Photos: LYLE RADFORD
Words: LARA HART

MORETON Border News pays homage to the former region through its name, now it reports on a reunion three decades after the Moreton Shire merged with Ipswich City.

As Moreton Shire, hundreds of employees in myriad roles kept the wheels turning.

On Saturday old work mates, many who hadn’t seen each other since the merger, reunited for the reunion at the Royal Hotel in Harrisville.

Outside the hotel was a large street sign, on that were the words ‘Welcome to Moreton Shire, Town and Country Living’.

It belonged to one of the event’s organisers Jeff Rice.

Former councillor pre- and post-merger David Pahlke was there despite still being in recovery from a serious road accident.

He said the effort was worth it to catch up with people he once worked beside.

“It was successful. We now have our own Facebook group, Moreton Shire Revisited,” he said.

“I saw all these faces and thought, ‘that’s right, you’re so-and-so!’.”

He was grateful for name tags because while faces were easier to remember, names were not.

Past mayors, managers, councillors, labourers, accountants and secretaries turned up, all eager to rekindle friendships and reconnect.

“When planning the event we thought we’d get 50 or 60 people but there were 172,” Jeff said.

His start with Moreton Shire Council was as an apprentice motor mechanic, then he went into the stores and purchasing side of things.

He worked there for more than 26 years.

He was part of the reunion’s organising committee. Helping him were Ken Freiberg and Tom Hutton.

“I was surprised no one had organised reunions before, there’d been no 10 or 20 year events,” he said.

“It was a massive effort but we made it happen.

“Over the last two months we took phone calls and received messages from people mentioning names we’d long forgotten.

“We tried to track them down and it was a massive effort.”

They made a ‘gone but not forgotten’ list, which Jeff said was fairly extensive.

Former mayor and councillor 89-year-old John Nugent OAM was the oldest person at the reunion.

He began working in local government positions in 1973.

Sixteen of those years were spent as Mayor of Moreton Shire and then Ipswich City Council before he retired in 2004.

“John was rattling off dates and keeping up with the best of us,” Jeff said.

‘We put out quizzes about who had been employed by Moreton the longest and found John Crone who lives in Churchill, started at Moreton Shire in 1961 and went with the amalgamation into Ipswich.

“I don’t recall what year he retired but he started in 1961 and so far he’s the longest serving employee we’ve been able to track down.”

The pre-event call for memorabilia was answered as people brought relics from pre-amalgamation days to the reunion.

“People brought books, pictures, maps and items of clothing with branding on them,” he said.

“They showed up with shopping bags full of items and some left memorabilia with us to hold onto.

“When I was going through the lists and straightening things out, I realised we’d become historians.

“We are going to ask some of the older fellows to write their history down so it’s there for posterity.”

The hotel venue meant each person ordered and paid for their own meal and drinks.

A commemorative cake had been ordered and was served as dessert.

The grand finale was a group photo outside the hotel with the Moreton Shire road sign as backdrop.

Jeff said the experience was so good there would be a reunion every year and the Royal Hotel was already booked for next year’s event.