Family Fun Day to celebrate official opening
Fred Beel trains a new generation of young origami boat builders
The mood was buoyant as Port Hedland Yacht Club, in conjunction with BHP Billiton Iron Ore, held a Family Fun Day last weekend to celebrate its official opening by Minister for Regional Development Brendan Grylls.
Early risers began their Saturday morning with a wander around outdoor markets at the club and the first 300 through the doors received a commemorative hat.
Sellers were offering everything from knitted beanies and pottery to handmade jewellery and aromatic candles.
Laurie Mirco was selling his unique array of plane mobiles made entirely of aluminium drink cans, but denied he consumes any of the alcohol to generate the empties.
“If I did the drinking, I wouldn’t be able to make the planes,” he laughed.
Food stalls and hot fish and chips were sizzling and Port Hedland Yacht Club Commodore Darryl Brown even helped cook bacon and egg burgers.
A major attraction of the family day was the “have a try” sailing down by the shore.
Back up at the club, artist David Hooper joined other volunteers to do face painting and Hedland Arts Council’s Fred Beel introduced a new generation of boat builders to the art of the origami sailboat.
Kids were able to float back and forth between bouncy castle, giant dino-slide and, for the white water inspired, a rodeo style surfboard which challenged the best junior surfers.
“Shucker to the Stars”, celebrity chef Andy Grljusich, had everyone downing oysters from noon and, with charismatic pull, also introduced novice shuckers to the art of slurping.
The sweet sounds of Julie Berry and guitarist Leon Tioke wafted during the afternoon and fireworks popped a cork on the evening.
Commodore Brown enjoyed the day’s festivities and indicated that a very important part of building the capabilities of the club would be to create a permanent channel of water.
He said he would love to hear from civil contractors around town who would be interested in volunteering some time and labour to clear the channel.
“It’s a major job to get that sand out of here,” the Commodore said.
With enough machinery, he envisages it might take between four and six days to dredge.
“It would give us 90 per cent use,” he said and, in doing so, would allow the club to maintain the channel thereafter.
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