THE Rotary Club of Foster will officially unveil the bronze plaque indicating the new, and second, location of the Club’s time capsule at a ceremony today, Wednesday April 21, 2021.
The Corner Inlet community is invited to witness the unveiling which will take place at the Foster Museum in Main Street at 5 pm.
The capsule was reburied in the grounds of the Museum on Australia Day this year and is to be lifted and opened in 50 years’ time when Foster celebrates the bicentenary of the township’s foundation back in 1870.
The wording on the plaque reads, “Beneath this plaque is a time capsule interred on 26th January 2021 by the Rotary Club of Foster to be disinterred to mark Fosters 200th anniversary in 2070”.
Foster Rotary president Rod Lomax said the capsule had been refilled with 120 envelopes containing letters, documents, images and other items supplied by local individuals, families, and community groups and organisations.
The round, steel capsule was first buried in Foster on Thursday June 23, 1977 with 249 similar envelopes inside, with instructions that it was to be lifted and unsealed in 2020, Foster’s 150th year.
It was placed in the lawn outside the former Shire of South Gippsland offices in Pioneer Street by the then Governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Winneke and the Shire President Cr Tom Morgan.
Foster Rotary, along with the South Gippsland Shire Historical Society as it was known then, and Foster and District High School, now Foster Secondary College, devised the capsule project, which went on to attract a lot of community interest.
Hundreds of local people watched it being opened at the Foster Museum nearly 43 years later, on Saturday January 25, 2020, with about two-thirds of its contents being claimed on the day by their contributors or their nominated recipients.
Rod said the date of the capsule’s reinterment was significant for another reason as April 21, 2021 is also the 100th anniversary since the Rotary Club of Melbourne was chartered, becoming the first Rotary Club in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, an area now identified by Rotary as Oceania.
“The Rotary Club of Foster is now in its 50th year, after being chartered by the Rotary Club of Yarram in 1966,” he said.
“Foster Rotarians would also like to acknowledge the continuing involvement of the Foster and District Historical Society with the time capsule and for allowing it to go into the Museum’s grounds.
“We appreciate the support we’ve been given by local people and businesses for this historic project,” Rod said.
“AgTrans Services refurbished the capsule, Luke Manders Plumbing dug the hole for it, and the Foster Licensed Post Office sold most of the envelopes and provided a central collection point for them.
“Thanks as well to everyone who bought an envelope for $20 each and then got them ready to go inside the capsule,” Rod said.
“Envelope sales raised a total of $2400 and the Rotary Club of Foster has decided to split this money four ways to support four different community projects,” he said.
“We’ll be giving a quarter of the funds to local schools, and the rest will be going towards Rotary’s overseas medical aid, to providing flood relief in Timor Leste and, closer to home, to the Gippsland Rotary Centenary House next to the Latrobe Regional Hospital in Traralgon.”
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