NHW TAS TASMANIA
Focus on Spring Bay Neighbourhood Watch The original and fundamental purpose of Neighbourhood Watch (NHW) is to help prevent crime. Although community-led, its ongoing strength and validity is through the partnership it enjoys with every Police Service in Australasia. Being a volunteer movement, NHW often needs to be strategic in the activities it undertakes. This article is about the benefits of those partnerships at the local and individual level and how public safety and connectedness are combined with crime prevention to form the three platforms on which we stand today. This focus on Spring Bay is intended to reinforce those values from a grass roots example. Triabunna and Orford are twin towns on the east coast of Tasmania about eight kilometres apart and one hour’s drive from Hobart. In 1999 each town had its own one officer police station to service a combined, permanent population of 2,000 people. This number tripled during the holiday seasons, thanks to the excellent fishing and beaches on offer in that part of the world. Although the area had a low crime rate, the newly transferred officer to Triabunna, Senior Constable Michael Fama brought with him some prior knowledge and experience of the benefits of Neighbourhood Watch. Not long after arriving in the town, Michael was approached by some youths asking when their skate park would be built.
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NHWA JOURNAL AUGUST 2020
Members of the Spring Bay NHWT group in 2006
Subsequent enquiries revealed that the local council would finance the park if an organisation would take responsibility for building it. The history record shows that one hot Saturday morning, local men and women screened some thirty metres of sloppy cement to complete the build which is still in use today. As a result, Spring Bay Neighbourhood Watch was up and away and is still going strong in 2020. NHW Spring Bay pride themselves on seeing a problem and doing something about it. The following
examples have proven to be simple but extremely worthwhile initiatives for their communities: • The tried and true fridge magnet is often a good way to start broadcasting a message. The NHW Spring Bay fridge magnet was an early project with a very specific message, to supply every home, holiday residence and business in both towns with all emergency phone numbers of their areas ‘first responders’. 2,000 were produced and given out free of charge.
