Community is one of the overarching important things in my life, and perhaps in your life too. The idea of ‘community’ is about, being there and helping others, getting together to get things done, enjoying good times, cleaning up messes when things go wrong.
A good community will be made up of many people who are always happy to get involved. Volunteers, and organisations and businesses to help those volunteers get their volunteer work done, whatever it is.
I live near a small town Mallala that has an aging population, but with many, many volunteers. These people are members of various groups, filling committees and giving their best, with no expectation of anything, beyond good feelings for how it makes them fee, when they are doing their volunteer duties.
Mallala has various community groups, all of them ‘watched over’ by Council, with a very light hand most of the time. This is a relatively new thing, having Council closely involved, but it seems to go well enough.
We have a Museum in Mallala, that is very well regarded, and has many bus tours coming along to see the great collection they’ve put together there. Our Bowling Club does well, when events are held there, the various other sports seem to be well run too. When the community gets organised, they can go on, doing bigger and better things, or doing the small things exceptionally well. That is my town, that is the Mallala community!
Gawler is my community too. The writing group I’m involved in meets in a hotel in Gawler every Thursday. This hotel, the Prince Albert Hotel, is also home to the monthly poetry ready we hold on the last Sunday of every month, and we sometimes use the Gawler Community House to record pod casts to the Gawler Broadcasting Association, where we talk about what we’ve been doing, and other interesting things in relation to writing.
I feel at home in Gawler too, it’s good to be with people who know me and want to be friends with me! So I have a few places near where I live, where I feel I can get on with doing the things that interest me the most, and where my abilities are recognised as being useful to my community. These are surely necessary things, these are needed things, to help a person feel like they are worthy members of the community.
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 