By Peter Sweeney
BETTE Clydesdale is a member of the Ausom Club – and whatever she turns her hand to ends up an awesome result.
And her latest effort – an eight-minute CD titled The Town Where I Live – is just that.
More importantly, it’s a production that will promote Cranbourne in its 150th year.
Bette, 80, knows things about Cranbourne few others do – and she has photos of the town nobody else has.
When she was asked by the Apple Users Society of Melbourne – the Ausom club – to do a “show and tell” film, Bette opted to do it on what she loves most, besides her four children and 10 grandchildren. Last week, it was played publicly for the first time… and was given the ‘thumbs-up’.
It’s a CD any tourism authority would be proud of.
“We’ve let Fountain Gate have the shops, but we’ve got the best sporting facilities there are,” Bette, a regular back injury rehabilitation swimmer, said.
On the front cover of her CD is a photograph of the recently opened Regional Athletics Centre at Casey Fields.
When Bette and her husband Greg moved to Cranbourne from Geelong in 1957, just 700 people lived in the town. Now there are nearly 40,000.
The late Greg Clydesdale was an engineer with the Shire of Cranbourne for 30 years. “He didn’t have one day of sick leave,” Bette said. The main square in Cranbourne is named in his memory.
“I’ve seen a few changes in this place. The main street was a little different in 1957 than it is now,” Bette said.
“But Cranbourne’s still a great place… it’s the best.”
Recently, authorities were trying to locate a photograph of the offices which housed the Cranbourne Shire between 1978 and 1994 – when it came under control of the City of Casey.
Who did you think had one?
Like so much else is, it was in the Bette Clydesdale Cranbourne collection.
