Diary of a Local – Woodlands

Some people wait for community to find them. Margie does the opposite. She feels her way into a new place, learns its stories, gathers its people, writes things down, connects one person to another and before long, a neighbourhood feels more like home.

When Margie moved with her family to Woodlands in 2009, she did what she seems to do everywhere she goes: she got involved.

“I really love whatever community I live in,” she says. “I just get involved in the community. Growing up in Ballarat, it was a very community-minded city. You learn to be part of a big community, and then you try to recreate that wherever you go.”

One of her biggest contributions to Woodlands was helping create a local history book. A colourful, carefully collected record of the suburb’s people, schools, lake, clubs, memories and beginnings.

At first, the idea was simple. Maybe it would just be a written document.

“But nobody reads those,” Margie laughs. “They say thank you and stick it on the shelf.”

So the project grew.

With no real budget, Margie and the Woodlands Doubleview Progress Association wrote letters to local businesses. Sponsors came on board. Residents donated $100 or $200. People sent in old photos. The City of Stirling provided historical images. They used the funds to engage a local printing company to do the layout, cover design and printing.

The book cost about $35 per copy to produce, but thanks to sponsorship, they were able to sell it for $15.

“I only ordered 100 copies at first,” Margie says. “I didn’t know if anyone would want it.”

In the end, they printed and sold 850 copies.

The book is now out of print, but copies live on in local libraries, the City of Stirling history collection, and the State Library. For Margie, that matters deeply. It means Woodlands has kept a piece of itself.

The stories came from everywhere: long-time residents, school histories, old photographs, clubs, families, lake memories and people who had watched Woodlands grow from farmland into a suburb.

“They all knew each other in the early days,” she says. “They all moved in together. It was farmland and then it was housing. Suddenly they needed schools, footpaths, a shopping centre.”

For Margie, local history is not just dates and buildings. It is people.

That is why she interviewed older residents while their memories were still there.

“Somebody needed to do these recordings while these people were still here,” she says.

Her role as secretary of the Woodlands Doubleview Progress Association also placed her close to local issues – from the lake, to parks, to community facilities, to conversations with councillors and the City of Stirling.

Margie speaks with affection about the people who show up.

“There are lots of really good people,” she says.

One example is the local newsagent, Trupti, who sold the Woodlands book through her shop while still learning how to run her new business.

“She is just a beautiful community person,” Margie says. “Her willingness to help still gives me goosebumps.”

Another example is the Woodlands sporting community, including the softball and tee-ball groups, who supported the book and offered help during COVID.

“They said, if people need shopping or driving or anything, we will help. We’ve got an army of people.”

Margie is also an artist. After retirement, she took up watercolour painting and became involved with the Watercolour Society. She had a painting in the Fremantle exhibition and is preparing work for another exhibition at City Farm.

“I’d never picked up a paintbrush in my life until I retired,” she says.

When I told her I used to paint in my 20s but had stopped, she did not let me stay sad for long.

“You’ll pick it up again,” she said. “When the kids are a bit older.”

That is very Margie: encouraging, practical and quietly certain that people can find their way back to the things they love.

Our conversation was full of small coincidences. UWA. Project management. Agriculture. Watercolour. Local history. Buy Nothing. Even a piece of art from her house had somehow found its way into mine.

“We were meant to meet,” she says, laughing. “We were absolutely meant to meet.”

And maybe that is the point of Margie’s story.

Community is not magic. It is made through letters, phone calls, meetings, books, committees, paintings, libraries, shared memories, small donations, local shops, old photos and people who care enough to do the work.

Margie does not wait to be accepted by a community.

She engages with it.

She contributes.

And wherever she goes, she leaves the place more connected than she found it.

Disclaimer: Diary of a Local entries are contributed by members of the public and should not be taken to represent the views of the City of Stirling.