How amazing that Alphington Bowls Club is 100 years old. To mark this auspicious occasion the club is holding a centenary celebration to which the whole community is invited, on Sunday 28th March from 11am-6pm.

The day includes:

• morning and afternoon tea

• BBQ

• the bar open all day

• live music

• barefoot bowls, and

• an exhibition including historical photos, memorabilia from the archives, team photos and more.

It is sure to be a super fun family neighbourhood day and a wonderful reunion event - if you’ve ever been part of the club, or have family or friends who have been involved in the club the current members would be delighted if you could encourage them to attend.

Alphington Bowls Club is at Parkview Road in Alphington. If you have any questions or need further information just call them on 9499 2530 or email info@alphingtonbowlsclub.org.au. See you there!

Our new brochure is out. We’ve created a trimmed down version for semester 1 2021. You can read it here. It is jam packed with old favourites like playgroups and choir and new ideas including a range of short courses, workshops and events you can book in to.

• Women in the Shed is back on Monday (for beginners), Tuesday and Thursday for 6 weeks in Term 1 and 2.

• Our free Access All Abilities Bowls program run with Alphington Bowls Club is back for 6 weeks in term 1 and 2.

• Our new Drawing in the Shed short course will also run for 6 weeks in Term 1 and 2. Run by local artist Louisa, this is a low-cost opportunity for all members of the community to develop the observation and co-ordination skills necessary to make creative drawings in any style. It will cover contour drawing, creating creative compositions, drawing with perspective and more.

• In 2019 we had Gordon come along and run a sewing machine maintenance workshop. It was a fantastic morning and so we’ve rebooked him this year. On Saturday 1 May he will run a sewing machine maintenance workshop and then on Saturday 17 June he will run an overlocker maintenance workshop.

• Local Manu is keen to share her Indian cooking skills with us … starting with a chai tea making workshop (Sunday 9 May). $20. Book here.

• Our History Walk is back! Join local Anne and other history buffs for a stroll around South Alphington on Sunday 16 May from 2pm.

• And finally … Home maintenance 101. It’s a maintenance kind of year it seems … and on the weekend of 19 & 20 June we’re offering a two day workshop (only $50 with Learn Local funding) all about building home maintenance skills. How to unblock a drain, how to stop a cistern running, how to fix a hose leak, how to hang pictures and fix cracks in plaster. How to fix windows that stick … (depending how old your house is the list goes on and on right?).

Book in online today.

At ACC we try to offer a wide range of opportunities for people to meet their neighbours, to make friends in the community, and to build, explore and share their skills and knowledge.

We run a number of activities that are self-led or run by a generous volunteer. These include Czech and Slovak Playgroup, Ukulele, Line Dancing and the like. For these programs we ask all attendees to contribute $5 per week (no matter how long the session lasts) to keep the lights on and the heater heating etc.

We also support a number of micro-businesses that provide services that fit in with our programming goals. Small business owners/sole traders running these programs set their own fees and we support them with low room hire rates (again $5 per attendee) and publicity. These programs include Jane’s Group Harp, Cat’s Lego Club and Matthew’s Guitar Lessons (about to start up).

Then we run a number of tutored programs, where we spread a small bucket of money that comes from Darebin Council and Yarra Council as widely as possible, prioritising community building and community need.

In the first half of 2021 we will fully subsidise Jill to run our very successful and long-standing AAA Bowls program (a partnership with Alphington Bowls Club) and Jenny to oversee our Friday community morning program that includes Community Craft, Gardening Group and Morning Tea on the Corner.

Then with the remaining program funding we will partially subsidising our tutored/supervised Community Shed sessions.

These programs will cost $5 per hour per participant (still a bargain) and we’ll need a minimum of 6 people booked in by the term for them to run.

Of course, we also tap into other funding where ever possible. We always have our eyes open and our ears to the ground … last year we partnered with MyTime to support our Peer Support Playgroup for example. And we get one-off grants from wonderful community support organisations such as Clifton Hill/North Fitzroy Community Bank who have previously provided funding for our Community Lunches and our Gardening Group … and this coming year will be supporting our History Group (more to come on this).

Our full program for 2021 will be out next week, and we’ll be featuring some of the new things on offer at ACC (and some old favourites as well) in our newsletter in coming weeks (with the links to book in).

We hope you can find something that you will enjoy being part of, and we look forward to seeing you onsite in the new year. Our programming will resume in the first week of February.

This week is deferred NAIDOC week (usually it is in July), a week founded on political action by our First Nation peoples.

NAIDOC week began way back in the 1930s … when a Day of Mourning protest was held on Australia Day in Sydney. This protest formalised years of Aboriginal rights groups boycotting Australia Day to highlight the shameful status and treatment of Indigenous Australians.

After the Day of Mourning, there was a growing feeling that it should be a regular event. In 1939 William Cooper who was the founder of the Aboriginal Advancement League, wrote to the National Missionary Council of Australia to seek their assistance in supporting and promoting an annual event.

From 1940 until 1955, the Day of Mourning was held annually on the Sunday before Australia Day and was known as Aborigines Day. In 1955 Aborigines Day was shifted to the first Sunday in July after it was decided the day should become not simply a protest day but also a celebration of Aboriginal culture.

It then evolved into NADOC and then NAIDOC week. NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee.

For those of us in the Federal seat of Cooper we have a special connection to this day as much of the early political action was led by our seat’s namesake, William Cooper.

The theme for NAIDOC week this year is

Always Was, Always Will Be.

This statement acknowledges Australia’s First Nation peoples 65,000+ years connection to country, it celebrates their status as the longest ongoing living culture in the world, and it recognises that they never ceded sovereignty.

If you are keen to learn more, local Sarah helpfully sent us a NAIDOC week resource pack to share, with links to recent interesting articles, books, TV shows, movies and websites. Thanks Sarah.

ARTICLES

• The Penumbra. Seven things organisations should be doing to combat racism. Esther Choo. The Lancet

• More than a refresh required for closing the gap of Indigenous health inequality. Chelsea J Bond and David Singh. MJA

• Indigenous mental health research and covid-19. Bushra Farah Nair, Sharon Brennan-Olsen, Maree Toombs, Insightplus

• Meet Karen Lund – a fly in, fly out renal nurse in Australia’s outback

BOOKS

• The Yield by Tara June Winch. Wiradjuri woman and author Tara June Winch received the Miles Franklin Award this year for her novel The Yield which is about colonial violence, trauma across generations and damage to the environment. It also celebrates the resurgence of her group’s language, Wiradjuri.

Films/Videos

• In My Blood It Runs - a beautiful, thought provoking film available on ABC iView for 30 days from November. Ten-year-old Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages. As he shares his wisdom of history and the complex world around him, we see his spark and intelligence. Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education lest he becomes another statistic. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future self.

• Baykeepers: Time of Chaos - humans have long been entrusted to protect Nairm (Port Phillip Bay). N'arweet Carolyn Briggs, Boon Wurrung Elder, shares the Time of Chaos story which tells how Nairm was formed and why we must continue to protect it.

• Short Film Collections here and here.

• Songlines on Screen - a collaboration between Screen Australia and NITV that presents eight short films from the remote regions of Western, Northern and Central Australia. These films represent Aboriginal people's ongoing connection to land and culture as told throughout time by the way of creation songs. 

• Always will be - NITV

 Other resources

• Aboriginal Seasonal Calendar for the Melbourne Area

• Lists of Victorian Aboriginal businesses/ certified indigenous businesses - Kinaway (Victorian) or Supply Nation.

• Once as it was - an ' A1 poster showing the ancestral family estates of Melbourne's First People. It features information on pre-colonial areas around the Bay, such as Birrarung River and Point Ormond, with cultural approvals by Arweet Carolyn Briggs. You can purchase it here.

• Check out Indigenous X here - creating a media landscape where Indigenous people can share their knowledge, opinions and experiences with a wide audience across the world.

• Find out about Australian Indigenous astronomy here.

• The Living Knowledge Place is a community based education site that showcases living knowledge content for education and wellbeing purposes. Developed from Indigenous teaching methods and practices the site is based on the community being the content. 

• Common Ground - records and shares First Nations cultures, histories and lived experiences. To help Australians see the value of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures through providing access to stories and knowledge that will help bridge gaps in knowledge. Common Ground is designed to build a foundational level of knowledge for all Australians, and be a go to resource for those wanting to learn more and connect with our First Peoples.

We featured a post about Fulham Grange a while ago … and that house that was built on the first subdivision, Edgebaston.

And … unable to contain my curiosity I popped past on a walk and took a snap. Here it is (just in case you are less nosy than me and/or didn’t get there for any other reason).