Australian Red Cross Official Opening of Southport Premises

Australian Red Cross, Queensland Director, Mr Garry Page and Chair of the Queensland Divisional Advisory Board, Ms Helen Clarke; award recipients; staff and volunteers.

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands around Southport, the Yugumbeh people, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also acknowledge any First Nations people with us today, and especially thank Uncle John Graham for his warm and generous Welcome to Country.

As Patron of Australian Red Cross in Queensland, I was delighted to receive the invitation to attend the dedication of this fantastic new facility and to have the honour of declaring it officially open.

The building is a fitting testament to the dedication and perseverance of the Southport Branch of the Queensland Red Cross Society over the past 84 years and I thank and congratulate everyone who helped bring this project to fruition.

The Red Cross has been an integral part of this community since the third of October 1939. On that afternoon, upwards of a hundred women and a few men attended a public meeting in the Diggers’ Memorial Hall with a view to establishing a branch of the Society in Southport.

The meeting was addressed by the redoubtable Mrs R.M. Atkinson, the Red Cross Society’s State Organiser. She had already established branches in communities from Mareeba to Monto, and her rousing speech that day in the Diggers’ Memorial Hall inspired no fewer than 75 women to join the new branch on the spot.

“The best way to keep the chin up”, she said, “is to know what to do in case of emergency and, to use the words of one of our leaders, we should all ‘keep calm and dig’”.

The meeting was a resounding success and I have been very pleased to discover that Mrs Atkinson was strongly supported in her efforts by the Queensland Governor at that time, Sir Leslie Wilson, and his wife, Lady Winifred.

The Red Cross had first been established in Australia in 1914, but in the aftermath of the First World War and the Great Depression, the society had ceased to function in Queensland.

It was Lady Winifred who embraced the challenge of reviving it in 1937, particularly in regional and rural centres, and Sir Leslie himself was one of an astonishing 900 people in Brisbane who offered their services as volunteers for the society in 1939.

Volunteering remains the heart of the Red Cross and I thank the many volunteers here today for their ongoing commitment. I also publicly acknowledge and commend the recipients of the two awards which I will help present shortly.

I am now very pleased to present the Australian Red Cross, Queensland with a certificate of Vice-Regal patronage, and to declare this new Red Cross facility officially open.