This Saturday, March 21 is the Fishing Day at the Cape, from 9am to 1pm.
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There will be lots of prizes, and you don’t have to be an expert fisher person.
Next Saturday, March 28, will be fireworks night at the lake, postponed from Australia Day.
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Sympathy is extended to Peter, Kelvin, and David Robertson, and their families, following the death of family patriarch Bill Robertson on February 28, on the Gold Coast, at the age of 91.
A graveside service will be held at the Jerilderie Cemetery on Friday March 20, at 11am.
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The Jerilderie Uniting Church community is currently trialling weekly services at St Andrews Church, at 10am each Sunday for three months.
This is instead of services previously on the second, fourth and fifth Sundays.
All welcome.
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I will be finishing up as correspondent for ‘Just Jerilderie’ in the near future, and I have been going back through my scrapbooks kept from the beginning of the almost 36 years.
Apart from getting a stiff neck from reading so much small print, (and I haven’t even started the 2000s!) I have been reminded of how busy Jerilderie was in the 1990s.
There were lots of balls held in any one year, run by various voluntary organisations in the town: Old-time, Masquerade, Debutante (both senior and junior), dinner dances, parish balls. Plus classes in jazz ballet.
The old Bowling Club hosted dinner dances and themed dinners, e.g. Italian, Chinese, and some funny stories came out of those evenings.
We had many service clubs – Rotary, Lions, Apex, football and cricket clubs, and a ladies Netball club began at the Sporting Complex.
CWA, Hospital Auxiliary, Red Cross, RSL, RSL Women’s Auxiliary, Friendship Club, Jazz Up Jerilderie, a Ladies Dinner club, Combined Pensioners and Senior Citizens, Meals on Wheels, Scouts and Cubs, were some of the many organisations to appeal to a variety of individual leanings.
Some are still going strong, while others have fallen by the way-side or transformed into a group under another name.
The Hospital Auxiliary held a very successful annual fete for many years.
Rotary ran Carols by Candlelight, later taken on by Apex when Rotary ceased to exist in Jerilderie.
Progressive dinners were in fashion, and the Civic Hall was used as a picture theatre for some time.
Pittfour Homestead Restaurant was providing fine dining for special occasions, including the odd wedding. Diners were also entertained from time to time with dramatic or musical entertainment.
Of course births, deaths, and marriages were reported frequently, as were special celebrations.
We had a local milkman who delivered to our doors, and a Community Health bus, which took local women to the Freemasons Hospital in Melbourne for ‘female’ health checks, as a group.
The Jerilderie Lake extension was started in October 1991, and at one stage there were six goats on the island.
The Uniting Church Flower Show was up and running.
A quarterly street competition, which was an initiative of Jazz Up Jerilderie and CWA, with the ‘2468 this Street Looks Great’ street sign put up at the end of the winning street, was a pre-cursor to Tidy Towns.
And, back then, the Newell Highway clean-up campaign began with a challenge thrown down by Finley to Jerilderie to see how much rubbish could be picked up from the side of the highway going out of both towns.
Strong rubber gloves, heavy footwear and no sense of smell were a requirement for the volunteers who turned out in large numbers to fill plastic bags with the litter that people dropped from their vehicles.
And among other interesting and amusing reports I found a recipe - we had a combined 18th/21st family birthday occasion in 1992 - that may have been shared again in later years, but I’ll take that chance:
Favourite fruit cake
You will need one cup of water, a cup of sugar, 4 large eggs, 2 cups of dried fruit, a teaspoon of baking soda, a teaspoon of salt, a cup of brown sugar, lemon juice, nuts, and a bottle of whisky!
Sample the whisky to check for quality. Take a large bowl. Check the whisky again. To ensure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.
Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one spoontea of sugar and beat again. Make sure the whisky is still OK. Cry another tup.
Turn off the mixer. Break two leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Mix on the turner. If the fruit gets stuck in the beaters, pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the whisky again to check for tonsisticity. Next sift two cups of salt. Or something. Who cares?
Check the whisky. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one babblespoon of drown sugar, or whatever colour you can find. Mix well.
Grease the oven. Turn the cake pan to 350 gredees.
Don’t forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out of the window, check the whisky again and go to bed.