The Following Years

We went into our second year a much stronger and wiser club, with Keith Mathiesen who is still a member of this club, as our President.

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Our First Changeover Charter President Ray Crompton to Incoming President Keith Mathiesen-June 1980

Keith, like Ray, had a tremendous year with many of the projects planned in the first year coming to their fruition. The Bellbowrie Lions Park commenced to take shape with regular working bees each month. The Leukemia House project at Herston was finally passed through council and worked started on what was to become the biggest undertaking of our club ever. Some 3000 man-hours were spent on this project over the period of two years.

As the years rolled on into the 80's, we undertook numerous major and minor projects consisting of fundraising and community themes. During the 81/82 year with Lindsay Stewart at the President's helm, we fund raised some $4000-00 to donate to the Bellbowrie Sports and Recreation Association for them to commence pouring the concrete slab for what is now a magnificent Community and Sports centre.

A major fund raising and extremely popular project was the Kangaroo Gully Stampede. This mini type show day was held on private property owned by a local character called Bill Kaye on Kangaroo Gully Road. Bill was a real go-getter and had many friends in the recreational horse show area. We transformed this property for a whole weekend each year into a show ring with some 35 horse events and numerous other displays. Every imaginable display, food type, rides, stalls, parachute drops, competitions, bands, greasy pole, etc etc; we had it all. The idea was that any local school, club, sporting association could have a stall or other fund raising theme with that group keeping their funds raised. The community came out in droves to support us; it was hard work, but gee we had fun!

Entertainment at Kangaroo Gully Stampede-1984

At one Stampede, we had the Army's Light Horse Regiment which, unbeknown to one of the Lions organisers who booked the army, did not consist of horses at all but huge army tanks. Anyway these four army troopers turned up this one Stampede with a couple of massive army personnel carriers which were capable of holding some 20 or so persons. They were to set up a static display along with some other army regalia. These army guys really started enjoying themselves and were convinced, by a few of us, that they should to show what these tanks are capable of doing in the vacant property next door. Well that got the army boys into the spirit of the day. With two of them in each carrier, they throttled around the paddock at full speed completely tearing up the muddy terrain and decimating the nice little creek that ran through the property. It was a spectacular display and the crowd just loved it. After this they were then persuaded to give free rides across the same terrain, filling the inside of the personnel carriers with up to 20 or so kids, mums and dads for the rest of the afternoon. The only person who did not enjoy the action was the owner of the property. Whoops! The army boys finally got away at about 9 o'clock that night when we closed the bar. They deserved the free drinks! They had to get extra drivers from the barracks to come and drive the trucks back. Needless to say, they army declined to send their personnel carriers the next year. The Stampede continued for many years and later became known as the Moggill Show.

Toilet Block at Kangaroo Gully Stampede-1985

Over the years we have purchased and erected three of the bus shelters along Moggill Rd and the one on Colledge Rd in Karana Downs.

Erection of Bus Shelter on Moggill Road

We financed and built the Kholo Community Centre in Svenson's Rd, again with the dedication of our member Jack Watson. This centre is used everyday for various uses including local parish church services each Sunday.

Another very worthwhile Australian Lions project was the purchasing of a Lions Hearing dog. This involved prepaying for a dog at the Lions Hearing Dog Centre in Adelaide to train in becoming alert to the various everyday sounds in life that a deaf person finds they cannot relate to, such as a telephone ring, a doorknock or bell, a kettle boiling and even a strange intruder in a house. The dog undergoes specific one on one training to alert its deaf owner of these sounds.

Winifred Cox was the very appreciative recipient of our dog and up to only 2 years ago was still living with Winifred in Caloundra, giving Winifred some 14 years of dedicated company.

One thing our club is remembered for is the Fairy Floss we made for many years at the various school fetes etc. Not only did we make the best floss but we were also the slowest. We seemed to always have a lineup of kids waiting for their fairy floss. This was made from our Lions van which was originally given to us as a written off Coke trailer. After many working bees and a complete stripping of the rusted wreck, we managed to produce the trailer in a refurbished state for road registration. Since then it has been used for many things and is still part of our equipment today. One particular incident was when we were asked to serve fairy floss at the Pullenvale school fete. Lions Jack Schmidt and Lindsay Stewart decided that year they needed a marketing edge to sell the floss so they decided to make blue floss rather than the standard pink. Unknown to them just how much blue food colouring would be required, they put in a little more than usual for the first test run, mainly to get a good deep rich blue colour. Their first customer, who had patiently waited for some time with her mother, was a sweet little girl about 6 years old in a beautiful all white lace party dress. About 15 minutes later both mother and daughter returned to show us how the little girl's dress had somehow turned blue all down the front. It was an extremely embarrassing situation with the mother almost ramming down our throats the remains and the stick that was left. We very quickly decided to go back to the pink recipe!

Serving Fairy Floss from the Van

Of all the projects in the 80’s one that touched most Lions was the visit to Expo 88. We were approached by the headmaster of New Farm Primary School who spoke to us at one of our Dinner Meetings and related how his area had two types of social classes; one very poor and one rich. The poor in the area lived in the old workers cottages, many broken marriages and deserted wives with children. As Brisbane was in the hype of Expo, he saw that many of the children at the school would not have the opportunity, through poverty, to go to Expo 88. We as a club arranged with the Expo organisers for tickets for a day and accompanied about 14 children from the New Farm area. These kids had a great time and were just amazed at the enormity of the Expo. On picking up and dropping these children at their homes, we understood just what the headmaster had related to us at our Dinner Meeting. Each of our members had different experiences but in one instance when a 8 year old child was picked up the parents told our Lion member how appreciative they were for what we were doing and how it gave them the opportunity to go down to the Clubs at Tweed Heads to play the pokies all day, yet they could not afford to go to Expo!

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