Election

The National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame held its Annual General Meeting and Elections last week. The organization is a non-profit Association with an elected Committee of four officers and eight general members to govern things.

Yours truly was elected as one of the Officers, to the position of Secretary! The (volunteer) job duties primarily consist of attending the monthly meeting and taking/publishing the minutes. I'm sure other activities will come along as well...

Molly Clark, shown here, founded this organization in 1993, and is a Patron. I had a delightful conversation with her. She lived on a homestead out in the bush for fifty years, many of them as a widow who ran the place herself first as a cattle operation and later as a tourist adventure destination after disease wiped out her livestock, and is now losing her eyesight and has to live in town. She is not happy to be in the city, and considers it a raw deal that she can't stay out bush.

Her homestead, Old Andado, is shown at this link: Molly's Homestead

I told Molly that although she can't see she has vision; better that than many people who have sight but no vision.

Her life inspired a play, called Morgan and Molly, that Ken and I plan to go see Saturday night.

http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/arts/ascp/araluen/whatson/theatre.html

The playwright, shown below with Molly, came to the meeting to talk to us. He met Molly over a decade ago and was so enamored of her that he spent a lot of time with her getting to know her well.

Here's the Committee, or at least those of us who were in attendance at the meeting.

Just below, this is Karen; she also works in the same job I have. We job-share; I have Mon-Wed-Fri and she takes Tues-Thurs. She and her husband live on acreage outside of town. She's quite handy. I've seen her making irrigation repairs at the museum as well as doing office work.

Here are a few other members who attended the meeting.

Jill, on the left, is as I understand it, a descendant of one of the early Central Australian pioneers, Francis Gillen. The closest mountain peak is named after him. Here's an article with a bit of info on this. http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/alicesprings.htm

One of the things that makes working at a museum interesting is that here in Alice, history is tangible.

Below are a few more members, Jan on the left and June on the right. Jan was one of two members who organized and executed a project to create an enormous quilt which contains the original signatures of many of Australia's women who first broke "glass ceilings" in various walks of life.

It's a great group of ladies and I'm privileged to work with them.