Welcome to Lifestyle DOOKIE Lifestyle DOOKIE is more than a group of people with a passion for where they live. It is a vision for where the enterprising community is headed and ultimately the exciting journey we can all take to get there. Lifestyle DOOKIE  is the inspiration of a small group of forward thinking people devoted to promoting and building on the emerging wine, food and tourism ventures in the district. We are people who live in the town and surrounding farming areas, business owners and other motivated community members. We invite all past and present members of the Dookie district community to join this project - w elcome to an exciting destination. You may wish to promote your business or community event, you  may have studied at Dookie College and would like to keep in touch or you may love living in Dookie as much as we do and want to help develop LifestyleDOOKIE, we would like to hear from you so please contact: Virginia Boyd - Tel: +61 3 5828 9282 - E-Mail: giniboyd@bigpond.com  Dookie & District Dookie is located about 30 kilometres from Shepparton, in the Dookie Hills. The University of Melbourne has a campus at Dookie, specialising in teaching food and agriculture related courses. With intensive agricultural land surrounding the town, this is an appropriate place for students to learn. Dookie has a fledgling wine industry that is fast developing into one of the region's burgeoning industries. An active community is planning for the future of the town with the development of a community plan, and a concept plan for the Dookie Recreation Reserve.   Dookie and District Community Plan At Mount Major in Dookie on 25th May 2003 the Mayor of Greater Shepparton launched the Dookie and District Community Plan. In response to approaches for assistance for a number of community projects in Dookie during 2002, the Council worked with community members and representatives of the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) to facilitate an integrated planning process. The purpose of this process was to promote a whole-of-community approach through identifying links between initiatives and potential opportunities that ensured community efforts and benefits could be maximised, identifying community priorities and the development of a process for managing change. A community planning event was conducted in June 2002 at which 120 local residents were involved in developing responses to the following questions: What do you value about Dookie? What is your vision for Dookie and district? What ideas do you have for specific development projects? The information from this forum was compiled into a draft Community Plan to guide the future development of Dookie and district. This draft was distributed for community comment and the plan was further refined as a result.  At a community forum conducted in November 2002, the Dookie and District Development Forum was established to co-ordinate implementation of the plan, and five priority areas were identified for year one action. The priorities are:   Establishment of rail and walking trails Redevelopment of the Recreation Reserve Water management Aged persons housing Development of partnerships with Dookie College. It is acknowledged that the plan contains many significant projects, that will be reliant on obtaining funding from a range of sources. The plan and yearly actions will be modified as required subject to the availability of funding for these projects. The Dookie and District Community Plan is available from the link below. A summary of the plan can be also be collected from the Council office, Welsford Street, Shepparton.