Page 1071 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The Ticehurst home was for many years a social hub for Labor Party members in Belconnen, a place where lifelong friendships were not only made but sustained. The Ticehurst lounge room was also a place where ideas, even strange ideas, could be entertained. It was in the Ticehurst lounge room over a drink or two that Frank Cassidy heard a friend of the family, a man who went by the unusual name of Chick Henry, first admit to his dream of holding a Canberra car show. She probably cannot take single-handed credit for Summernats, but Pat was definitely a woman who got things done.
If there was party fundraising to be done, Pat was in there doing it. If there was a community event to be supported, like the Belconnen Fun Run, Pat was there, not running but running the show—often in the cold, sometimes in the wet, always with good humour—a job which is more tiring and takes far more skill than putting one foot in front of another.
These are some of the identities of Pat Ticehurst, the identities I did not know enough about until last Friday. The Pat Ticehurst I knew, who was known to many in this building, was loved and will be desperately missed. I offer my deepest condolences to Noel, to Pat’s brothers, Michael and Brian, to her sisters, Denise and Helen, to her daughters, Kim and Lisa, and their children. This Assembly shares, in some small part, in your loss.
National Folk Festival
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.58): I wish to endorse what the Chief Minister just said. I share his loss and the loss of the community of Canberra. I want to speak about another Canberra icon, but this one is an event. The National Folk Festival has been occurring in Canberra now for—I am not sure how long it has been located primarily in Canberra. I was lucky enough to attend one day of the festival over Easter, Good Friday.
It is such an important event that it deserves to be mentioned here. It is one that does not have the bells and whistles perhaps of Summernats, but it draws crowds of thousands every year, many of them from the Canberra community but other people coming from all over Australia to attend. The National Folk Festival is always at the one venue. Each year it takes a theme of one of the states of the commonwealth. This year it took the state of Queensland and invited musicians from there to come and play at the festival.
I commend the organisers of the National Folk Festival. Anyone who has been there knows that now it runs as smoothly as silk. Over the years there have been problems with some of the venues being too small, crowded and therefore a great disappointment. But the organisers have dealt with that by scheduling people a number of times, so that if you miss them on one day you catch them on the next. They now have rather a large number of large marquees as well as all the venues that already exist at the National Exhibition Centre.
Some of the performers who had been coming there for years and who liked the more informal atmosphere of the early days complained, but there is probably no going back now. It is relatively costly to enter the Folk Festival, but you can get around this by becoming a volunteer. Canberra has an army of volunteers at the folk festival. And it is
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .