This month we held our meeting in the Commercial Club in Albury, with a good number of members present.
We do thank Lockhart Shire President, Peter Sharp for receiving our NSW Volunteer of the Year Team Award Certificate on our behalf at the Volunteer Awards Ceremony in Wagga last month when none of us were able to go.
Our Branch has been concerned about the Albury Base Hospital building situation, so I contacted Head Office about us writing a letter to the Minister and I spoke with the CWA Policy “person” who had ironically been listening to a debate in Parliament that morning about the Albury Base, so I sent him my information and he drafted a letter, got the approval from Danica Leys the CEO and it was duly signed by State President Tanya Jolly and sent through to Minister Park!
We have lots coming up – the Group Ag & Environment Day, Henty Field Days, The Rock Show, then the Albury Show which we’re planning on entering this year, plus our Riverina Group Conference at Collingullie and our own AGM.
We received an invitation from Murray Group to attend their Land Cookery “How To..” Day with Ellice Schroeder on Saturday, 27th September which several members hope to attend.
Since our meeting was held in the middle of CWA Awareness Week, and this year we’re focussing on food sustainability and seasonal eating, we had a member from Carevan, Rachelle Armstrong speak to us on what they do. Rachelle was a great speaker and covered many areas on this topic.
Henty Field Days were discussed and I think we have covered all aspects that we need to. Members were asked to please bring any craft items they had suitable for Show entries to please bring them to the next meeting or to the Field Days if they’re helping there. Since the Shows are only two weeks apart, we can possibly use the items in both Shows.
In our Land Cookery this month, we had the Surprise Cake, of which we have seen some great examples of on Facebook! Kay’s chocolate cake with the peppermint butterfly won first prize with Lyn Jacobsen second. The light fruit cake was won by Lyn. Next month we are having the magic bean cake and the plain butter cake.
Group Conference is to be held at Collingullie on 8th October, and we have several members planning on attending. Please note that our meeting will be a week later on 15th October.
Sympathy has been extended to Wendy H on the loss of her father and Carol G on the loss of her mother. Wendy C is visiting her Dad in hospital – he is 102!
Nett Maloney is exploring some more options for us re holding meetings in Albury.
A tip that was passed on to us was that wrapping car keys in foil is supposed to stop people being able start computerised cars as the foil blocks any attempt to tap into the key computer.
Some of us went to Uranquinty a few days after our meeting to the Ag and Environment Day. This was held on a beautiful sunny Saturday, and we had guest speakers on Frogs, our fauna that we’re studying this year, Common Myna birds which are our foe this year. Our convenor of the day, Ag & Enviro Officer Margie Carter spoke on her commercially grown Olives and as our primary product this year is Aussie Cut Flowers we had another guest speaker talk about Australian native plants before driving to a fresh flower farm for a look at the plots of flowering annuals growing which are also sold to the cut flower market.
Next meeting will be our annual one and will be held in Albury on Wednesday 15th October, a week later due to Group Conference and will be held at the Commercial Club at 10.30am. We look forward to welcoming more new members!
Lyn Jacobsen, CWA