is a hub designed specifically for community not-for-profit groups to use for storage, meetings and workshops.

It opened a few months ago after an extensive refurbishment of the disused clinic building.

Since then, its new occupants have become the Karratha Community Association, Community Garden, Soroptimists International Karratha and Districts, Rotary Club and Men’s Shed group, with a number of others having also expressed interest.

Project leader and KCA committee member Peta Mott said a lot of local community groups would benefit from using a fixed and centrally located building.

“Basically they’ve now got somewhere to call home that they can operate out of and leave their records in the one spot,” she said.

“A sporting group or the motocross, they’ve got somewhere physical, whereas community groups don’t often have that and there’s nowhere they actually have or own — they just do good works around the place.” The Co-op project has been led by the KCA and supported by the City of Karratha’s Annual Community Association Development Scheme funding.

The building includes storage areas, a meeting room, small workshop space and kitchen for groups to share, and six small sheds have also been built nearby for any local club to hire for extra storage space.

Soroptimists president Glen Slee said the facility had already enabled her group to innovate and run a series of new activities, including busy bees and information seminars.

“Having the physical space has given us a lot of opportunities,” she said.

“I think the more and more people get used to it and know it’s also part of the Community Garden, the easier it will be to run activities down there.”

Men’s Shed co-coordinator and Karratha Rotary vice-president Gary Slee said moving into a building that was adjacent to the shed’s future site would help the project to progress.

“It’s a great location for what we want to achieve,” he said.

Expressions of interest for the six storage sheds are open until the end of November.