Text: John McGregor and Janet Chambers
Image: Janet Chambers
In the early 1950s, Peggy Cossick (whose husband Arthur owned and operated the Crafers grocery store) convened a committee of women whose daughters attended Crafers School with a view to forming a club to give the girls activities to do on Saturday afternoons.
It became known as the Crafers Girls Club, and it met in the Crafers Institute. Because the clientele were Crafers School students, the girls all came from Crafers or Stirling.
Some of the local names associated with the club included Cossick, Healy, Sharrad, Jeffries, McGregor, Howard, Moulds, Kuhlman and Smart.
Activities included various sports and games, and practising and performing concerts. One well received concert was a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. At some stage it was decided to form a netball team (called basketball in those days), to play in the local competition. This unwittingly lead to the demise of the club, because the girls who lived in Stirling eventually preferred to play for Stirling, because it meant less travelling for them, and as the girls aged, their interests changed and the parents who had been organisers also had nothing to tie them to the club.
After the Girls Club closed the Institute was used for a time for Girl Guides and Brownies.
Do you have memories of or were you or a member of your family a part of this club? Contact us at mldhsgateways@mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au or drop into the History Centre at the Coventry Library, 63 Mount Barker Road, Stirling.
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