--- Experiencing Community

Apologies from the Sydney ConFesters team for the late notice cancelling the Australia Day Gathering.

Persistent rain, both this current week, and during the past months, has hampered efforts to finish repair of the entry road to our Sydney ConFesters site. We have been in constant contact with the owners of the site and at noon today (Monday 21st Jan), in discussion with the owner, have decided to cancel the gathering.

We appreciate that this is very frustrating news, please remember we also share with the community of ConFesters the disappointment of having to cancel.

It is unfortunate that we have not been in a position to keep the community better informed, but hope that you in turn appreciate our reluctance to make tentative announcements along the lines of "The road is still unpassable, we understand that it will be fixed soon, we will report developments." and so on. The uncertainty of dealing with the vagaries of the weather and the difficulties of repairing and improving the access road under these conditions, made it necessary to defer the decision to the last minute.

So much for the past, just in case you are interested here are some of the why’s and a view of the future:

In June there was unprecedented rainfall in the valley, (it caused that gathering to be abandoned, but that is now incidental). In the ensuing flood our containers of gear, water tanks etc were moved around like toys, some gear was destroyed, these losses have by now largely been remedied, (also incidental). The most important damage was that the access road was rendered impassable due to several washouts. These have proven difficult and time consuming for the landowner to remedy, what is more their attention was diverted when equine flu hit their main business. The lack of an access road caused the October gathering to be held elsewhere.

It was only one small but very boggy section of the road that still needed to be drained, excavated, filled and compacted. Please understand that we are somewhat demanding of the unsealed farm track, firstly our drinking water arrives in a truck with a laden weight of over 20 tonne, then we run a 100 or more cars up and down it.

We believe that with new drains, road fill, grading, contouring, compacting, etc, the road will in future be usable in all but extreme weather conditions.

Sydney Confesters team
NB.
Many people will be heading to the grove. For more info got to:
www.grovegatherings.com
please let them know if you will be there.