High School Rural Youth Leaders badge.

Recently I received a reply to one of my blogs asking if I was the teacher at Nanango State School who had started a High School Rural Youth Club at the school back in the early 70s as they were writing the history of Junior Farmers/Rural Youth in Queensland. Of course, that was me!

The first thing they asked me to do was to find any relevant badges that I had of that time so I went fishing through all that stuff that I can’t bear to throw out because of the wonderful memories.  There I found badges representing many different stages of my life  and I thought “what a wonderful story of various times of my life that would make”.  So here it is:

Caboolture State High School was the earliest badge I discovered.  I was a student there for most of 1962 when I was in Grade 9.  I had previously attended the Caboolture Primary School and those were the happiest days of my schooling.  I loved it and had some great teachers – all of whom I can remember.  At the time we lived at Donnybrook, a small fishing village on the mainland across from Bribie Island.  My Dad was a professional fisherman/crabber and we also had a multi-faceted small business with a corner store, boats for hire and the unofficial post office. 

Caboolture State High School badge.

At holiday times, Donnybrook would be full of campers and there were many kids to play with.  At other times, it was a lonely existence but I always had books to read and I loved to row around in one of our dinghies.  Being a bit of a nerd, I used to sit out in the boat and do maths problems!    My best friend at Caboolture High was Ingrid Irmer who later became godmother of my second daughter, Sally.  The journey to school involved riding my bike up to the bus stop over a dirt road which was often very corrugated.  We’d hide our bikes in the bush and climb onto the bus which was actually a banana truck which had long planks going down the length of the truck for us to sit on.  Not the most comfortable ride over dirt roads!

In October 62, Dad sold the business and bought a citrus and poultry farm with an abattoir at Chevallum near Palmwoods and I attended Nambour State High School.  This badge is my Prefect badge – an honour bestowed on me in Grade 12.  I enjoyed my senior years at High School especially maths and chemistry but I hated physics.  I can’t remember much about our duties as prefects except that we had to tell kids to turn their socks down and we used to patrol the streets of Nambour at lunch time to ensure that any students who were up the street had a signed pass. 

Nambour State High School Prefect badge.

At this same time, I was a member of Palmwoods Junior Farmers Club and I have a badge to prove it.  I remember a fun day out when we caught the train to Brisbane, went to a car raceway, saw a live show of pop music being made at Channel 7 and played 10 pin bowling and I remember that the secretary’s name was Fleur.  I think that may have been the first time I tried debating which I enjoyed a lot at university and in Nanango.

My next badges are from my time in Rural Youth (RY) (Junior Farmers had changed its name).  I joined Rural Youth when I was teaching in Nanango and it was one of the best things I ever did.  It was a wonderful organisation where we learnt many skills which made us better citizens.  We had competitions across many activities from debating, public speaking, cooking, ploughing, tyre changing…   The list was endless but probably the most important skill I gained in that time was how to run a meeting. It is so much easier to run a meeting when you understand meeting procedure and that has been important to me many times during my life.  I also learnt about the responsibilities of the various positions in an organisation and have occupied most of them over the years in different organisations.  Of course, we also had many good times in RY as well and I have such great memories of trips to conferences in various parts of Queensland.  We made wonderful life-long friends. 

Girl Guides Brownie woggle and badge.

I  started the High School Rural Youth Club and this badge shows that my position was Leader.  The students ran the meetings and organised everything themselves – the leaders were in an advisory/chaperone role. 

If we fast forward to the 80s when we lived in Bundaberg, my three daughters were in Brownies and Guides so I put my hand up to be a leader and started a new Brownie pack at Branyan where my children attended primary school, just up the road from where we lived.  That was fun although I must admit I was never much good at tying knots or doing macrame.  I really enjoyed taking the girls on Pack holidays though and being involved in that part of my children’s lives.  My Brownie name was Kinka.  This is my badge and my toggle for my scarf.

Over the years I was approached many times to join Rotary but just never had the time with running a family business and taking care of my family,  However, in 1997 I was working at Logan TAFE and was invited to join Beenleigh Rotary Club and I thoroughly enjoyed that.  I was then approached to start a new morning club at Springwood and so the Logan Sunrise Club was formed and I was the inaugural president.  Not long after, I moved to Cloncurry for personal reasons so had to resign from that club but I joined the Cloncurry Club which held their meetings over dinner – it was great to have dinner cooked for me one night a week!  Here are my Rotary badges.

Rotary badges.

I have been involved in many other organisations over the years such as P&Cs, Nursing Mothers where I was a counsellor, tourist associations and business organisations but I don’t seem to have badges to remember them by.  I wonder why? 

Perhaps they just weren’t as important to me.