Williamstown’s All Aboard Club celebrates its 80th birthday on July 4.
The All Aboard Club, which had various branches, was started by radio and TV broadcaster Doug Elliot in 1937 to raise money for charity and to send food parcels to Australian soldiers overseas.
President Wendy Taylor said the Williamstown club, which has 87 members, is the last still standing.
“We’re a social club and we work for charity,” she said. “It was more or less, you help anybody out. To go back through the old minutes is very interesting … there might have been a chap who couldn’t pay for his medication and somebody would find out about it so they paid the bill.
“Since 1991, [Williamstown Hospital records show] we’ve given $103,720 to the hospital.”
Secretary Marni Brunt said the club was initially formed to help the war effort.
“When it first started, it was more to help people in Williamstown have somewhere to go,” she said.
“If the ship was in Williamstown and it was going to England, they would take down stuff and give it to the sailors to take home.”
The club’s motto is: ‘All aboard for you and me’. Members meet in the Williamstown Town Hall chamber and for social afternoons.
For inquiries, call Wendy Taylor on 0421747040 or Marni Brunt on 0405338483.
“And there were lots of other groups right through Melbourne and the country in those days, in 1937.
Goya Dmytryshchak
