Tending to broken bones at Premier Speedway and festival-goers fainting at the Port Fairy Folk Festival were just some of the stories told by former St John Ambulance cadets at the weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The former Warrnambool cadets reunited over drinks at the Warrnambool Bowls Club and a barbecue lunch at Lake Pertobe.
It had been 50-years since South-Australian man Aubrey Mattner responded to a call-out for ambulance drivers in Warrnambool in 1968.
He moved his family from Mount Gambier to Warrnambool after successfully applying to a job advertisement in The Standard.
His 12 year-old son Michael Mattner continued in his footsteps and became one of the city’s first St John Ambulance cadets.
Michael said former cadets had come from near and far, with one man attending from more than 2000 kilometres away.
His brother Garry and mother Miriam attended too, with Mrs Mattner cutting a special cake made by Dorothy Mattner at the bowls club on Saturday.
Garry said his mother was the special guest of the day.
“She cut the cake alongside Norm Sheppard, who was always our bus driver, and Maxine Golding Clark, who was a senior St John Ambulance member,” he said.
“On Sunday there was was a barbecue gathering at Lake Pertobe, where we continued the stories and good memories.”
Garry said the cadets had to be at least 11 years old to join.
He said duties included working at the Premier Speedway, the Lake Gillear Motocross Track, the Warnambool, Port Fairy and Koroit shows and the Port Fairy Folk Festival.
“Anywhere where they needed someone with first aid experience,” he said.
“It gained us that experience and the people had someone to look after them.”
Fellow founding member Anne Smith said the reunion was sparked after some of the former cadets reconnected on Facebook.
“That happened in February and then I thought, why don’t we have a reunion? And as I was doing some research of our history I realised that this years was 50 years since cadets were first formed in 1968,” she said.
“We’ve caught up, reconnected, had a few drinks and reminisced on old memories.”
She said the cadetship provided not only first aid training, but valuable life skills.
“It was only once you got older that you realised the like skills that you had actually learnt from being in the St John Ambulance,” she said.
“It was confidentiality, self esteem, self worth, a sense of belonging, and lots of different things that gave us a really good background. Since we’ve reconnected, and even today, it’s just like we were never apart.
“My favourite memory is how we were like one big family and we were all just brothers and sisters.”
Have you signed up to The Standard's daily newsletter and breaking news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in the south-west.