A brief history of our Club

The history of our club has an amusing beginning. Rotarian, Ted Sheedy, was commissioned by his club to establish a men’s Probus Club in the district. Ted thought this would be a simple pleasant task and placed an advertisement in local newspapers inviting interested men to contact him. He received a phone call from a woman introducing herself as Janet Harrison-Ford, querying why only men were invited to attend and announcing that she would like to come to the meeting. Ted could find no reason to deny her and the meeting duly took place with Janet in attendance. Apparently Janet was very persuasive and Ted accepted her arguments and could see no reason why both men and women could not belong to the same club. He resolved to take back to his Rotary club the recommendation that a mixed club be formed. His next job was to persuade his Rotarians to agree to the recommendation which they duly did. So, seven years after the first Probus club in Australia was formed at Hunters Hill the first mixed club came into existence at North Sydney. Our club celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008 and was delighted to have both Ted and Janet as guests. Janet has sadly passed away since that evevnt.

Janet Harrison-Ford and Ted Sheedy cut the birthday cake at our 25th Anniversary luncheon.

The rest of our history is yet to be written.
Perhaps by joining us you can help write it.