Number of members: 77
President: Sharon Beattie
Secretary: Narelle Williams
Women’s Contact: Trish Willoughby
Our meetings: We alternate our meetings between Ariah Park, which is 35km from Temora, Temora Public School and the Temora Bowling Club, and meet once a month.
Our community: Our population in Temora is 4000 in town and 7000 in the shire, with Ariah Park also a part of our shire. Coolamon is roughly 65km away which often proves prohibitive to Coolamon members attending meetings.
It’s a farming area and we’ve had a bit of rain in the past week that might give the farmer’s some hope for the season. Temora and Ariah Park as well as Coolamon are rich sporting towns but Temora has teams in all the football codes as well as many other sports.
Our state member is Stephanie Cook of Temora and we are in the federal electorate of Riverina, held by the Nationals’ Michael McCormack. He hasn’t been around as much now that he is Deputy Leader.
The teachers in the area are wide-ranging in age.
Our focus: At the moment it is funding and dealing with some inequities in our school, Temora High.
The best thing in the past few years was the induction of Ian Corby as a Life Member of our Association. Federation Senior Associate Maree O’Halloran was in town for a Teachers Mutual Bank and legal function and awarded Ian with his pin.
Our attendance is always fairly low but we try to spice it up with food competitions between Temora Public, Ariah Park and Temora High. We have seen attendance pick up with interest in the schools funding battle campaign and certain issues within the schools in our association.
We have had Federation executives out for dinners in the past; Bob Lipscombe was the last one to attend apart from the visit by Maree, who also attended a dinner out here when she was President.
We see the Federation as a mostly Sydney-based organisation and it would be good to get some people out here for our meetings at an area event at Wagga Wagga or another town in the area.