More space for nippers' boards, safer storage and a new gym were all reasons to celebrate when Thirroul Surf Life Saving Club officially reopened their clubhouse after four years and almost $600,000 worth of renovations.

On Sunday, November 19, Member for Cunningham Alison Byrnes, Member for Heathcote Maryanne Stuart, Minister for the Illawarra Ryan Park, Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery, President of Surf Life Saving NSW Peter Agnew and President of Surf Life Saving Illawarra Peter Everett joined committee members to mark the end of the project.

Thirroul Surf Life Saving Club president John Dryden said a growing number of nippers and a 30 per cent rise in patrolling members on last year meant the club needed more space for storage and training.

“We're really happy with the way it turned out,” John said.

“We were running out of room, basically. We've got a fairly strong membership and, in particular, we're getting a lot of people interested in board paddling, training and also our nippers’ program was growing and storing nippers’ boards was becoming an issue. So we needed to expand our equipment storage, but there were some other problems that we needed to address.

“Our gym was very old. We wanted to refurbish the gym and also the trailer storage area… now we've doubled the number of community members using the gym and that in itself is a source of income for us.

“One of the big things was just improving the safety for our own members. Before, it was very cramped, so getting equipment out of the club was quite difficult … it’s nice and spacious now and we've got good racking, which was part of the project, and all that helps us to improve the safety of the operation as well.”

After the original club – a weatherboard shack – was washed away by the tide in the mid-50s, the club’s members rallied to build a rendered brick structure, which remains today.

Over the past seven decades, the clubhouse has undergone a number of redevelopments with the help of club members, including the construction of its function hall. John said the recent renovations were no different, with members volunteering their time to demolish walls and flooring, and to paint refurbished areas. Grants funded most of the work and club members manned the bar and barbecue to help raise the remaining $142,000.

“We had a lot of members physically involved in the projects, knocking down walls and doing all sorts of cleaning up, painting, all sorts of activities associated with the project… so we would've had… at least 40 of our members involved at different times,” John said.

“All the final painting, for example, that was all done by our members.

“We needed a whole range of different people to come together to help us achieve the project or the results of the project, so [it was] good to get the opportunity to thank them more formally [on Sunday].”

While minor improvements are still in the works – including the addition of solar panels and increasing accessibility to bathrooms and first-aid areas – John said he is proud to have been a part of the collective who brought the major project to completion.

“Volunteer organisations are always struggling for numbers, it's sort of [an] increasing challenge for all volunteer organisations. So trying to give our members a greater space and something they can be proud of, I think, is one of those things that helps us to keep our volunteers,” he said.

“The club gets used now pretty much nearly every day of the year – summer and winter – with people training and coming down and doing their bit down there, so I think just providing that sort of a space as well is good.

“As well as the training, it's a little bit of a social thing for people to come down and go training together and then meet and have a coffee after it. That happens almost every day at our club.”