By KATH GANNAWAY
THE opening of the new Narbethong Hall in November 2011 was an amazing feat for the Narbethong community and for Jennifer Wood.
“This building is such a wonderful legacy from what was one of our darkest moments,” Ms Wood said at the opening.
On Monday, the Narbethong mother of two was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday List for service to her local community.
Ms Wood has been a member of the Narbethong Public Hall Committee since 2003. As treasurer she took a leading role in ensuring that the hall, which was burnt down on Black Saturday, was rebuilt.
It was acknowledged, as the $1.6 million hall rose out of the ashes of Black Saturday, that the Narbethong Hall Committee and particularly Jennifer Wood, had taken control of their own destiny to garner corporate support and obtain funds from the Bushfire Relief Fund to build what is recognised as an iconic public building.
She was also a member of the Marysville and Triangle Community Recovery Committee for three years, including Vice-Chair in 2009, the Narbethong Reserve Project Control Group and the Narbethong Progress Association.
Ms Wood, a social worker, moved to Narbethong in 1996 to be with partner Mark Kaempkes.
She said she has always been community minded and signed on when a call went out for people to join the hall committee.
“It was one of those crisis points that come in small communities where if you don’t get a committee, whatever organisation or club it is won’t be able to keep going.
“Someone nominated me for treasurer … I guess because I do the books for my partner’s small business,” she said last week as she digested, and kept secret, the news of her Queen’s Birthday honour.
It is an understatement to say that the fires had a big impact on the small Narbethong community, but as the shock of loss lifted, many in the community focused on recovery.
A big part of that was to get a hall back as a community meeting place and as a symbol of belief in the future.
When governments turned a deaf ear on calls to rebuild the hall, Ms Wood looked to the corporate sector who responded unstintingly, with generosity and encouragement.
Ms Wood was working for Yarra Valley Community Health and as welfare co-ordinator at Buxton Primary School.
“In both professional roles I had things I needed to be doing post fire,” she said adding that the hall was also taking a lot of time and energy.
“Because of the enormity of what had happened up here, as I was going about my counselling work, and some of that with fire-affected people, I increasingly felt torn between work life and volunteer work that needed doing up here,” she explained.
With her first son Jack just 15 months old when the fires hit, and another on the way, she pulled back from her paid work.
“Like a lot of women, I was juggling part-time work, family and volunteer work and I don’t think I’m unusual in that,” she said.
She was also dealing with a diagnosis of breast cancer six months after Black Saturday, and was undergoing treatment for most of the time she was working on the hall project.
Ms Wood says she took the view that she would keep up with the voluntary work as long as she could.
“It’s true I had a lot on my plate and probably it was a good thing to be able to be busy and have things that were positive to work on,” she said.
To add to the levels of complexity, she was pregnant with the couple’s second son Connor, now three.
The commitment of time and energy in her role on the Recovery Committee was intense with fortnightly meetings running concurrently with the hall effort.
“A lot of the voluntary work I’ve done was with small children in tow, literally, including visits to Spring Street,” she says of the negotiations with government departments.
She said that the official opening of the hall was a triumph.
“It was the culmination of so much work and struggle, and it was an exciting day, not only for me, but for all the committee,” she said.
“I don’t think we’ve had many more positive days since the fire and it was a great atmosphere to be part of.”
Ms Wood said the Queen’s Birthday award was both a surprise, and a great honour, which recognised everyone who worked on the hall project.
