General News
5 August, 2025
Red Cross members mark five decades
Since they began working with the Maryborough Red Cross, Gwenda Hill and Margaret Finch have achieved a century of work between them.
Recently marking 50 years of membership with the Maryborough Red Cross, both have similar recounts of joining the unit in the mid 70s, hoping to extend on their previous experiences.
“I joined because I had four children and I was on kindergarten committees, school committees, church committees and it was something I wanted for myself,” Ms Finch said.
At the same time, Ms Hill had previous experience with blood donations.
“I came from Melbourne back in 1974. I had been a blood donor in Melbourne, but I didn’t know anything about the Red Cross. When I came up here, they were just starting a new Red Cross unit here in Maryborough,” she said.
“When we started up 50 years ago, the old Red Cross unit here in Maryborough got to the stage where age had caught up with them, but they didn’t want to see Red Cross go, so people from Melbourne came up and had a meeting to see what the interest was in the town.
“From that, we became the new group.”
Now with five decades of experience each, the pair have watched numerous changes both locally and throughout the organisation over time.
“Things that we used to do, we are no longer allowed to do. You have to be in a certain department to fulfil certain jobs now,” Ms Finch said.
“Fundraising is huge these days, particularly due to the separation of services we have. And our unit is basically the fundraising unit. People really support us.”
Ms Hill also acknowledged these changes.
“There are many things that we just don’t do anymore. When Red Cross first started up here, we had blood bank, but only as giving people cups of tea. Later we were taught how to take the blood. But now the blood bank is based in Melbourne,” she said.
“We used to have a picture library in the nursing home and hospital. They would be done throughout the year. But they actually don’t do it now. It would be nice to do those sorts of things again. I thought that was really good. A lot of people are so pleased to see someone in those moments.
“We all used to do Red Cross calling, now that is all very restricted. The town used to get divided up, we would get one or two streets and knock on the doors. We also used to run patient transport out of our own cars. Red Cross is also more corporate these days.”
The pair’s roles have covered almost all departments with the Red Cross. Ms Finch’s work has included driving patient transport and catering at local evacuation centres. Ms Hill has worked as a Trauma Teddy coordinator, a vital part of Maryborough Red Cross’ work.
Both agree that much of their most memorable call outs were during local emergencies in recent decades.
“I remember when we had the big fires from Avoca to Carisbrook. We had never done any training for when there was a fire, the town hall we were in had no facilities, but we had to cater for people evacuating,” Ms Finch said.
“We catered for nearly a fortnight. People were coming off the street, and we had to feed them all. We didn’t get any sleep on nights we were on duty.
“When the floods happened in Carisbrook, I was out there at six in the morning and was told Carisbrook was getting evacuated, so I was sent to the football ground to set up there. After that, some of us had to go around to house visits for those still in Carisbrook. That was pretty traumatic, especially seeing people you knew.”
The pair were honoured for their years of service at the Maryborough Red Cross’ recent AGM, where they spoke on their many years of work.
“It was great because there are a lot of members who didn’t know what it was like when we started,” Ms Finch said.
Despite both marking a significant milestone recently, neither plan to end their work with the Maryborough Red Cross in the near future, citing friendship as the reason it has lasted this long.
“A lot of it has been friendship, you get to make a lot of friends and it is something we really love doing,” Ms Finch said.