“She said, ‘I’m looking at starting a group, would you be interested?’ and I was the extra number they needed to join,” Ms Walker said.

And so the Bordescros SCA, a ‘shire’ within the Society for Creative Anachronism, was born.

“The actual organisation itself started back in 1964 at Berkeley University in California,” Ms Walker said.

“It started out with someone’s medieval birthday party and they wanted to keep going. Now it’s a world-wide organisation and we belong to the Kingdom of Lochac comprising Australia and New Zealand.”

The group’s biggest event is the ‘Border War’ at Wagga, where contests like archery, rapier fencing and bard songs from the period 600 to 1600 take place. Ms Walker, now president, said the group had grown from a handful of members to 37.

“We’ve got one member from Narrandera, quite a few in Wagga, some from Tarcutta and also down to Beechworth,” she said.

“I enjoy seeing people coming in who are a bit shy and gaining a whole lot of skills and confidence.

“I have had a fascination with history for as long as I can remember and this is a way of keeping the old skills alive.”

The Bordescros group will celebrate 15 years as a shire on Saturday afternoon at the Albury-Wodonga Sportfishing Club in Albury from 2pm.

There will be combat tournaments, displays of arts and sciences and games in the afternoon open to the public, with members to tuck into a pot luck feast of medieval food afterwards.