Uncle Desmond's 80th Birthday Party

Thank you Moorooka for helping to celebrate the opening of The Clubhouse Moorooka and Uncle Desmond's birthday. He was thrilled to share such a significant event with his community. It was very special to walk the grounds with our community as the land was cleansed and blessed.

Special shout out to all our volunteers who worked in the lead up to the club opening and across the weekend. Without your help we would not be able to get such a mammoth venue open again. If you want to continue to see the club thrive, please consider volunteering with us. It's a lot of fun and a great way to meet locals.

Thanks also to our sponsors - Mark Bailey MP, Peter Russo MP, Mark Ward, Hutton and Hutton, C&K Moorooka, #tipsfromablindman, Barra Boys and Umu Cafe.

Photo credit: Tim Auguston

It's time to throw the gates open!

After months of planning, negotiations and prepping, we are excited to finally throw the gates open to The Garden Bar at The Clubhouse Moorooka with a big weekend of family-friendly, socially-distanced celebrations on the greens.

On Friday 11 February from 4pm, you and your neighbours are invited to a very special birthday party. Join Moorooka's local Elder Uncle Desmond Sandy, Head Headsman of the Yuggera people of the Chepara area, for his 80th birthday celebration and a special smoking ceremony to bless the land on which The Clubhouse Moorooka stands.

Uncle Desmond Sandy will deliver a Welcome to Country, followed by a smoking ceremony across our grounds performed by Uncle Desmond Sandy's niece, Marissa and his grand nephew didgeridoo performer Jamal. We invite you to join the smoking procession around the grounds as she cleanses and blesses the land. After the ceremony Uncle Desmond wants nothing more than to share cake and conversation with his community. The bar will be open and food trucks serving dinner into the evening.

On Saturday 12 February we are making the most of our expansive green space with an outdoor cinema presented by Brisbane City Council.

Pack your chairs and picnic blankets and settle in under the stars from 5pm for a performance from The Swingalicious Big Band followed by an outdoor screening of The Princess Bride.

A delightfully postmodern fairy tale, The Princess Bride is a deft, intelligent mix of swashbuckling, romance, and comedy that takes an age-old damsel-in-distress story and makes it fresh. -Rotten Tomatoes

Enjoy drinks from our newly opened Garden Bar, as well as dinner from food trucks.

You may remember late last year we held a crowd fundraising campaign and promised an exclusive preview event for members who paid $35 and above. That event was scheduled for this weekend with a tour of the building.

But COVID-19 had other plans and we are uncomfortable encouraging people to gather during the peak of the wave. Sadly grand plans for the preview have been cancelled.

We hope our community will understand and not be disappointed. It’s hard to plan in this environment and it feels crazy to be opening a venue, however we have asked ourselves what does our community need right now?

We think we have the answer.

We can offer you a safe place to connect. A place to gather with friends and neighbours. A place to chill and enjoy our beautiful weather. A place to meet someone new. Come up with a new idea. To laugh. To be.

As far as venues go, we’re fairly COVID safe, with plenty of outdoor space to spread out . We know you’ll do your best to be as safe as possible.

So going forward here is the plan.

From Friday 18 February we will offer you a cafe in the mornings and a bar in the afternoons. Our club is fully fenced and is a perfect space for kids to run free while parents catch up. Pups are welcome as long as they are on a lead.

Our community cafe Bean on the Green will open Friday, Saturdays and Sundays 6-10am. The Garden Bar will open Friday evenings, 4-8pm, Saturdays 3-9pm and Sundays 3-8pm. As our patronage increases, so will the days we open.

Many of you have been asking how you can support us over this time. The practical answer is, well, just come say hello if you can and you feel comfortable. It probably goes without saying that anything you spend over the bar with us will go, quite literally and seriously keep us in business.

You can also buy a membership at the bar. Donate some goods. Sign up to volunteer.

We can’t wait to meet you on the greens.

A huge THANKS to these local legends

On Saturday 22 January we held our inaugural working bee with a bunch of local legends who willingly got their hands dirty to bring to life The Garden Bar. At the start of the bee we introduced ourselves and said why we had joined the working bee. We all agreed that we were there because we wanted to support a community space where we could come together as a community, and recognised this could only be a great as the effort the community itself makes to make it happen. Of course, we also wanted to meet other local legends.

A so a massive thank you to local legends and new friends Bess, Hugh, Sean, Beck, Nissa, Sander, Sarah, Nigel, Simon, Moira, Louise, Luke, Harvey, Courts, Brooke, Riad, Kristy and Cassie.

We couldn't have done it without fuel to keep us going, so a shout out to Botanicafe for the cakes, Woolworths Moorooka for morning tea, Green on the Bean Cafe for coffee and cookies, and Mark Bailey for dropping in with coffee and pastries.