Dottie Hammond has a problem.
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And it has been a challenge with which the outgoing president of the Echuca Historical Society (EHS) has been forced to deal with for most of her life.
Dot’s biggest issue is she has to work. In fact, she can’t remember the last time she held down just one job.
Even when she has agreed to lend a short-term hand, it just never quite works out that way.
Take the year 2000.
Before that millennium moment, Dot and her other half, John Moore, had just returned from two years of zigzagging their way around our great southern land – with caravan in tow.
Back home it was the end of one journey and the beginning of a much longer one – that would span 21 years.
“I had met Heather Rendle at Echuca hospital, where we both had oldies in there for various reasons, and we knew each other as members of EHS because I had joined that year,” Dot recalled.
“Then a few months later we bumped into each other in the library and Heather told me EHS was looking for someone to help out as secretary for six months.”
Famous last words.
Dot would hold office at EHS for the next two decades (and a bit). Eleven consecutive years as secretary and 10 more as president.
Well, actually, that demigod decade was only 90 per cent complete – she only did nine years as president; taking 2016 off so she and John could hit the road again, this time going west until they turned right and headed north.
Passing through Broome and into the NT, it all unravelled at Mataranka, on the southern fringe of Kakadu.
“I was on the phone, talking to Heather (Rendle) when I simply stepped off the balcony without even thinking,” Dot laughed.
“That ended up with a broken ankle and me in a leg brace – and it just doesn’t work out on a camping holiday; so we headed home.”
But she stuck to her guns and took off the rest of the year as she hobbled around home and let the bones knit.
Then it was straight back into the president’s chair, where she stayed until this year’s annual general meeting and was replaced by Margaret Hart, who had previously been historical head honcho for three years in the 2000s while Dot was still secretary.
It might be a slight exaggeration to suggest the hardest Dot worked at EHS was finding a replacement for her presidency, but her relief with Margaret stepping up again was palpable.
Pushing the pause button for a moment, Dot has taken a somewhat circuitous route to get into – and out of – the EHS command centre.
Please pay attention as there’s a lot to keep track of: Echuca born and bred, her family moved to a dairy farm at Camperdown when she was 15. From school Dot started at a local garage, where she worked her way up the food chain (also working as a collator at the local paper and in the TAB branch) before swapping to Elders on a short-term deal to cover the office secretary. When she left 10 years later, Dot had become a livestock auctioneer and then merchandise manager.
Suddenly she was back in Echuca and found herself owner of the milk bar (now Molloy’s) on the corner of Hare St and Ogilvie Ave.
Then she was a milk bar owner and in real estate with LJ Hooker. And then she had a milk bar, was a real estate agent and started dabbling in property development with units in Moama.
Add in four seasons in the snowfields, where she “did beds, dunnies and dinners” before deciding it was time for a change (normal people might want to take a breath here) and she and John bought a property out on Stratton Rd; which they turned into a B&B as she phased out of real estate. So between making breakfasts for those using the beds and winding up her real estate career, Dot and John had a few spare moments, so they launched a nursery.
Until in 1999 they sold the lot, loaded up the caravan and the car and started that aforementioned two years on the road.
“I loved it all; well almost all – I don’t think I was cut out for delis – and it was all a challenge and that’s what I am always looking for,” Dot said.
“And I am pretty sure I am leaving EHS in better shape than I found it. That’s what every president aims to do,” she added.
“It was in good shape when I started as secretary, and Helen Coulson (the now 103-year-old matriarch of EHS and Echuca-Moama) and Heather Rendle were the inspiration; and kept us on course.
“The team grew and now I think we have a great group working together; and hope they keep on going.”
Dot said the past 21 years had plenty of highlights, such as the 2012 Shrine of Remembrance exhibition, which featured indigenous soldiers at war – from the Boer War to the present; and Raw Edge, the Campaspe Shire-owned Rathbone Collection of naive art, staged at the Uniting Church in Hare St.
If they were some of the public highlights, Dot’s time at the EHS helm saw some of its greatest achievements in the back office, driven by Dot’s relentless pursuit of state and federal government funding.
“That included $30,000 to restore the old police cells; funding to build the office and archive room; and money for the digitising of our newspaper records,” Dot said.
“I think the other thing I brought to the role was my business experience.
“In those 21 years I believe we have evolved from an enthusiastic hobby for everyone to a 21st century enterprise that is fairly financially secure,” she said.
“While I am satisfied I have done my turn, I am still staying on to help with the promotion of EHS and its work. And I am a life member.
“I also think the committee and the society are facing a new set of challenges. Not just to remain relevant but to keep attracting new blood and now dealing with how this will all work in the post-COVID era; dealing with the vaccinated and those who are not; who we can even put on the front door as well.
“It’s stuff no-one has had to cope with before so it will be a learning curve for everyone.”
So at long last Dot has some spare time, to simply put her feet up and get lost in that long list of books she has been meaning to read for years.
But the first one is yet to be picked up because Dot has a new job – she’s now a DJ with EMFM, the community station in the twin towns.
She does two shows – Mondayitis from 10am-12pm on, well yes, Mondays; and Dot’s Treasures, 3pm-5pm on Tuesdays.
“It takes me about four hours to set up and pre-record each show, which someone at the station has described as a collection of the eclectic,” Dot smiled.
“I am really loving it, and while I try to focus on music, I do like to explain who I just played and toss in a bit of jibber jabber; but mostly it’s the music, that’s what people want to hear.
“I avoid singing along live, but I do have to remember my desk buttons – green means no-one hears my warbling and red means ‘oops, sorry you had to hear that listeners'.”
While she confesses to being a little more country than anything else, which makes sense when you have caught up with the Dot Hammond story, she has one other confession to make.
“I’ve got the radio station, I’ve got my garden, but I’ve got a lot of spare time. I need another job.”