By KATH GANNAWAY
YARRA Glen and District Living and Learning Centre is celebrating its 30th birthday with a community celebration on Saturday, but the seeds were sown long before 1985.
The very beginnings of what has become a community centre of exactly what the name implies – living and learning – started in the lounge room of Iris Caddy in the late 1960s.
Iris and her husband moved to Dixons Creek and she started going to Yoga classes in Ringwood.
When other local women wanted to do the classes, but didn’t want to travel at night, Iris became the tutor – in her lounge room.
Denise Miller, a physical education teacher at Healesville High School came on the scene and phys-ed was added to the ‘curriculum’.
It was time to find a home, and their first thought was a room behind the Anglican Church.
“Yoga was foreign to the church in those days and they wouldn’t have a bar of the idea,” said Iris who is still very much a part of the centre.
They ran classes in an old shop in the main street, and Healesville Council then provided a TAFE-built building at the railway station and in 1984 it was decided to move the building up to its permanent home alongside the tennis courts in Anzac Avenue.
It provided clubrooms for the tennis club, and enabled the group to offer more classes – win-win.
The council wanted a more formal arrangement, so, in 1985, the group became incorporated as the Yarra Glen and District Living and Learning Centre.
Iris said everything, including a creche for the littlies, was done on a voluntary basis in the very early days when classes included soap-making, tai-chi, tye-dying, art classes and sewing.
Co-ordinator Debra Traill is a relative new-comer to the centre, but says the sense of community and exchange of skills and ideas that started in Iris’s lounge room and developed over the years, is still at the heart of today’s centre.
While the majority of tutors are now paid, there are still some who volunteer.
Yoga and Stretch and Strength (a modern take on phys-ed), Dance NIA Technique, Meditation and Valley Voices singing group are among the regular classes, and there are all types of workshops run throughout the year.
The celebrations on Saturday 14 February will offer a taste of what the centre offers, with cooking demonstrations and tastings, NIA classes, instrumental string demonstration, gardening activities, artist at work and the singing group.
There will be a barbecue, kids activities and the opportunity to chat with neighbouring groups including the tennis club, Men’s Shed, CFA and with Leading Senior Constable Linda Hancock who is the district Community Crime Prevention Officer.
To mark the occasion Iris will demonstrate just how beneficial the Stretch and Strength classes have been when she plants a commemorative tree.
The birthday will be an opportunity for everyone and anyone who has been involved with the centre over the years to catch up and mark a significant milestone in the continuing life of the Yarra Glen and District Living and Learning Centre.
Iris said the centre had been a learning and meeting place for many people.
“I think it has been a huge benefit to lots of people, especially in the early days before there was child care in Yarra Glen, for the mums at home with their children,” she said.
She said it was, and still is, a place where friendships are made.
“It’s been a joy to me. I’ve made lots of friends and I have kept healthy and fit.
“I’m thrilled to see it grow the way it has.”
The birthday celebrations will run from 10am to 2pm at the centre.
