General News
18 June, 2026
Funding to deliver revitalised hall for scouts
A DILAPIDATED building on The Prominade covered in profane graffiti is set for a new lease of life thanks to a $35,769 investment to restore and activate the premises into a thriving community hub.
The Victorian Government last week announced an allocation of $35,769 to restore the Old Scout Hall in Terang as part of round three of the Tiny Towns fund.
Scouts Victoria assistant chief commissioner Wombat Lyons said the funding would be transformative as the disused premises was trending towards demolition.
“Unfortunately, the hall has been left underutilised after scouting ended a few years ago,” he said.
“It attracted some vandalism and has also attracted the possums, who feel it is a much better home than a tree.
“We’re going to use this money to remove all the graffiti, clean up all the damage, and fit some stronger new windows and door frames.
“We envision turning this into a new space where we can work with other community groups and organisations, such as the Terang Returned and Services, who often get requests from people who want a small meeting space.”
The building will also be used as a home base for the thriving Cubs and Scouts members of Noorat and Cobden, or even further afield.
“This will also be available for us too as we’ve got Cobden and Noorat as part of our full-time youth programs, so if they want to have an activity in Terang, they’ll have the space to do that,” Mr Lyons said.
“With Camperdown and Terang being on the train line, we feel it can open up opportunities for scout groups from Melbourne or Geelong if they wanted to come up for the day and do activities in these communities.
“This can be a space for them to use as a base hub, to leave their gear.
“It’ll be great to get rid of the graffiti and restore this premises because it is one of those things where you don’t want to lose the facility, which we were on cusp of.
“This grant funding ensures it can be restored to be a youthful community space.”
Mr Lyons said it could also be used to further engage south west youth in scouting programs, with early plans underway to try and relaunch scouting in Camperdown.
“We’ve got the Noorat Scouts, who are 10 minutes out of town and are absolutely brilliant,” he said.
“Rather than try to find new volunteers, I’d rather direct people to our wonderful volunteers at Noorat.
“Cobden is also one of our strongest groups as well, so with two really strong groups we see this as an opportunity to support them rather than compete with them.
“Noorat Scouts do all the Anzac Day and Good Friday Appeal stuff in Terang, so having a facility they can use as their base when they are in town makes life a little bit easier for them.”
Mr Lyons said he expected the project to be completed by the end of the year.
“It’ll definitely be achieved by this year because with this grant funding the project has to be completed before 2027,” he said.
“We applied for the grant with quotes in January, and we imagine they’ll want to revise their quotes because the world has changed a bit since then, but I imagine if they revise their quotes over August we could have this underway in September and finished in November.
“There’s no structural work so this is all based on quotes local tradies have offered us and we don’t think it would take long to finish.”
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