Belconnen Day VIEW Club

Gaye, Rebecca Marg

Ros receiving her 20 year badge

Visitor Belconnen Day, Rae

2023 May - Arthritis

During our pink themed May meeting we had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca Davey the CEO of Arthritis ACT. Rebecca is very proud of her background in nursing but now she is the 'go to person' in terms of designing and initiating programs along with doing all the 'nitty gritty' stuff at Arthritis ACT.

Rebecca Davey made her presentation of dealing with arthritis entertaining as well as informative. Rebecca gave us one 'special' tip to help with exercise, pelvic floor and may even help with sciatica. Ready to try this exercise ladies? Every time you go to the loo just stand up and sit down 3 times which will eventually build those muscles we all need. Hold on if you need to but eventually you will be able to do that exercise with your arms folded on your chest. You're welcome!!!

It was with much pleasure our President Gaye presented Ros P with her 20 year badge and she welcomed to our club Kathy B with her membership pin. Gaye was also very pleased to welcome our visitor Rae Clarke who was a member of our club for many years and a president for 3 years before she moved to Queensland.

The lucky winners of our Mother's Day raffle were Lorraine L, Normi M and Lyn R. Julie M and Marilyn B won the lucky door prizes. Many congratulations ladies and thank you to all members who bought tickets and including those lovely ladies who came encompassing our pink theme today. The venue and our members looked lovely.

What beautiful autumn weather we are enjoying at the moment. Stay warm and well ladies. Look forward to seeing you at our morning tea at Pulp Book cafe at 10:30 Tuesday 23 May and/or at our June meeting.

A new member, Kathy with Gaye

Belconnen Day Gaye, Lea, Shirley and Adele receive service pins

Belconnen Day Marg, Penny and Gaye

Guest Speaker, Penny Grist

2023 April

Hope everyone enjoyed their Easter weekend. Winners are grinners. Jann, Julie and Alice were our raffle winners at our April meeting. Thank you to all our lovely ladies who buy tickets.

Three of our members also received very special service pins at our meeting. Lea for 20 Years, Shirley for 10 years and Adele for 20 years. Many congratulations ladies and thank you.

We have to sincerely thank our guest speaker Penny tremendously as she stepped in on a couple of days notice.

What an impressive CV! Penny's career started off in 2005 with honours degrees in Law and Art History and was followed by work in the legal profession. In 2009 she decided to become a curator and moved to Canberra to work on exhibitions at the National Library, the National Museum of Australia, and a long stint at the National Portrait Gallery.

Recently Penny has taken up the position of Assistant Director, Programs and Engagement in the Art Collections team at Parliament House. She is also Secretary of the ACT Fire Brigade Historical Society, which runs the Canberra Fire Museum. Last year she was awarded the 10-year long-service medal from ACT Fire and Rescue for her volunteering efforts with the Fire Museum.

Penny began her presentation by giving us a sense of who she was. She did this through photos of five forests which took us from her childhood near Lismore to Arthur Boyd’s tapestry in Kings Hall, Parliament House. She also shared with us the evolution of the definition of ‘curator’ from Roman times when it meant ‘to take care of bathhouses’ through Medieval times, when it designated the priest who cared for souls, to the 18th century, where it meant looking after collections of art and artifacts. Today, curating means to preserve, select, to connect to history and display or arrange works so that they become an extraordinary experience for the viewer.

Penny then involved us in a series of intriguing questions or statements which enabled her to share with us 13 favourite stories from 13 years of curating in Canberra. Topics covered dinosaurs, nudes, blue shirts, fire engines, hairbrushes, fires and so much more.

Penny’s presentation was both entertaining and instructive and the members justifiably gave her a rousing round of applause.

We look forward to seeing everyone at our May meeting. Don't forget to wear your pink glad rags.

Christmas Celebrations

2022 December

What a fabulous year it has been for our VIEW club and the year concluded with a fun filled Christmas lunch. Many of our Members dressed in their Christmas finery, and all looked fabulous.

Unfortunately, our President had to start the meeting with the sad news that one of our dear members passed away recently. We send sincere condolences to Christine Burnett’s family; she was a real treasure.

Due to the generosity of our members twenty lucky people won a jam-packed Christmas bag with Christmas goodies, plus lucky door prizes. Heather E, Wendy W, Wendy D, Alice M, Lorraine L, Kathy B, Marilyn B, Shirley H, Leah W, Christine K, Pam B, Lyn M, Shirley G, Joan D, Chris C, Carol S, Anne C, Robyn T, Jann R, Rhonda B. Congratulations ladies.

We sadly farewelled Lyn M who is leaving us for warmer climes in Queensland. Lyn was our Barrel Girl for five years but altogether has been with VIEW clubs for thirty-five years. We thank Lyn for her contribution to our club and wish her well on her next adventure.

One very pleasant task performed by Gaye (our president) was to read out a letter from the National Executive congratulating Christine Colyer for being the recipient of the ‘Making a Difference’ award for July – September 2022. Congratulations Chris, very deserved.

After a sumptuous Christmas lunch we were delightfully entertained by the dapper Bryan Butler with a range of great songs – there was even some dancing from our ladies! Many thanks Bryan, we all really appreciated your humour, stories and great singing.

Happy and safe Christmas to all our members and sister clubs. May 2023 be kind to us all.

The Smith Family Visit

2022 June

Members and guests were welcomed to our June meeting. Our guest speakers were Fiona Hennig, Program Coordinator, Smith Family and Monica Watson, Family Partnership Coordinator from The Smith Family.

They talked to us about the history of The Smith Family and Centenary Celebrations. Fiona and Monica both spoke of their roles which cover many programs including:

• Learning clubs which meet at Schools, libraries and community centres for one on one with Learning for Life children.
• Let’s count and Let’s Read for early years
• Student to Student buddy reading program for Primary Years
• Passport to Success a transition program for Yr 6 to Yr 7
• Money Talks; and
• Future Seekers, to mentions a few.

They also gave us an insight to what our sponsorship covers which was very interesting as we sponsor five students at the moment and will take on another student this month.

The ladies mentioned that the Smith Family is always looking for retired teachers or other interested persons to volunteer for these programs.

Marg was the first prize winner of the raffle scoring a beautiful rug.

2022 April Meeting

Boy this year is just tearing away. Time flies when you are enjoying yourself.

Well, our April meeting was another successful, interesting meeting. Our guest speaker was Fiona Wearden, who is the Case Manager Home Care Packages and Short Term Restorative Care Uniting, Canberra.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of interest in this subject as most of us have loved ones that can make use of this information.

Fiona has a very interesting background. She has been a Support and Social Groups Program Worker, Art Tutor, Public Servant in several divisions and a Landscape Architect.

There were many aspects Fiona covered in such a short time. For example, Government subsidies, Home Care packages and Changes we can expect in 2023 to name a few. We were very appreciative of her knowledge in this very complex area. Thank you Fiona.

This month’s lucky raffle winners were Alice M, Marian D and Rhonda B. Thank you to all the ladies who generously bought tickets.

Many happy returns to our April birthday ladies. Gaye C, Susan M, Roslyn P, Isabelle P, Leah W, and Dorothy Luckman.

Don’t forget our big Mother’s Day raffle will be drawn at our May meeting and there will be goodies to buy from the trading table. We can also look forward to a meal of Tandoori chicken kebabs, steamed rice, tossed salad with yoghurt dressing. Followed by individual pavlovas with fresh cream and fruit. Boy! My mouth is watering already.

Enjoy the rest of this lovely autumn weather, stay well and we look forward to seeing you in May.

2022 March IWD

Happy International Women’s Day celebration at Chris Colyer's home for Belconnen Day View Club members and friends.

We enjoyed such a delightful morning with 24 ladies partaking in a delicious morning tea supplied by the committee. Great catch up on a perfect autumn day.

Allana Maher won the lucky door prize, while Cathy Barrett, Lorraine Lane and Marilyn Brennan were the lucky winners of the raffles. Congratulation ladies.

Many thanks to everyone who attended especially the committee for the morning tea and Chris Colyer for opening up her lovely home to us.

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy whatever you may be doing. Look forward to seeing you all next meeting.

Alice Mason

 Robyn Siers

2022 March

Welcome one and all to our March meeting. We want to acknowledge and salute all our wonderful ladies on this, International Woman’s Day. You are all special.

The lovely Alice Mason loved her special birthday gift of a Chrysanthemum plant full of buds. She was also a lucky winner along with Sheila Ashmore and Jill Chin of the monthly raffle. Congratulations girls.

Margaret Hourigan introduced our guest speaker. With around twenty years’ teaching experience in classrooms, Robyn Siers’ career in education took a slight left turn when she started work at the Australian War Memorial in 2005. She has held various roles in the Education team including delivering gallery programs to visiting school students, developing and delivering public programs for diverse audiences, and supervising Education outreach.

Today Robyn gave an exceptionally interesting talk about the stories of Australia’s military nurses. Sincere thanks Robyn for such an insight into the stories of our heroic nurses.

Looking forward to seeing all you lovely ladies at our next meeting 12 April.

Cootamundra Light Festival

2022 March - Cootamundra Light Festival

It is so nice to come across other VIEW club members from other towns.

Cootamundra had a great community event – the Light Festival. Here are the lovely VIEW club ladies promoting their club at the festival. Well done Cootamundra and VIEW club ladies.

2022 February Annual General Meeting

Welcome one and all to our 2022 February meeting which was also our AGM.

As there are no Delegates or Area Zone Councillors in our area June Weise has taken on the role of "advisor" for Canberra and surrounds. This is only a "temporary" position! 

June kindly offered to chair our AGM. Thank you June. 

Even though we have only had eight meetings in 2021, we can be truly proud of our achievements. Ten new members have joined our club - welcome ladies, so good to meet you. We also have successfully sponsored five Learning for Life students. Well done all our members for your kind generosity.

Our president Gaye Clarke thanked all the committee. Gaye made special mention and extended an extra vote of thanks to committee members who have stood down from their current positions. 

Barbara Murphy has been an amazing secretary for many years and done an outstanding job - she is standing down as secretary. Thank you Barb. Lorraine Lane was an excellent Treasurer for many years then handed the reins over and offered to be Assistant Treasurer, but now is having a break from the committee. Many thanks Lorraine. Lyn Mellier, the queen of raffles has stood down. Thank you Lyn, you've done a great job. Carmel McGarry has stepped away from the committee after supervising our trading table so well. We will miss fun loving Shirley Good as our Vice President. Sincere thanks to our outgoing committee.

Let the good times roll. 
The following are our new committee for 2022

Gaye Clarke - President

Chris Colyer - Vice President

Christine King - Secretary

Carol Sweetapple -Assistant Secretary

Marilyn Brennan - Treasurer

Barbara Murphy - Assistant Treasurer

Margarete Gill - Publicity Officer

Mary Wheatley - Program Officer

Marg Hourigan - Program Officer

Heather Evans - Program Officer

A special mention to Ros who has offered to be our Archivist, a very important job. Thank you Ros.

Congratulations 2022 Belconnen Day View Club committee. May it be another fun filled year with continued and new friendships.