Welcome & Apologies
John McKenna opened the meeting at 2.09pm and welcomed members and our Guest Speakers, Peter McGann and Kevin Ryan

Apologies: Pamela Richardson, Beth & Russ Werner, Merle Warwick, John Warwick, Kevin Haswell, Pat O’Brien, Flo McMaster

Confirmation of Minutes of Public Meeting held on Sunday 9 December 2007
The Minutes of the Public Meeting held on Sunday 9 December 2007, which were mailed to members, were accepted by the Meeting. 

Business Arising
There was no business arising from the minutes of the previous meeting.

Correspondence
As per the list included in the Agenda.  Helen Olde tabled the folder containing correspondence and asked that it be circulated to members present for their information, noting upcoming events at Fairfield Museum and Mt Druitt Historical Society.

President’s Report
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our first official function for 2008. Nice to see some sunshine today after all the rain of the past week. We must also pass on some thanks to Holroyd Council’s grounds contractor – he was here most of yesterday doing the lawns and general tidying up for most of the day. With all the rain and humidity, the grass was getting quite tall. Helen and I were here from lunchtime until about 6pm doing some well overdue cleaning out of our office and the gentleman was here when we arrived and was still here when we left – so he certainly put in a good day’s work on the grounds.

Well, we have lots to ‘show’ and not a lot to ‘tell’ today, so we will make a start on all the donations that have come in over the past few weeks. Feel free to come up after the meeting to have a closer look at them all.

• From Cristine Andrews, a descendent of the McCredie family through one of George & Susan’s daughters who married into the Shorter family, we have received some very interesting memorabilia including an original invitation and programme for the Official Opening of the Linnwood Museum by the Historical Society back in September 1985, together with some copies of family photos and early photos of the historic Harborne home in Parramatta (but still in Holroyd LGA). The Shorter family owned this lovely home for quite a few years from 1905.  Harborne is now used as a Bed & Breakfast and regularly wins awards in Holroyd Council’s Heritage Awards scheme. (All information received from Cristine is in a folder which I will pass around for you to have a look at.)
• Christine McKenna has kindly donated the lovely nightgown you can see on one of our mannequins. Christine has also donated a young girl’s linen pinafore, a child’s voile dress, a baby’s dress with petticoat, and a longer baby’s dress that still has its English shop label inside.
• Adriana de Haas has donated the vintage lawnmower/roller, a very colourful crocheted cover – I’m sure a lot of you will remember this design!, a crocheted bottle holder (we think), 2 large embroidered runners, an embroidered guest towel and a collection of vintage greeting and birthday cards.
• From Doris Kilvington (nee Grinyer and Hansen) we have received her gorgeous 1946 wedding gown, when she married Neville Hansen, together with some photos of the occasion, a small kerosene night light, a ‘Sydney Mail’ newspaper of 30th March 1927, a trivet for an iron, 2 packets of Uptons Marvel soap powder, a packet of Pearson’s Sand Soap, a Voitlander Vito B 35mm Camera, with case and instruction book, and sundry other bits, and this lovely cane hall table which belonged to her mother so we are estimating it is circa 1900.
• Now, on to the next collection kindly donated by Pauline Macbeth. There really are too many items to list individually and some of these items we will keep for display, some we will be able to use in the kitchen and some will unfortunately have to be disposed of, but there are still a lot of items of interest such as – the lovely fur jacket on the 3rd mannequin, another faux fur stole, two bed jackets, sets of silver fish knives & forks, butter & jam utensils and a carving fork, some books, a box of photo corners, an old wooden cigar box, an absolutely beautiful large table cloth, assorted cut glass dressing table pieces, assorted crockery, and remember these (and how many of you had one??) a Walkabout hair dryer – and many, many more small items too numerous to list. Actually, just as a matter of interest, I checked on the internet trying to date some dinner plates and found that the markings on the base, date them to being made between 1891-1906.

December saw us having our final public meeting for the year and we had an extremely interesting speaker from Youth off the Streets, and the committee would like to look at discussing with them some sort of fundraising function, possibly as part of one of our open days. A truly inspiring organisation and with the history of Linnwood being what it is, we feel it would be a worthwhile cause to support. We will keep you posted on that one.

We had our annual Christmas dinner that evening and it went off very well with approximately 50 members in attendance. And it was so much easier to organise, having it after a public meeting instead of an open day – we all actually lasted the distance!

As far as I am aware we did not have too much trouble on the site over the long break – other than a visit from the Fire Brigade when some workers in Pioneers set off the alarms with dust while they were working, and we appear to have had another break-in down at McCredie Cottage. We are still waiting for some of the maintenance work to be completed – the roof tiles on Faulds House have still not been replaced and the gutters on Linnwood itself are still waiting to be cleaned out – both of these were to have been completed by the end of last year. The wheels seem to turn very slowly….  There is also still no word – at least to us – about any further developments regarding the future of the rear of the property. As mentioned in my last report, we have more bookings now for the use of the house and we have written to the Heritage Office asking for some monetary consideration from the rent collected for the time some of the committee members have to spend opening and closing the house to accommodate these bookings.

We hope to have a working bee here, probably on Sunday 2nd or Sunday 16th March, to clean and clean out the rooms on the southern side of the house.  The date will be finalised by the time the minutes go out, so if you can spare us a couple of hours to help on the day, we would really appreciate it. We would like to make the room at lot more ‘user friendly’ as it is a good sized room and on open days sometimes we really need the space! With the weather the way it has been, and the rapid growth of the gardens, maybe we could make it a combined working bee in the garden as well. Just a thought.

With the house being used by more groups and some of them being quite large, we will really have to purchase more chairs as soon as possible, so we will be using the donation from the Lace Guild for this, together with some of our own money. Pioneers have also indicated that they have some chairs that they are willing to donate to us, so we should be collecting them this week. Granville Historical Society has also been in touch– they have to move from their current home and have offered to donate their display stands to us. We also hope to collect those this week, so they will be available for our next open day.  So, we thank both groups very much for their kind offers of donations – it all certainly helps.

You will see by our current calendar of events that we have some interesting events, public speakers and exhibits coming up for the year. March will see a collection of telephones and The Traditional Tools Group will be here with a display of traditional woodworking tools and will also be demonstrating their uses and have also offered to do appraisals if anyone would like to bring in their own tools.

The Cavalcade of Fashion will be back in April with a demonstration of women’s clothing from the 1870-1890 era. There will be a cost for admission for this one as the Cavalcade charge us – but we will be including one of our wonderful afternoon teas, so it will be well worth the price!

The calendar will be updated regularly as we confirm more exhibitors for each open day, and it promises to be a most interesting year.

Before I finish, I have a query for those of you who have lived in the area a long time. If anyone knows where ‘Barsony Ceramics’ was in Guildford, could you let me know? They were quite well known for making the Black Lady Lamps from the mid 1950’s to the ‘70’s and were based in Guildford. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I think that’s about it from me, thank you once again for your support and we look forward to seeing you at some of our functions throughout the year. Please stay and enjoy the talk by our guest speakers Kevin Ryan and Peter McGann and then have some afternoon tea with us afterwards.

Thank you.

Treasurer’s Report
John McKenna gave the financial report for December 2007 and January 2008, and noted that both months were fairly quiet, due to the holiday season.

                                                                       December 2007             January 2008

             Income                                                             $957.40                           $35.00
             Expenditure                                                  $1,404.39                         $261.00

Major expenditure included $1,039.19 to replace merchandise, $265.20 for the Christmas party, and $141 for RAHS membership.  Income emanated from tours and the Christmas party.  We also received a donation of $350 from the Australian Lace Guild and we will put this amount towards purchase of more chairs.

We received $174.02 interest on our interest bearing deposit, with a balance at 31 January 2008 of $15,685.32.  Our bank account balance at 31 January 2008 is $15,988.44.

General Business
Vanessa McNeil proposed that we should write a letter to Holroyd City Council, seeking their help in publicising events being held at Linnwood.  Previously the Council had given great assistance in this regard.  The Friends have expended money in publicising Open House days via letterbox drops, but this does not seem to be very successful.  Vanessa feels we should remind Council that Linnwood is an asset to the community and should be more prominent in advertising our events.  Helen Olde agreed to write a letter to Council.

Guest Speakers
John McKenna then introduced Peter McGann, President of the Probus Club at Guildford, and also Kevin Ryan, former President of the Guildford Rotary Club and a member of the Guildford Probus Club.  (We thank Peter and Kevin for letting your Secretary quote from their presentation notes and other Probus material.)

What is Probus?  Probus is an association of retired and semi-retired people who join together in clubs, the basic purpose of which is to provide regular opportunities for them to keep their minds active, expand their interests and to enjoy the fellowship of new friends.  Probus Clubs are formed and sponsored by local Rotary Clubs, but on formation are self-governing.  Guildford Rotary Club formed Guildford Probus Club.  There are men’s clubs, ladies clubs and combined clubs.  The word “Probus” is an amalgam of the words “Professional” and “Business”.

Probus originated in the United Kingdom in 1965 and is now a worldwide movement.  The first Probus Club in Australia was formed in 1976, and there are 597 Probus Clubs in New South Wales.  The Probus Club of Guildford has just under 100 members.  Around 65-70 members attend each meeting, which is held on the first Thursday of each month (except January) at the Guildford Leagues Club - in the Linnwood Room - at 1.00pm.  Some members choose to have lunch at the Club prior to the meeting (cost between $8.50-$11.50 depending on whether you are a member of the Guildford Leagues Club).  (Holroyd Probus Club meets on the second Tuesday of every month at the Merrylands Bowling Club.)

Clubs are simple in structure and free from the constraints and obligations of service clubs.  They do not support any companies, they are not allowed to fund-raise, they do not have a political agenda, they are entirely secular.  Probus is purely a social club - to meet people and form long lasting friendships.

Activities fall into two parts:

• A formal meeting on a set day each month.  This comprises a club business session, a coffee/tea break followed by a guest speaker and/or discussion on a topic of mutual interest.
• Outings between meetings to places or organisations of interest to members - theatre, social outings, sporting occasions, general interest.  These may include overnight trips, tours or walks.

Probus has organised many interesting outings, including a tour of Linnwood (of course!), Mays Hill Cemetery at night, a trip to Maitland Gaol, Floriade in Canberra, Broken Hill by train, a week in Brisbane, Hunter Valley wine tasting, Kangaroo Valley, and Adelaide.  Some upcoming trips include Kurrajong Radio Museum, Garden Island, and 5 nights in Bundaberg.

To join Probus is inexpensive - a once-only $20 joining fee, and a $20 annual membership fee.  Members receive six magazines per year and members are covered by insurance while attending or participating in a recognised Probus activity, including meetings.

Contact details for Guildford Probus Club: Peter McGann - President:  (02) 4733 4178; Helen Reardon - Secretary:  9631 7241

Contact details for Probus South Pacific, located at Level 2, Suite 2B, 43 Hunter Street, Parramatta, 2124:
Toll Free within Australia - 1800 630488

Or go to the Probus website  -  www.probus.com.au

Peter and Kevin have invited the Friends of Linnwood to be their guests at a Guildford Probus meeting, and have suggested Thursday 3rd April.  Please call Dorothy on 9632 9203 or Helen on 9807 3224 if you would like to attend so that we can let Probus know how many people to expect for catering purposes.

Next Meeting
The next Public Meeting of the Friends of Linnwood will be held on Sunday 20 April 2008.  Barry Bullivant from the Granville Historical Society will speak on “The Way We Were - A Walk Down Memory Lane”.

Raffle
Peter McGann drew the raffle, which was won by Margaret McKenzie.

Meeting Close
There being no further business, the meeting closed at 3.25pm