Mary Bowman, the now 91-year-old Kyabram resident who was the first mayor of the shire in 1997, will not be sending pearls (the traditional gift for three decades of marriage) to the Echuca headquarters of the shire to mark the occasion.
In fact, when I made contact with her to let her know of the decision to go in the ubsubdivided direction — effectively doing away with the Kyabram ward she represented from 1997 to 1999 — she said it was time for a divorce.
“For a number of years, I’ve firmly believed that Kyabram was big enough to be separate from Campaspe,” she said.
“If Stanhope, Girgarre and Tongala were to come on board, that could happen. It’s all in the state government’s hands, though.”
In the mid-1990s, the Shire of Kyabram was one of five local government areas engulfed by the new ‘super-shires’ created by then premier Jeff Kennett during the Victorian amalgamation process.
It was in March 1997 that the first seven-member Campaspe Shire Council was formed.
The number of councillors remained the same at the 2000, 2003 and 2005 elections, before a ward restructure introduced the current format in 2008 — three Kyabram-Deakin ward councillors, three Echuca ward councillors and single representation in the Rochester, Waranga and Western wards.
Mrs Bowman, while maintaining an awareness of what happens at “headquarters”, pours most of her energy into the Kyabram Deakin Residents, Ratepayers and Development Group.
She chairs meetings on the third Wednesday of every second month — the next one is on March 20 and details will be advertised in the Free Press.
She said marriages were “for better or worse”, and the Kyabram union with Campaspe had been firmly in the latter category.
Just how this latest twist in the marriage of the Kyabram people to the Campaspe Shire turns out remains to be seen.
Kyabram-Deakin ward constituents will soon be engulfed, as they were in 1995, into a much larger entity, as all wards will soon be defunct and become part of the unsubdivided shire.
Mary Bowman is under no illusions how the marriage will end.
Her passionate description of “her” town being on the edge of Campaspe Shire’s boundaries sounded like the description of a child that had been estranged from its parents.
She did say, however, that the role of a councillor on the new shire would be more important than ever.
“Candidates will need to know what is happening in the entire shire, just like we did back in the days of Kyabram shire,” she said.
She said maybe it was time for the KDRRADG to become the CDRRADG (’C’ for Campaspe) and also become an unsubdivided organisation.
“It’s been my ambition for a while to have the group become shire-wide. Maybe this is our chance,” she said.
Mrs Bowman said being a councillor now was very different from 20 or 30 years ago due to the centralised nature of the organisation.
“Everything revolves around Echuca,” she said.
“We used to have our monthly meetings in a different town every month. We would meet at Echuca during the day, then meet at Rushworth, Kyabram or Rochester to have our monthly meeting in the evening.”
While suggesting a breakaway shire, Mrs Bowman did acknowledge the efforts of current councillors John Zobec and Adrian Weston.
“They are very good,” she said.
“They come to our ratepayers’ meetings and discuss things, but even they admit they do not have much say.
“We do need personal contact with our councillors. I have a feeling that going unsubdivided will not help.”
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