Relief for park owners as mini golf opens up

ON COURSE: Riverland Family Park's owners Michael Wilson and Caryn Wilson with daughters Jessica [left] and Natasha.

Mini golf at Riverland Family Park has reopened, seven months on from the June floods.

It was a "devastating but great" feeling for business owner Michael Wilson, who said the park was officially reopening at 2pm yesterday. Only the mini golf will be open for use at the Anzac Pde park. The go-karts will take another month or two to be ready.

Any proceeds gathered over the long weekend will go into a new disaster relief fund for future disasters, Mr Wilson said.

"When the floods happened, we said our first day would be fundraising," he said.
However, as they only had the mini golf open, he has decided to allow the whole weekend's profits to go to the fund, which would be available to the community for any type of disaster.

The fund will be administered by Wanganui Lions.

"It's been a real tough seven months, as the public knows. It would be nice if we were opening the whole thing, but unfortunately we're not ready."

The up-side would be that they were looking into upgrading the track and getting new, faster go-karts, he said.

"It's going to be a few months before we're back to normal... at least we can offer another recreation activity to people."

If any business or individuals would like to make a donation to the disaster relief fund, they can email Mr Wilson at riverlandfamilypark@gmail.com or send a cheque to Wanganui Lions: PO Box 322, Wanganui.

The park does not have eftpos machines up and running yet, so can only accept cash.