Welcome to the Moonie Branch!
The ICPA Moonie Branch was formed on 18th April, 1972; only a year after the ICPA was formed. The first executive was President: Mr Tim Brown, Secretary/Treasurer: Mrs Dawn Brown.
Our small original group worked hard to educate the local community about the workings of the ICPA & soon membership increased to 20 families.
A priority on the agenda of the ICPA at this time was to lobby the government for Living Away From Home Allowances. As the nearest secondary school to Moonie was 80km away in Tara all children in the area had to go to boarding school, hostels, or private board to obtain their secondary education.
The Moonie Branch has held many fundraisers and raffles over the years. These have included catering at clearing sales, hosting a Halley’s Comet Dinner Dance, “Buzz ’n the Blues” jazz concert in a local bulk shed, wine tasting & orders, Melbourne Cup Luncheons, & various interesting raffles. (Prizes have included anything from swags & vouchers to personal house cleaners & catered dinner parties!)
Money raised from these events has contributed to Federal & State Councils to continue their excellent lobbying, to send delegates to both State & Federal conferences, to make small donations to the local school, to fund an “Encouragement Award” for good citizenship at Moonie State School & assist student teachers experience “bush” pracs at small schools.
Moonie Branch was very proud to have a member, Di Angel on State Council for the first time from 1997-99, then Di Selby from 2006 until 2012. We also have a state webmaster in Lynelle Urquhart, who began in 2011 and continues to enjoy pretending that being webmaster is a tricky & time consuming job so she can keep enjoying doing it!
In 2000 the State Conference was held in Chinchilla. Moonie Branch was involved with four other local branches to host this conference. All members contributed to make this a very successful event. A financial distribution to all branches at the end of the conference enabled us to donate a trophy cabinet to the Moonie state School. We were very pleased to be one of three branches running the 2012 state conference in Goondiwindi, the other 2 convening branches are Kindon and Westmar-Inglestone. It was a very successful conference, both in attendance and financially, enabling Moonie branch to donate to Moonie State School again.
At its peak the enrolment of members for the Moonie Branch was 32 families in 1991-93. We remain strong!
