Club History
By original Founding members: Hank and Teresa Deierkauf
Well. . . . This is how it all - very simply - happened, some 35 years ago.
As new members of the WA Lapidary and Rockhunting Club, Theresia and I paid weekly visits to their clubrooms in Ewell Street in Fremantle to attend meetings, workshop sessions, talks etc. But when this club decided to move its headquarters from Fremantle to Rivervale, the travel distance from Rockingham became a bit too long and the hours of coming home at night became too late, especially in view of our early morning working hours in our business.
So - in August 1978 we put an advert in our local paper to find out if anybody would be interested in forming a new club in Rockingham. We received 5 letters. We visited each of them and invited them to our home, encouraging them to bring a friend. Together, with other people we talked into coming as well, we suddenly had a house full of well over 20 people. This inaugural meeting was held at the end of September 1978. The little advert we placed in the local paper and the full list of these participants at the clubs first meeting can still be found on the first page in the Club’s first Minute book.
1978 Original advertisement.
It was remarkable that there was so much interest in Rockingham for our type of activity and it soon became apparent we would outgrow the limited space in our house and workshop. We were told by one on the then leaders of the Police Boys Club, that they would be vacating their clubrooms in one of four huts on the oval next to Oleander Drive (Point Peron). He advised us to apply for the use of their hut for our club a.s.a.p. With the help of our local Councillor John Buns, Shire Engineer Ian Edge, the then CEO, the late Mr Cuthberton, we were given the use of half of hut no. 2, later enlarged to the whole hut. The other 3 huts were all in very bad shape and we were allowed to virtually demolish No. 4 Hut and use as much of its material as we needed for our new clubrooms. A lot of hard work was done by all enthusiastic members to make this hut fit to our needs, and all through the years this enthusiasm has always come to the fore in busy bees etc. This self-help enthusiasm has stood us in good stead in later years when we needed assistance from the council, builders and the service industry, and we are proud of our members' attitude by young and old.
Over the years the club flourished and was always at full to capacity. Starting from scratch, members even had to bring their own chairs; but now we have a full array of nearly all possible equipment.
Our first rock hunt was to Fields Find on a very hot Easter long weekend. We had a very long convoy of cars holding 43 members (including kids) with pet dogs, cats, even guinea pigs and a huge marquee which was borrowed from the local Boy Scouts. Our rock hunt leader was Terry Ovens. Our first trip outside WA was in 1980, all the way to Agate Creek in Queensland, over Laverton, Ayres Rock, Alice Springs, up to the Harts Ranges, to Urandangie, Mt Isa, Cloncurry, and Agate Creek. From Agate Creek each member went home their own way. What a trip that was!
By now, 25 years later we could only say that our members, either individually or in club
combinations would have visited about every possible finding place in WA of rocks and minerals and to many, many similar places beyond our borders to the "Eastern States"
We joined the Lapidary Association of WA (LAWA) and had our first exhibition in Flinders Hall. We demonstrated our craft in many shopping centres and surrounding markets. We sold our club made lapidary wares and jewellery at fairs, school fetes and organized cake stalls (at Frank and Renee's Service Station), held lamington drives, public open days, charity events at Nursing homes and care centres. We visited mining centres at Greenbushes, Collie, Mukinbudin, Jarrahdale and Capel. We saw numerous mineral shows and private and shire mineral collections down south. We participated in parades with a large Papier-Mache dinosaur and on several occasions followed behind the Rockingham City Pipe Band. We had our AGM every year in September, and apart from our regular December Christmas parties, Jacqueline Higgins introduced our "Christmas in July". She also taught a lot of members the art of jewellery making which eventually developed into an important part of our activities. This led to "Silver Smithing" with the help of Muriel Roper, Jean Millar, Marion Murray and others like Ivor and Sylvia Strong.
Members of the Kalamunda Lapidary Club showed us how to make pewter findings in Cuttlefish moulds and to do soap stone carvings - others showed us how to cut, shape and polish precious opal. A Queensland couple spent a few days teaching our members to make gemstone findings with silver wire – we had guest speakers come in (mostly geologists), to talk about their experiences in South Africa, America, England and Queensland - Jacqueline told us about the use of medicines. We had lectures on soap making, man made crystal forming, soldering, and even some lessons in art from a regional artist, Dorothy Lillie. We had some involvement in the Easter "Gemboree (the national Gem fest held every year by AFLACA) and lets not forget the numerous field trips to Ravensthorpe, Norseman, Spargoville, Coolgardie, Koolyanobbing, Meekatharra Milgun, Wed's Creek Station, Nullagine, Wave Hill (NT), The Pilbara, Wyloo, and of course Fields Find, etc! Every one of these field trips was very successful, relaxing and laid back.
We even had a German couple Ingo and Christa Freitag as members, who specially flew over twice to participate in our rock hunts. We also spent many pleasant and informative morning or afternoon tea on club organized visits to members' private collections. Some of our members followed special courses at Rockingham TAFE in Geology 1, Geology 11 and Prospecting.
The Mines Department sent us pamphlets and booklets on Gem-Finding places in WA and we made visits to the CSIRO to see the huge vacuum microscope.
Frank Phillips, through all the years has been our most stalwart Rock hunting leader with a vast knowledge of places to go and minerals to find, always making sure that the Club visited places with the acknowledgement of their owner or lease holders, and with a vast array of good connections in this field
Over the years we also enjoyed a very good relationship with the large rock and mineral dealer, the Socklich Family, who always supported us (and still do), when we needed them. Our club now has the benefit of a small faceting section in conjunction with the Faceting Guild in Perth. Highlights of our activities were always our Annual Exhibition. We first held them at Flinders Hall during the height of the Tourist Season (January - Australia Day), then later in the Dog Club Hall next door and now in our own club premises, often necessitating members to sleep over night amongst the display boxes.
We were pretty lucky when our President at that time, Colleen Murray, found an unused
Sports change room building on Bungaree Oval, Rockingham, next to the Dog Club. Once more we had the full co-operation of the Shire Council (Ken Needham especially), not only in acquiring this building, but also in putting on a brand new roof and a complete modification of the inside to meet our needs. Right from the start it was decided to establish a Club Constitution and to have this accepted by law and thus change us to an “Incorporated Body”. This would ensure that no individual member of the club could be sued for damages in case of accidents etc, and to minimize tax liabilities in case of club profits. One of the clauses in the Constitution states, that every member is entitled to a monthly Newsletter, so that they can be informed of the Club Activities, even if they do not regularly attend its meetings. To many members this newsletter is an important part of Club life. We are pleased that this tradition is strictly being observed. We also instituted Life membership and a Sponsor Board
We would not like to finish this resume of the club without the acknowledgement of the many enthusiastic club members who were with us since the beginning and have passed away. We remember: Harold Russell, Harold Dearlove, Stan Cross, Greg & Willie Backer, Jerry Ackerman, Norm & Jean Harrington, Big‘Jo" Zaremba, John Henneberry, Mick Wynn, John Riemsma, Shergofer & Mick Brindle, Hildegarde Nold, Ron Gath and Noel Scarfe,
From the fullness of our hearts we thank all Presidents, Vice Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers, Workshop Managers, Rock hunt leaders, Committee Members and hardworking Club members for the above memories.
May the club continue to thrive in the next 35 years and beyond and have their own fond memories to look back on.
Hank and Theresia Deierkauf
