Celebrating Our Pioneer Past

Our evening as part of the South Australian History Festival for May was a great success. The hall was decorated with photos of our district, a display by the Collectables Guild and a display by Red Cross. The Yankalilla & District Historical Society had a display of books and the Books and Words Group displayed information on artists and writers of our district.

Guests were supplied with badges identifying heritage of English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish which was a great talking point and songs which originated in those areas were played during the evening.

The selection of food was researched to reflect history with ploughman’s platter entrée, representing late 1800’s, pie floater as truly SA icon registered by SA National Trust and fruit crumble popularised during World War II years.

Dr Margaret Morgan spoke about the new book “Old Normanville” recently launched and provided us with some funny and some sad stories of the past. Lorraine McLoughlin discussed artists and writers in the district and their connection with the history of the area and George Adler of the “Collectables” showed an interesting selection from his collection.

During the evening there were breaks for joining in singing around the piano which was a reflection on entertainment of the past. Our group with Anne Petch on the piano, Graham McAinsh on the drums and Kim Mitchell on the saxophone played for us and. we thank them for their great music which was very much enjoyed. Guests left with comments like “it has been a different but most enjoyable evening”