Born from one man’s vision in the late 70s to serve the people of his local town, the Macksville Lions Club has played an important role in supporting the local community – from fundraising to help build the Autumn Lodge Nursing Home, right through to establishing projects focused on the support and wellbeing of local youngsters.   

With help and sponsorship from Bowraville Lions Club, Macksville Lions was chartered in 1978 after its first president, Ken Mills, set himself a goal to form a Lions Club to serve the people of Macksville. 

Tragically Ken passed away in 1979, but his dream and commitment to serve people continued to live on.

In it’s 40 years, the club has firmly ingrained itself in the fabric of the Nambucca Valley’s volunteer organisations, with members dedicating not only their time, but establishing a culture of support and comradery in the wider community. 

Students from Macksville High School designed the club’s original bannerette, which develop over the years into the current banner designed by club members, which is considered to better reflect the diversity of life and business in the Macksville area. 

In 1989, the club hit a major milestone in its history with the induction of the first female members  – proudly recognising itself as one of the first clubs in the area to acknowledge the valuable contribution women could make to Lions.

Women had been barred from Lions since the formation of the first club in 1917, as the original members didn’t consider women to have the necessary business experience to take part. Seventy years on and the ruling was finally abolished in July 1987 when 77 per cent of the 5100 delegates at the Lions International Convention in Taiwan voted that women be admitted as members. 

Mackville Lions lead the way on the Mid North Coast in welcoming its first female members and some years later Barbara Marshall went on to become Macksville Lion’s first female president.

Over the years the Macksville Lions have participated in a variety of fundraising ventures.

In the very early days members grew melons and vegetables for sale; hosted raffles and bingo, catered for farm sales, Talarm Hall dances and funerals; became masters of the sausage sizzle fundraiser and even collected scrap metal, which often unearthed some interesting finds on local properties along the way.

At the peak of their popularity, Lions Mints were distributed to over 50 outlets around the Macksville and Scotts Head communities. But it’s the sale of Christmas cakes in conjunction with the annual Christmas raffle that’s remains popular to this day, with cakes and pudding sales making up a significant source of the club’s annual income. 

Moving on from veggie sales and scrap metal, the group corodinated a ‘Bridge to Beach’ fun run from Macksville to Nambucca; manned a ‘Merry Go Round’; Became supporters of the Macksville Gift; and established ongoing projects like ‘Reach out to Kids with Cancer’.  

The Autumn Lodge Nursing Home in Macksville opened the same year as the club was established and from its beginnings has received assistance from the Macksville Lions, who bought a number of bricks in the ‘Buy a Brick’ fundraiser during the nursing home build.

Over the years the club participated in projects like the maintenance of Welsh’s Park at Talarm, the formation of the Lions Park in Macksville, Meals on Wheels, shopping for Senior Citizens, and the Driver Reviver, until the bypass construction started. The club also ran the Macksville Hospital trolley Blue Light Disco and nights at the cinema as for the youths of the Valley. Members also made Trauma Teddies for the Bawrunga Medical Service, which were given to children when visiting the centres in Macksville, Nambucca and Toormina. In combination with other clubs in the zone, Macksville Lions raised $8000 in about eight weeks to purchase a wheelchair for a lady with Motor Neuron Disease.

The club also as a history of keen involvement in various youth projects. Driving support for local primary school children to participate in the ‘Peace Poster’ contest, which is a program aimed at disadvantaged children. Each year the club sponsors two local children aged between 10 and 13 to attend Camp Getaway at Foster. The club also makes regular donations to the Valley’s primary schools, including making a book donation every year to help raise awareness about Anzac Day.

Fast forward through the years and the club took on new challenges, new projects and new members – and their community service work doesn’t go unrecognised. The club had received many awards over the decades including the Australia Day award for service to the community in 1999 and 2005. 

In late 2015 Macksville Lions took on a major fundraising project to raise money for an insulin pump for a local primary school student. The club was approached by the young diabetic’s school friend, who needed help to raise money for the much-needed apparatus that would help to improve their young friend’s quality of life. The club moved into action and raised money through raffles at the Scotts Head and Gumma Reserve caravan parks during the 2015-16 Christmas holidays. With some help from Urunga Lions, Macksville managed to exceed the target and were able to purchase two pumps – with the second going to a young girl in Bellingen. Lions concluded the project in 2017 with a ‘Kids with Diabetes Fun Day’ at the Big Banana, which attracted diabetic kids and their families from Halfway Creek in the north to Eungai in the south. 

Lions’ then put their fundraising efforts into supporting the Lions Youth Exchange, with an international themed trivia night to raise fund for local teens to take part in the exchange program. 

In more recent years, the club’s main fundraising events have been catering for barbecue and sporting events, including the FIA World Rally Australia car race at Talarm, where you might see them feeding hungry local, interstate and overseas visitors ‘a good ol’ sausage sanga’.   

In early 2017 the club commissioned Macksville Men’s Shed to build picnic tables at Lions’ Park in Ferry Street. The tables were constructed from recycled Nambucca Valley hardwood and the club hopes they will stand testimony to the strength and durability of the Lions International movement and to the 40 years of service from Macksville Lions volunteers. In April 2018, the tables were dedicated to Lions International and the memory of Lion’s volunteer Debbie Barrie, who passed away in January 2018.

As with many Lions’ clubs, the number of members in the Macksville Lions’ Club has declined over the years, but the commitment of the current members to live up to the Lions’ motto “ We Serve” is as strong today as it was in 1978, when Ken Mills and his friends.