Better to wear out than rust out

THE Portarlington-based resource guide PortShare has clocked up a decade of helping local community groups avoid duplication by lending others items that spend much of the year going unused.

Frustrated by the unnecessary time spent by many community organisations funding items through grants or volunteer fundraising, co-ordinator Eliz Turner decided to set up the online guide so that people could share items for free or for a modest fee.

“It makes sense for a small town like Portarlington to share resources rather than duplicating and while some people are reluctant to lend items lest they be damaged, many are only too happy,” Ms Turner said.

Under the motto of “better to wear out than rust out”, users of the guide can borrow from a wide variety of goods like a laminator, chairs, bollards, even an official tug-of-war rope and rule book.

The Portarlington Mussel Festival is a generous lender, offering up marquees, traffic cones, plastic fencing, star pickets and even a large billboard on wheels.
Community groups are invariably entitled to free rent of the goods while the wider community is typically offered highly reasonable borrowing rates.

“I don’t get any funding for what I do,” Ms Turner said of the service.

The towns churches are another useful source of goods that spend much of their time in storage, including a bain-marie from Church by the Bay and crockery and cutlery from several other congregations.

“I got a request for chairs for an open concert, so St John’s Anglican church in Portarlington and Church by the Bay offered their chairs,” Ms Turner said.

The typical reaction of first-time users of PortShare is somewhere between incredulity and shock. “They’ve said ‘Wow’,” she said, laughing. “PortShare is not something they’ve come across before.”

“And its prompted people to offer what they have personally, like a laptop that has been on loan to the Bellarine Safe Harbour and Ferry Group. It only has PowerPoint on it, but that’s fine for plenty of people and I’m about to put it back on PortShare.”

For those interested in getting access to the PortShare resource guide or in lending their own resources, head to emailtree.yolasite.com or contact Eliz Turner at [email protected]