Punmu Basketball Court Cover

WeatherSafe WA

We were commissioned to supply and install a dome-shaped barrelvault roof structure 25 meters wide by 36 meters long (900 square meters) with a 4 meter by 10 meter annex to one side to cover a stage. We also incorporated two frames at each end for the basketball hoops into the frame installation, as well as seven 6 meter by 6 meter linked triangular shade sails off the opposite side of the annex. The framework has built-in basketball hoops, netball rings and provisions for tennis, badminton and volleyball nets.

The small aboriginal community of Punmu Rawa, 450 kilometers southeast of the northwest coastal town of Port Headland in the Great Sandy Desert, is home of the Martu Tribe of Aboriginal people. Approximately 90 kilometers from the Canning Stock Route, the community is home to approximately 400 adults and 80 school-age students. It boasts a modest primary school, a shop, nursing outpost, a fuel pump and is home to the Punmu Bulldogs football team. It is quite simply a tiny community in the middle of nowhere. In late 2006 the local Rotary club of Margaret River, after doing many projects for overseas communities, decided to look for an Australian community that they could adopt and work on local projects rather than looking beyond Australia's shores. They discovered the Punmu Rawa community and have been involved with many projects including constructing school buildings, refurbishing the school and shop and other minor works. In 2008, the main Rotarians involved with the community asked the community elders if there was any project that the community as a whole would like to see. After this consultation it was decided that a major redevelopment of the basketball court would be of the most benefit to all the residents. In June of 2008, the main driver of this project from the rotary club approached our company with an A4 sketch of a basketball court with a dome cover over it that was hand-drawn during a brainstorming session. Rather than a tin shed they were interested in a fabric structure that would be a bit different, blend into the environment without being too obtrusive and be truly unique to the area. Our company proposed a curved framed Barrelvault structure with a series of shade sails off the side. The Rotarians took our design and estimated cost and went off to seek government funding. Almost six months later the project looked as if it would be able to get funding and we were asked to define exact costs. This necessitated a visit to the community to inspect the site and determine the logistics of doing the job. This was a very important facet of the entire project as the existing basketball court was a crumbling mess and the location needed extensive retaining and levelling.

It was obvious from this initial site inspection that not only were we going to need to have a good deal of cement to build our footings, but the whole basketball court needed to be upgraded, the site levelled and filled to build up one side where it fell away suddenly. The logistical nightmare of how we were actually going to do this became our priority. We had discussions with a concrete contractor from Port Headland who decided that the only way to get the concrete to the site was to actually set up a batching plant on-site and freight in all the equipment along with all of the sand and aggregate. This took two huge semi trailers. At the same time it was decided to run lighting and power around the court so we engaged an electrical contractor to liaise with the concrete contractors so that everything could be done at the same time. In one week we had the footings dug, rag bolt assemblies set into footings and a new 150 millimeter concrete slab laid for the new basketball court. The concrete had to set, for which we allowed two weeks.

We had to organize all of the equipment and the delivery from the gold mine to the community. We hired a crane and two scissor lifts from Port Headland. We hired a semi trailer to bring the crane and scissor lifts to the community and then we travelled back to the mine to pick up and load the structure onto the truck and then back to the community. Although Punmu is only 120 kilometers from Telfer the trip takes about five hours each way in the truck as the road is little more than a rough desert track with a top speed of 40 kph. We were also dealing with a gold mine which involved negotiating a fair bit of red tape with security, inductions and permits. The equipment arrived on site two days late which put the pressure on us to complete the project in the allotted time so that we didn't miss the flight back to Perth (These are charted flights for fly-in fly-out workers they are always full, so if we missed our allocated flight it could be days before we could secure another flight). The build started as soon as the truck arrived at the community, which was late afternoon, and we had all the uprights in position by about 10 p.m. on the first night. Fortunately we had a small amount of lighting that allowed us to work in the dark. For the two days that we were waiting for the equipment to arrive we made friends with the local people and did a few community projects. Some of our team went camel shooting and we had camel BBQ one evening. We were fortunate that there was a Department of Employment and Training work for the Dole scheme in progress, so we had about six locals on hand to help us. The Rotary club also had five representatives on hand to oversee projects that were running concurrently to our structure, so we had an able work force to tackle the job. Once the build commenced it was pretty straight forward. Having no access for our scissor lifts around the outside of the structure, we managed to assemble our frame by running the scissors inside, over the court slab. The odd problem that arose we tackled as best we could with the limited resources that we had. No hardware shop around the corner here! Once the structure was assembled we simply dragged the shade cloth cover, which we made in one complete piece, along the length of the structure using the two scissor lifts. The shade cloth was then tensioned and secured to the frame. We then fit seven 6-meter by 6-meter triangular sails to the side of the structure to depict the Aboriginal flag.

The finished structure is a most impressive sight. The nine meter height of the center of the structure makes it by far the largest building in the community. The structure covers the entire basketball court with a 10-meter by 4-meter extended annex to one side where there is a stage built. The structure was made with provisions to hang netball hoops on the side uprights as well as anti-climbing spikes to deter would-be climbers. The structure was completed in September 2010 and in the time since it has played host to a basketball carnival, an official grand opening by the Minister for Sport and Recreation, numerous music festivals, weekly cooking schools as well as serving as a focal point for the whole community. To conclude, it was an inspiring and adventurous week in the desert for the four city folk who oversaw and did the majority of the work on the construction of the project. To see the look of delight in the faces of the locals when the structure was completed was a golden moment. For us to be given the chance to experience the culture of life in the desert for a week was a life-changing event, never to be forgotten. A week of sleeping in swags, modest accommodation, no beer (as it was a dry community) and BBQ dinners in the middle of the desert made us realize how easy we have it back home. As the project supervisor, to see a vision come to fruition after more than two years of negotiations was very humbling indeed.

Project details

Location: Northwest Australia
Size: 900 sq.m
Fabrics: Monotec 370 by Pro-Knit Industries Pty Ltd. from Ricky Richards (Australia) Pty Ltd.
Engineer: Baretta, Kneebone & Hall
Design: Mark Lewis, WeatherSafe WA
Fabrication: Eric Moonen, Abacus Shade Structures
Project Manager: Mark Lewis, WeatherSafe WA
Installation: William Blown, WeatherSafe WA / Abacus Shade Structures