2018 in review: A sign of things to come

OCTOBER set the tone for what would be a long and aggressive local state election campaign from both sides of politics.

Ballarat mattered and the then Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said as much on the first of his many trips to the city over the following eight weeks.

Over the month the region was offered or given super-fast trains, upgrades to sporting facilities across the city, and money to get one of the Ballarat Now and In the Future items started – the Ballarat Innovation and Research Collaboration in Health.

Save Our Station also ramped up their campaign to try and make the future of the Ballarat Station precinct an election issue, this drew an Opposition pledge from the then Shadow Minister for Public Transport, David Davis, to “work with the developers and to seek to renegotiate aspects of that set of contracts.”

Outside of politics the new Central Victorian Livestock Exchange opened in Miners Rest after over a decade of wrangling on the issue.

The closure of the old Sale Yards on Latrobe Street had some people wondering what would happen to the traders in the area that had come to depend on the traffic generated by the facility.

October also saw Buninyong Mt Helen Lions Club unveil the greatest barbeque tailer ever seen with money raised from the Bendigo Bank, the City of Ballarat and the service club’s own fundraising efforts.

Entrepreneurs and ideas people also got a boost with the opening of Runway Ballarat and it’s well-resourced Fab Lab with the space enabling the incubation and hatching of start-up and tech ideas from the drawing board to market.