Taupō's Tauhara Club leaves a legacy

Tauhara Women's Luncheon Club members Cherry Dickie and Pamela Grayling see the club's book Legacy Letters for the first time. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

The Tauhara Women’s Luncheon Club are a modest bunch, not inclined to self-promotion or pulling focus, but behind the pleasant conviviality of our charming lunching ladies lies a vast library of lived experience.

Which is why we have published our own book, Legacy Letters. A beautiful hardback full of amusing anecdotes, deeply moving and very personal revelations, gorgeous artwork, and photos capturing special moments in time.

It was a year in the making, and no small achievement to get these naturally reticent women to consider that they might have something in their lives worth mentioning, let alone worth anybody reading about. But what a legacy they have delivered!

The Tauhara Women’s Luncheon Club was initiated in 1969 by a local, Rosemary Sanderson. She and other local women were keen to keep their fingers on the pulse of business and community and create a space where they could enjoy respite from the home and where they could come together for intelligent, educational and social exchange. After all, these women had been breaking glass ceilings before glass ceilings even existed, and they weren’t done yet.

Thus the club began, with a membership of around 50 women meeting monthly in the Arabian Coffee Lounge, above the New South Wales Bank in Horomatangi St.

The meeting structure was the same as it is at present: we gather just before 11am, grab a coffee and enjoy a quick catch-up, then settle in for about an hour’s presentation from an invited guest speaker.

Topics have ranged from staving off dementia, to worm farms, geothermal innovation, horse racing, our innovative kiwi hatchery, space junk, our geographic fault lines and many other local and international going concerns.

Then, at the end of all that stimulation, there’s the much-anticipated luncheon. Only now we enjoy our get-togethers at the leafy and serene Wairakei Resort.

Sadly, there are no original members in the club any more and their histories have been lost to us. That is reason the Tauhara Legacy Letters came to be. A couple of our members were struck by the realisation that each time the club lost a member due to their moving, or passing away, their stories went with them, unknown and unrecorded.

From there, the club decided to get some of those memories now and put them together in our own book so we leave a legacy for all who contributed, for our families, our friends, our community and can be an inspiration for all generations.

And we are proud to say that’s exactly what we did!

Legacy Letters – a collection of memories by a group of awe-inspiring women.