Fresh-faced and bushy-tailed, ready to have fun outdoors. My guess of the average age? Around 25 years perhaps? Skewed a little by three children in the picture but I don’t think the median differs much from the average.
And what did this bunch of smiling, happy, enthusiastic people do in 1990? The paper reports that the newly formed South Gippsland Walking and Adventure Club met on the 5th of August to enjoy the Lyrebird Walk near Mirboo North, but leaves us readers in the year 2021 with multiple questions.
Did these enthusiastic faces smile at a smartphone camera? Was their photograph submitted to the newspaper by email? Did they traipse around the forest guided by software called ‘apps’, installed on tiny assemblies of electronic hardware called ‘devices’? Did they rely on global positioning systems (GPS) to avoid bumping into wallabies? These people look fit -- but did they wear a 'Fitbit'TM? Obviously, the answer to all these questions is ‘no’ but illustrates how much change has occurred in the last three decades. Not just technological change, mind you.
Don’t fret. I won’t embark now on all-encompassing reflections about the technological and societal changes around the world in the last three decades. Nor will I attempt the impossible task of identifying all the change that has occurred within our club. The only constant is change, as Heraclitus’ ironic paradox goes… It is, for example, quite obvious to any reader of the archived club newsletters and photographs that we are getting older (please pardon my honesty), that there are no more children participating in our activities, and that few people of working age are club members. But it is not necessary to elaborate on this today. It is what it is.
Instead, I want to point out something that is a constant, not a change (Heraclitus, please forgive me). Something that we apparently have in common with those smiling happy faces of 30 years ago. What I want to point out is, quite simply, the enormous enthusiasm about spending time with each other – ideally out there somewhere in nature. It is this enthusiasm that I observe whenever club members greet one another at the start of events, when we walk or cycle or paddle, when we make fun of each other during our activities, when we laugh with rather than about each other, when we help each other clear up at the end.
Smiling, happy, enthusiastic faces. That is what we saw again throughout the 26 November 2021 celebration of the South Gippsland Walking and Adventure Club’s 30th anniversary, which had been postponed multiple times due to the Covid pandemic.
Our celebrations comprised of the Lyrebird Walk in two versions, with 25 members attempting to retrace the steps of the first club walk as faithfully as possible while four others took a route more commonly used today. Yet another four members joined us for the subsequent culinary festivities at ‘The Grain Store’, beautifully set up by Judy Speedy and Kate Senko and generously endowed by multiple contributors.
Hence, a total of 33 club members participated today and thus a very similar number to the happy smiling faces in the old photograph…….. but that brings us to a little mystery!
The club’s first event report, written by Rob James and published in the inaugural ‘Footprints’-edition of September 1990, speaks of only “eight adults and 2 children” undertaking the 5th of August 1990 walk. That number differs greatly from the 28 smiling, happy, enthusiastic faces in the old newspaper photo. And only few faces can be identified by current members of the club. Further, none of the participants of today’s anniversary celebrations – not even our longest-standing-club-member (Roz) – participated in the walk thirty years ago. Hence, it is unclear when, where and in what context that newspaper picture was taken and who the smiling happy people are!
However, there is something we can be certain about: The enthusiasm that is so palpable in that black-and-white photograph has survived more than thirty years of change. Happy multi-decadal anniversary everyone!
Frithjof Arp