Australia Day Celebration 08

At Tarneit Skies Retirement Village, we had an Australia Day celebration. It was organised by Pat Hickey with a large group of assistants.

About 145 people attended showing that the residents of the Village supported the celebration enthusiastically.

My photos can be found at this link

To whet your appetite here is a slide show of the pictures:




As can be seen from the pictures, tables had been set up for all those attending.

The celebration was started by a stirring rendition of the National Anthem.

The first activity was the thong and gumboot throw. Women threw a thong (foot variety) men threw a "gumboot" (small variety). The aim was to land the object in a bucket. None of the men were successful, but two women succeeded: Pam Radford and Judy Barned.

The video below shows a small part of the thong and gumboot throw. Click on the play button to view it.



Meat and chicken platters were provided and residents bought plates of salad and desert. Consequently the buffet table was heavily laden with luscious food. We all ate our fill (and a bit more for some of us).

The steady hum of conversation around the tables showed that everyone was having a great time and it sometimes gave Pat a challenge to be heard as he made his announcements.

Pat had provided a "show bag" of activities for each person attending which contained a wide range of interesting items. These included gap fill exercises for Banjo Patterson's poem Clancy of the Overflow and a quiz. See this link for electronic version of some of the activities.

Pat had organised a large number of prizes for the raffle and many people received an extra surprise when their ticket was drawn from the box.

Although there was a residents' meeting in the Community Centre in June 2007, this was the first activity in the Centre since it has become habitable.

We all had a great time, and for me as a new resident, it was fantastic to be able to attend such a great party and then walk home!