History of Feathers
Mission Statement
To create a Club with a safe environment, where women can meet together on a regular basis.
The Origin Of Feathers
How else does a business, project or even a club become reality without firstly being a need in the first instance? As the adage says “necessity is the mother of invention”
There we were, a group of women enjoying a party at a friend’s house in 1991. It was early in the new year (January if I remember) and it was getting late and we were lamenting the fact that there was absolutely no place exclusively for gay women on the Gold Coast.
Oh yes, a couple of venues in Brisbane existed but that was quite a drive and worse still to drive home at some ungodly hour. A mixed gay bar on the coast, but mostly men there.
This discussion went on for quite some time and as my partner and I had recently come from Sydney to live on the Gold Coast, we had the benefit of often going to gay venues in Sydney. In fact one of my friends had actually been a founding member of “Clover”, a womens' club in Sydney.
Those people who know me well, also know that I am not a person who can tolerate moaners or people who have too much to say and no intention of doing anything to remedy the situation, so after sitting and listening to “I wish we had somewhere to go” etc. I then said, “As nobody else is going to do it for us then I suggest that we do something about it ourselves, if you really want a venue to go to”. Silence!!!
Then I added that this was not the place to discuss the finer points, so who would be willing to attend a meeting next week and we discuss getting something up and running.
Five people jumped at the idea and so the next Thursday we met at Boonaroo Park at Trish and June’s house. There was Annette C. Trish & June and Heather (nickname Feathers) and myself Iris C.
Our first meeting went very well and we made a list of the various things we needed to do;
- Mission statement
- Give ourselves a name
- Get a committee started
- Get a postbox
- Put some money in the pool to finance these things
- Get a constitution
- Find a suitable venue
With that we pulled out $20 each which gave us the grand total of $100 and we each gave ourselves a membership number.
Next a name; as we had all originally come from Sydney we knew about the club “Clover” and that it had been successfully running for well over sixteen years. We then started to think up a few names for our Club and Top Hat was one of the ones which was high on the list.
As I had stated, my partner’s name was Heather but as her nieces and nephews could not pronounce her name she was always known to her family as Aunty Feathers. This nickname “Feathers” had been adopted by myself and our close friends and so as we were agonizing over a name somebody said FEATHERS hey that would make a good name for the club.
Then we voted on the three names which we had come up with and FEATHERS won hands down.
At the next meeting a week later we had our post box registered and had the application to open a bank account. As we needed minutes of a meeting to finalise this we appointed somebody to take minutes. Me!
At this meeting we decided that to continue on we would have to set up a steering committee until we were finalised and ready to run our first dance. We combined all our knowledge of people we knew and selected a list of those women with different skills to handle different jobs.
We needed; somebody who could handle the music, somebody who could handle food & catering,women who knew a lot of other women and women who had time to source venues etc, so the list went on in this fashion.
We approached these women on the list and they were all eager to join our committee so eventually we had a total of eleven eager women.
The steering committee was disbanded and we became the proper Feathers’ committee and I was elected President by the now bigger membership of eleven members!
With this group of people we all worked diligently for the next couple of months in setting up a constitution which was based on Clover’s constitution, only changing the relevant information to say Feathers. We had the music happening on a grand scale thanks to Shea, Toni and Ann on the catering and then we all spread out to find the right venue. This was eventually found by Jan and Carol who worked with the Pelermans’ group and we had a date set to open at Pelerlman’s Nerang in May.
We printed fliers and handed them out and word of mouth went around like gossip and so by the opening night it was the most talked about event on the Gold Coast for women.
It went off like clockwork, with over 150 women attending.
Good music by Shae, finger food by Pelermans, a great atmosphere all contributed to the night being a huge success. We handed out membership forms and by the next dance a month later we had well over fifty members in the Club and the numbers continued to grow to well over 100.
Feathers produced an eight page magazine for our members each month and this continued on for over two years with photographs from the various events we put on for our members.
We held car rallies, camping trips, restaurant nights, theme nights at the dances and these different functions are still part of the successful recipe for Feathers today.
The success of Feathers as a Club is due to the hard work by the various committees and their members who give their time, money and support to the club as well as the loyal support of the members who continue to attend the various functions put on by their Club.
The fact that the Club is owned by the members and is not a private business is another reason why it has endured for all these years. Other private bars have opened and closed on the Gold Coast but none has lasted the length of FEATHERS WOMENS’ CLUB INC.
As a personal note here, I wish to acknowledge those friends who gave so much time to the setting up of the club and who stayed on the Committee through thick and thin. The job is certainly not a cushy one and your home life often suffers with the late nights and the many meetings and the patience which is needed to placate unhappy people who want to criticize all the time. YOU ARE ALL CHAMPIONS!
I would also like to acknowledge my partner, Heather (Feathers) who passed away some years ago. Such patience she had with others and especially me when the Club intruded on our personal life as much as it did in those early years.
Heather is member number 01 and that number has been dedicated to her for the life of the Club.
When I attend the functions these days I get a feeling of satisfaction at seeing the Club endure for this many years, and that the women on the Gold Coast continue to have a safe place to meet and enjoy themselves.
May Feathers endure for many more years.
Iris Coulson