This evening’s Ringwood Historical Society meeting included two guest speakers. Firstly, Neville O’Connor, a local Ringwood East resident spoke about his interest in theatre organs and the current locations of the surviving organs within Australia.

The second presenter was the President of the Ringwood City Soccer Club, who discussed the unique history of the club. Ringwood City Soccer Club, based at the soccer field in Jubilee Park, Ringwood. The club was founded in 1953 as Wilhelmina Soccer Club by John van Hoboken who desired to create a professional soccer club for Dutch players who migrated to Australia.

Wilhelmina Soccer Club was based in various suburbs including North Balwyn and Hawthorn before it was relocated to Ringwood’s Jubilee Park in 1962 and renamed Ringwood City Wilhelmina Soccer Club. The club had tremendous success in the early years fuelled by the quality of players that were being recruited into the club.

While the Dutch connection remained strong throughout the first two decades, this waned in latter years due to the establishment of a professional soccer league in the Netherlands, which hampered efforts to recruit new Dutch players. As a result the club’s standing and revenue began to fall causing a re-evaluation in its direction.

Today, as an amateur soccer club, the focus is on the Ringwood and Maroondah community catering to the needs of local residents. The Ringwood City Soccer Club has definitely had a unique and interesting history.

Lastly, there was discussion around a new website for the Ringwood Historical Society. I have volunteered to design a new site, which will provide the ability to add new content and photos quickly and easily. The website, which is currently being finalised, has been developed using WordPress, the same software I use to power my own site.

As I was showing a demonstration of the new site someone asked about the costs associated with WordPress. WordPress is freely available for download and I personally have a preference for free software. My main operating system is OpenSUSE Linux, which I use due to its reliability and additional features that are not found on other software. The next version of Ubuntu 8.04 is expected on the 24th of April.

For more details on the Ringwood Historical Society please visit www.rhs.org.au.