Woden Seniors Inc

50 years of providing Community Service to the over-50s of Canberra

By

Fortnightly News 21/2/2020

Advance Care Planning

Woden Seniors has organised for the Advance Care Planning Team to give a presentation at the Club on Friday 27 March at 11.00 in the Sitting Room. Jenny Gregory and Sue Allen will organise some light refreshments for this. If you are interested to attend please let Polly know.

Bridge Classes

Classes for improving bridge players will be held on Mondays at 1.30 pm. Any interested beginners should contact Cathie Padovan on 62313334.

Woden Seniors Website

For full details of all that is offered at Woden Seniors such as the list of activities and the timetable check out the Club’s website at www.wodenseniors.org.au.

Also if if you are wanting to go back and check on something in a previous issue the Fortnightly News can be found on the Internet site.

2020 Seniors Week Forum

The Public Trustee and Guardian will present two Forums during Seniors Week on the importance of having a valid and up-to-date Will and Enduring Power of Attorney. The Public Trustee and Guardian offer a free professionally drafted Will for anybody aged 60 years and older.

Date: Tuesday 24th March 2020

Time: 9:30am – 12:00pm

Venue: Dickson Tradesman Union Club (The Tradies)

Address: 2 Badham Street, Dickson

Date: Wednesday 25th March 2020

Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Venue: Town Centre Vikings

Address: Cnr Athllon Dr & Rowland Rees Crescent, Greenway

• • Lucky door prizes

• • Free PTG Will voucher for all attendees up to 60 years of age.

• • Light refreshment provided

Bookings essential Call 62079800 or ptg_marketing

We will also be at the Senior Week Expo at Exhibition Park on Thursday 26th March from 10:00am – 3:00pm on Site 16.

SPIRAL PROGRAM – meets at the Uniting Church, Curtin at 10am on Thursdays

My name is Brett Yeats, and on behalf of all of us who put this community group together, I welcome you to the first Spiral program of 2020. As you will see in a minute, we are off to a great start next Thursday, February 13.

Many of you know what to expect but before I tell you about the treats we have in front of us, I’ll remind those who are less familiar with Spiral about who we are and what we do. We are a group of people who have been meeting in the hall at the St James Uniting Church for 50 years. There is no religious nature to our meetings and our members come from varied backgrounds, occupations and origins. We are mostly retired, aged from our 60s to our 90s but we won’t turn you away if you are younger or older. There are good numbers of both men and women. We do ask that you make a gold coin donation when you attend. There are no membership fees, no forms to fill in. You can come to as many or as few of our entertainments-and-morning-teas as you like, and you don’t have to book in.

We are a volunteer-run not-for-profit group largely funded by the Canberra Southern Cross Club’s Community Rewards scheme (check out this link). Whether you attend Spiral or not, any CSCC member can support us by nominating us to receive 7.5% of your food and/ or beverage expenditure.

St James is at 40 Gillies Street in Curtin. This link will give you directions from your place to the large carpark if you have transport. There is a bus stop at the Curtin shops directly opposite.

We ask you to arrive by 10.00 am and we aim to start our ‘entertainment’ by 10.10. The entertainment is either a guest speaker, sometimes in a conversation format, or a musical performance. We aim to serve a fresh, mainly home-made, morning tea at 11.00 (sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later) and we aim to finish at midday.

We welcome new faces and I ask you to share this program with anyone you think might be interested. If you have any questions you can contact Brett Yeats via email at yeatsb or on 0406 37 9119 or 6281 7684. Or you could contact Angelika Dunker at angelika.dunker or on 0491 120 556 or 6281 4023.

Now, here is what has been booked for February and March.

February 27 Jan Harris

Jan, Canberra born-and-bred, spent 30+ years in the Australian Public Service. She was the first ever female deputy secretary of Treasury in its 112-year history. Highlights in her career include representing Treasury at the OECD delegation in Paris, sitting in Cabinet discussing the Global Financial Crisis and being a finalist in the 2015 Telstra ACT Business Women’s Awards. She also had a senior role in PM&C. Since 2016, Jan has been an Independent Director of the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.

March 5 Bruce Chapman AM “The Economic Value of Don Bradman and Reflections of a Lifetime Bradman Tragic”.

Bruce is an ANU economist and academic known for being the architect of the HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) loan system. In 2001, he became a Member of the Order of Australia “for service to the development of Australian economic, labour market and social policy”. I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying Bruce’s economic lectures which are very entertaining, I can’t wait to see how he addresses this subject.

March 12 Dame Annette King New Zealand High Commissioner

Here is a first – we’ve never been joined by a Dame before. This Dame has taken on a new challenge. Dame Annette is NZ’s longest serving female MP. Following more than 30 years in parliament, she has thrown herself into her new life as High Commissioner in Canberra with energy and enthusiasm.