The Voice takes a look at our best Friday Features published in 2023.
Church conservation group Save St George’s committee member Di Rule is helping bring back the once popular St George’s Flower Show to Queenscliff after more than 50 years. She speaks with Jena Carr about the show’s history and the church’s significance to the community.
It has been more than 50 years since the St George’s Flower Show filled Queenscliff with vibrant colours and sweet floral scents.
Before the show was discontinued in the early 1970s, it had been a regular event on Queenscliff’s calendar dating back to 1905.
Save St George’s committee member Di Rule said she remembered what the shows were like and that they had helped create a strong bond with her family.
“It was always exciting,” she said.
“My grandfather would grow pansies, and then the next year, he’d be mad keen on growing pelargoniums because it was such an unusual word.
“He would put them all together for the best pelargonium display and he always involved me in gardening things like that, so I’ve always enjoyed gardening.”
Di is now leading the charge in helping bring the show back to St George’s Church on Saturday, October 14, from 9am to 5pm, after finding an old flyer from 1940.
“We found a copy of the show’s entry form or the category list for the entries in the church archives,” she said.
“The Queenscliff Historical Museum (QHM) then contacted me and said they had found a silver goblet dated 1908 that was awarded to a Miss Jessie Clark.
“She was able to keep this goblet because she’d won the best exhibitor of the show three years in a row and that means it goes back to 1905, which was really exciting.
“The cup is going to be on display on Saturday, so it’s got a table set up to put it on and they’re going to have a box to make it precious.”
According to a report from The Sentinel of October 31, 1908, the cup was presented by George Hitchcock and was later donated to the QHM by Miss Clark’s son, the late Canon Donald Johnson.
Di said she was looking forward to featuring the silver cup at the show and that the event had already generated much community support and interest.
“Many people who remember it from the 60s stop me and chat about it…and I think those who are interested in flowers have certainly found out about it,” she said.
“I think it will be in my mind reminiscing of those times, and I think people are looking for that pleasant feeling, and I think tweaking those childhood memories does it.
“The schools are going to encourage their students to enter, and the Queenscliff Primary School I know has a garden, and they’re going to bring entries from their school garden.
“The residents from Arcare Point Lonsdale have been planning what they’re going to display, and they’re going to bring a bus along on Saturday for residents who can come along.
“It has filtered through to other areas of the Bellarine because I know the Bellarine Agricultural Society are bringing along entries and a flower group over at Drysdale are also bringing entries.”
Di said she believed the show would be a great opportunity for people to explore how the region’s gardens and St George’s Church in Queenscliff had changed over the years.
“Our gardens have changed because the entries that they had in the brochure that we found were a little bit different,” she said.
“Especially the Point Lonsdale area where everyone seems to have native gardens, so we’ve had to add indigenous categories to our entry list to accommodate that.
“St. George’s is such a beautiful old church and building…built in 1863 and is an integral part of Queenscliff’s history.
“It has been closed for quite a few years as it was used by the previous Vicar’s (a member of the church body) wife, so it was shut up and no one could go in.
“I think many people will be going into it for the first time and be quite surprised at the beautiful rooms in the old school hall.
“The architecture and everything in those buildings is just so beautiful and we want people to realise that it’s there and available for the community.”
The main role of the Save St George’s church conservation group is to help raise money and awareness for the church. Di said she was excited to see the return of the flower show.
“The church requires work to maintain it, and the show is a means of encouraging the community to remember about it and have a look,” she said.
“We will have church tours on the day so people can look through and see the gorgeous stained-glass windows.
“We’re (the group) getting ourselves organised, but we’re a group of women, there’s about five of us on the committee, who have not really done anything like this before, so we’re learning as we go.”
Di said everyone was invited to submit a floral arrangement, their best three camellias, a spectacular bunch of spinach, or their other plants to be judged at the Flower Show.
There will also be artisan stalls, Devonshire teas (a type of afternoon tea), a sausage sizzle, and wreath-making demonstrations from 9am to 5pm on Saturday, October 14, at St George’s Old School Hall in Queenscliff.
