On Tuesday 16 June at The Temora Arts Centre, the TADVAC Pottery group hosted an unusual fundraiser. Select a hand-made pot of your choice, select a hot soup of your choice plus bread roll and enjoy a chat. All for $20. What a bargain. Further, your support contributes toward a new pottery kiln. What a winer all round. Attendance was beyond expectation. The Old Scout Hall filled, and the meeting room catered for the overflow. Officially, the numbers in attendance were 80-90, but I am quite sure the numbers were closer to 100. Some people arrived around midday, stayed awhile and left. Others replaced them. The scheduled time of midday to 2pm rocked with busy-ness. Such a successful event cannot overlook a huge thank you to those who worked so hard behind the scenes. The major organisers were potters and part-time soup makers Melissa Hunter and Judy Gorton. Of the 106 soup pots thrown, (quite a number churned out by Judy), pots were donated by local potters, the Temora Pottery Group, Faye Baun and John and Donna Boulton. The soup pots ranged from colourful, to selectively coloured, to a repeated colour pattern, to plain. Heaps of choice. Soup makers were Judy Gorton, Sue James, Wendy and Martin Stephens and Melissa Hunter. The delicious home-made soups ranged from pumpkin, lamb and vegetables, lentil and chicken. Tracy Heinrich donated lamb shanks for the soup. Thanks also to TADVAC’s Susie Atkinson and Bob Brabin for keeping the overall busy-ness flowing smoothly both before and during the event. Bob was great at getting chairs reallocated to meet the influx of people. And the result? $1875 raised for the new kiln. An unbelievable result, helped by some community members purchasing more than one soup bowl. Not a bad effort for little Temora group still in its public infancy. And perhaps the greatest success of the day was not simply the funds raised, but the opportunity for people to gather, share a light lunch and support a local creative group. The steady stream of visitors demonstrated the strong community spirit that continues to thrive in Temora.
