2017 Presidents Report
AGM and President’s Report @ CERES — 7, 8 October 2017, by Peta Christenson
The ACFCGN national gathering weekend started funtastically with a Tamil Feast at the Merri Table Cafe at CERES – delicious food lovingly cooked and served by Tamil men currently seeking asylum in Australia.
Learn more about the ongoing Tamil Feasts here.
And what better place to ‘gather and AGM’ than the amazing CERES – in a huge community garden surrounded by their community of like minded people doing a wide range of community activities.
If you haven’t yet been to CERES you are seriously missing out, so take a cyber visit to their website.
After the ’round the circle’ introductions to each other (the fun of putting a person to a voice or email address in our Australia wide network), and finalising the planning the weekend’s activities, we held our 2017 AGM.
We had a report from outgoing President Peta Christensen (big thanks and hugs) and the tabling of the financial report (big thanks to John Brisbin who is our Treasurer and runs the mapping data base), we moved onto the election of our 2017/18 committee.
Special thanks also go to :
- founding members Fiona Campbell (established and runs our website) and Russ Grayson (Media Officer)
- Jane Mowbray for taking on the newly established task of membership officer
- and to Lorna Martin as part of the organising team and especially for organising the Geelong garden tours.
And of course to everyone else!
After another beautiful ACFCGN shared meal, and more networking, we had an inspiring afternoon of workshops and tours of CERES.
Workshop topics ranged from a buzzing presentation on bees by Amelie Banderstock to a session by the Department of Consumer Affairs on the obligations of incorporated associations in Victoria (where ACFCGN is incorporated) and the ins and outs of our constitution.
The tour I went on was of the CERES Nursery where we learnt about the realities off running a large nursery, propagation methods and shade houses and green houses. Thanks Meg!
Before we knew it we had finished the day’s meetings, workshops and tours, met lots of new people, had lots of chats and learnt heaps of new and inspiring stuff.
Heading off to the local Lomond Hotel for a good feed, a quiet drink and some great music we came across this poem posted on a wall.
Next morning we headed off to Geelong in a car share convoy. Visiting community gardens teaches us all about new ideas and different experiences in establishing and keeping community gardens going.
After the tours were finished we had a quick dip in the ocean and of course, being Victoria, it rained on our way back to Melbourne. It did clear up enough to have quick drink with Costa though – perfect timing!
If you are a member of a community garden anywhere in Australia, become part of our amazing network.