Formation of BPHTinc

Our own history began with the new century and reflecting back over the years, much has been achieved!

There had been an agreement reached at the first joint meeting of the Maroochy Council’s Heritage Tramway Walkway Track Committee in 2001 that, amongst other things, Council and the cooperating community groups, led by Buderim Historical Society (BHS), would move towards the formation of a new formal incorporated body to address the tramway project. McGarvie and some others had reservations about this move because the existing structure had been very successful in achieving real and amicable results.

This structure had BHS as the ‘umbrella’ organisation handling most aspects of administration. It then had other organisations from Buderim and Palmwoods and interested individuals operating independently on group or individual sub-projects beneath this informal ‘umbrella’. For example, the discovery and then the attempts to recover the Shay remains was a sub-project which the Palmwoods Progress Association Inc carried, while another community group called Buderim 2000 had moved to individually and jointly apply for Tramway Project funding.

However the Councillors concerned with the Tramway Project became quite adamant, that a new body addressing all aspects of the project was likely to be better for Council interaction and perhaps general interaction. Cr Johnston asked a Council Officer, Eric Moes, to facilitate the process through first assisting the volunteers with the formation of a steering committee. This committee, when formed, had members Bruce Horton, Trevor Robinson, Nicola Rooney, Neil McGarvie, Helene Cronin, Garth Fraser, Paul Brown and Peter Stanley. As a result, a formal body named the Buderim-Palmwoods Heritage Tramway Inc (BPHTI) was established in 2003. A surge of community interest and an increase of volunteer workers’ involvement resulted, and BPHTI has since that time performed well in achieving its objectives. The image on this page shows a clipping from the local paper in 2003.

BPHTI established the objectives for the new association by recording the aims and objectives that had been developed by the volunteers, BHS and the informal cooperating community groups.