The Redland Museum in Smith Street, Cleveland, has the knack of attracting dedicated and excellent volunteers.
In the past five years, four of its volunteers have been awarded the Greg Cook Volunteer of the Year Award.
The latest recipient, Sandra Davis, was presented with her award in December last year. Sandra became a volunteer at the museum in October, 2005. She was originally asked to undertake research, describe the various exhibitions and download the descriptions into the archives on the computer database.
She is kept busy taking, downloading and labelling thousands of photos, maintaining the weekly community notices, writing articles for the Redland City Bulletin, the Senior Lifestyle, The Courier Mail. In addition, she assists exhibitions officer, Rick Thomason, presenting lectures on various topics and visiting with colleagues, local nursing homes and respite centres.
As a member of the Redlands Spinners and Weavers group, Sandra enjoys organising, assembling and maintaining the 2010 Beanie Tree, which blooms every winter and in its 19 years has raised more than $3900. Over the years she has organised the program for many work experience students from various colleges, monitoring and supervising them to ensure that they gain the best possible knowledge of the working of a museum, a complex task, to which the 145 volunteers apply their skills with great enthusiasm.