BA Working Bee 1 November 2025

Sometimes it's all about timing, this was so much the casefor the four day working bee that has just been held at the Hotham Biathlon Arena over the Melbourne Cup weekend.

As the last of the planned jobs came to an end the rain started and didn’t let up for a day further delivering 10cm of snow across the resort.

Many thanks go out to all the volunteers that came along and made the working bee such a success.

All in all there were 12 people taking part in the working bee over multiple days which roughly equates to over 220 hours of unpaid work and not a single worksite complaint….

A very special thanks goes out to Greg O'Donoghue (aka GOD) who gave up his own time to set the tasks out for people to achieve. Greg is a visionary when it comes to snow fences and drainage systems and the $1200 of materials bought for the weekend enabled some of Greg's vision to come to life.

The major works that were carried out saw 50 metres of new drain work carried out to draw water away from the right hand side of the cattle race (as you look at it approaching the range).

Both fence sides of the cattle race were removed, refurbished with new timbers then new bracing timbers installed and the fences relocated on a new alignment to make the cattle race now at least 6 meters wide to enable the largest grooming machines to traverse through the race and to keep the track wide enough for people to overtake when races are on.

The green container behind the Range had a major purge of obsolete and unused items making way for a more useable area to store items off season.

The Ballistic tiles on the target frames had remedial works carried out to give them a few more years of life before full replacements will be needed. 

The floor of the shooting point had a ’deweeding’ exercise carried out making for a smoother point to lie down in Prone position outside of winter.

Another major change to the landscape was the removal of the old pistol hut that has been standing forlornto the side of the Stadium for longer than I can recall. The hut was pulled over with the help of a rope over the roof then a Subaru to bring it down in one piece where it was then deconstructed and placed in very large rubbish skip and removed off site.

Other smaller tasks were undertaken in helping to keep the environment clean and pleasant to look at. The two Alpine copperheads sighted were a reminder however to be vigilant when walking up there.

And of course it would have been wrong to have been there and not used the range for some impromptu training sessions with some fun Biathlon games.

If anyone lost an earing on the range please let us know, you can get it back!

Again a massive thanks to the band of volunteers that supported me and a special thanks goes to the BA Board of Directors who rewarded us with nourishment at the Hotel on Saturday night.

Until the next working bee, keep well and enjoy European skiing if you get the chance.

Paul C