OLD age and shifts in society have seen one of Albury’s oldest women’s groups fold.
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The Albury VIEW Club began in 1973 and at its peak had 130 members, but that figure is now 17 and their average age is close to 80.
“We’re all very disappointed, no way did we want to fold but it’s just inevitable,” treasurer Pat Gee said.
The club’s last president Margaret McDonald added: “It’s just a matter of age and the times.”
Life has radically altered from when The Smith Family charity’s George Forbes created the organisation which stood for Voice, Interests and Education of Women.
“In 1960, when he started, women weren’t allowed to go into a hotel alone and married women weren’t really allowed to work, it was discouraged,” Wodonga VIEW club secretary Barb Stieber said.
Mrs Gee said: “If you went to work people thought your husband couldn’t keep you, it’s a different world today.”
That shift has been integral to the Albury group, which once had a sister evening club, terminating.
“The young ones are now all working,” Mrs McDonald said.
“They’ve got to pay their mortgages and if they do any voluntary work they do it for their schools and the older ones are babysitting.”
Mrs McDonald was running the pharmacy at Tallangatta when she and a group of friends were encouraged to join VIEW in 1974.
A swirl of social activities, ranging from garden parties to fashion parades to dinner dances, followed.
There were even visits to Beechworth prison for concerts.
The group initially met at the Cedars reception centre in Olive Street, but it has been convening at the SS and A for the past 30 years.
As numbers have dwindled the members have gone from massing at an upstairs room to meeting in the bistro and it was there they held their farewell last Thursday.
Two tables were booked and lamb shanks consumed along with wine and coffee.
National VIEW club councillor Barbara Gullotta travelled from Leeton along with Gail Tooth from Wagga.
Mrs Gullotta had previously been on hand when Corowa’s club closed last year and she expects the trend to continue.
Though, Wodonga’s VIEW club still has 34 members and Thurgoona’s group has 19, having scored five newcomers through Albury’s closure.
It means money will continue to be raised to go towards helping struggling students who may not otherwise be able to afford education costs.
Mrs McDonald said VIEW clubs were growing in beachside areas of northern NSW and the Sunshine Coast, a reflection of the greying demographics of those locations.