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EVENTS

Lunch at Caloundra RSL - January 3rd 2011

The Queensland Manx Society kicked off the New Year in fine style when nearly thirty members, friends and relatives turned out to meet Dubai Manx President Gil Costain-Salway and her husband Alex at an impromptu lunch at Caloundra. Gil and Alex were visiting relatives on the Sunshine Coast and took the opportunity to renew contact with their QMS friends.

The occasion provided many photo opportunities and, in particular, a group photo was taken of Presidents past and present whose collective involvement and contributions to the QMS and the Dubai Manx Society span many decades.

(See Photo Gallery)

Christmas Lunch  - December 11th, 2010

The Arana Hills Leagues Club was the venue for our Christmas Party this year and our thanks to Lillian Smith for making the club  facilities available to us through her membership. Much hard work and organisation went into ensuring the proceedings went off without a hitch and over forty-five members and guests had a great time with plenty of traditional Christmas fare, good company and Manx fellowship.

Michelle and Simon Huggins entertained us with a number of crowd-pleasing favourites such as 'If I Loved You' from Carousel, 'I Could Have Danced all Night' from My Fair Lady, 'The Sentry's Song' from Gilbert and Sullivan as well as a Sea Shanty from Simon mentioning the Manx ship 'Ben My Chree', much to the audience's delight.

Santa, a.k.a. Doug Quayle, made a timely arrival from his toy workshop in the frozen wastes of Bribie Island and was ably assisted by his happy and efficient elf, Ebony, in distributing presents to members and guests.

(See Photo Gallery)

Glen Innes Celtic Festival - April 29th to May 2nd, 2010

The Year of the Manx

There was a lot of activity from the Queensland Manx Society before and during this annual Celtic festival as it was the Year of the Manx. It was an opportunity to let the world know there is more to the Isle of Man than Manx cats and the three-legged symbol.

Many people were involved in the organisation of this Festival which has become a great gathering place for Celtic groups from throughout Australia and overseas. We trust their efforts have been duly recognised elsewhere. We would like to acknowledge  the efforts of our own QMS people for all they have done to contribute to the success of the Festival. We were sorry that our Secretary, Trevor, could not make it to Glen Innes after all his hard work. We wish him a speedy recovery from his illness.

Some of our Queensland members elected to drive down to Glen Innes before the official opening at 3.00 pm on Friday 30th April so that they could join in the many activities in and around Glen Innes. These included the Deputy Mayor’s luncheon at the Land of the Beardies House which was attended by President Val.

Val also sang the Manx and Australian National Anthems at the Opening Ceremony outside the Glen Innes Town Hall.

Some of us, who were also members of the Celtic Connection, sang at a Manx Concert in the evening at the same venue. The Celtic Connection, a Brisbane Community Choir, had been invited to sing, together with national and international artists, at Glen Innes during the Festival. The choir also performed to an appreciative audience at the Australian Standing Stones on Saturday and Sunday and at the Triquetra Awards Dinner on Saturday evening. They had a good repertoire of Manx songs that contributed to the Manx cultural focus of the weekend and even braved the cold weather and dim light to sing a couple of Manx hymns at the Dawn Service on Saturday morning.

The Queensland Manx Society members, wearing their smart blue Manx sweaters, marched at the Festival Parade on Saturday morning which finished with the Manx Flag-raising Ceremony in Grey Street.

The QMS joined the NSW Manx Society for the Dawn Service on Tynwald Hill at the Standing Stones where President Val gave a short speech and Tony recited the Lord’s Prayer in Manx Gaelic.

As usual, the Queensland Manx Society and the NSW Manx Society met for dinner on Sunday evening and the Queenslanders also had the opportunity to meet special guests, the Earl and Countess of Dunmore, at a joint dinner on Friday evening before the Manx Concert.

John Corlett gave entertaining talks on the Manx TT on Saturday and Sunday in the Workshop Tent but couldn’t show his exciting videos of the latest races on the Isle of Man because of the sunlight streaming into the fairly basic tent/shelter used as a crude venue. Similarly, Tony Ashworth’s slide presentations on Manx Heritage were abandoned in favour of an interactive chat with verbal descriptions of the various slides. Despite these setbacks, some awareness was created of what the Isle of Man is currently famous for and people left with a better understanding of the Isle of Man’s history and heritage.

(See the Photo Gallery for pics)

Lunch - March 27th 2010

This was the second members’ meeting for the year and we had 25 people present.  President Val welcomed us all and gave a special welcome to Joy and Colin Trethway from the Cornish Society, Valma, a friend of Norma Conwell and Barbara Poole, Secretary of the Celtic Connection Choir. It was also wonderful to see a  few members who have been absent for some time, back among us.  We sang the National Anthems, accompanied on the piano by Barbara Poole from the Celtic Connection Choir, who was standing in for both Vic Riddel and June Caine, both sadly  absent.  I think that is the first time in the History of the Manx Society [that I can remember anyway] that we have not had a pianist at our meetings.  A special thanks goes out to Barbara for generously giving of her time to help us out.

Secretary Trevor read the apologies from Ten members unable to attend.

Norma Conwell showed us wonderful photos of her visit to the Isle of Man late last year.  We were thankful to Tony Ashworth who provided the projector and screen so we could all view the photos so well.

Tony Ashworth said grace in Manx and English before we visited the buffet to enjoy a wonderful lunch.

After Lunch Trevor showed photos of his Shimmin family with some wonderful old  photos  which were taken in 1855 and 1875.  They included photos which taken of both his Grandfathers, one of his Grandfather and Grandmother on their wedding day, then later with their first two children.  The photos followed the trail up to recent times with his daughter’s wedding.  Not only were they photographic memories of Trevor’s family, they were of interest just to see the fashions of the day and the result of many years of painstaking work which I am sure his grandchildren will appreciate in the future.

Meeting Dates 2011