Valerie Fisher AO OBE
CWA President - Valerie Fisher grew up in Melbourne and had never heard of the Country Women’s Association when she moved to Barnawartha as a young woman.
Valerie Fisher grew up in Melbourne and had never heard of the Country Women’s Association when she moved to Barnawartha as a young woman. A few short months after she was married in 1952, Valerie received a knock at the door and an invitation to join the inaugural Barnawartha CWA branch. As she remembered it:
I waited and my husband came in off the farm at lunchtime and I said to him that this lady … had been there and ‘She wants to know whether I’d go to this meeting on Thursday’. And I said ‘Do you know what they do? What does the Country Women’s Association do?’
It was not long before Valerie became a valued member of the Barnawartha CWA. The CWA and the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) have a long history together, with the CWA running a kitchen at the Show since the 1930s. Valerie first started in the kitchen helping to clear tables and clean up, but after it was discovered she had a knack for addition, she soon found her place behind the cash register. This she did ‘every day from six o’clock in the morning until late at night’ for some forty years.
The CWA women formed close relationships with the other Show exhibitors, staff and RASV councillors, catching up and swapping news each and every year.
We got to know them and they got to know us, and they would say when we came in the first morning of the Show they’d say ‘How are you girls?’ and we loved that ‘girls’ bit of course. ‘And how are things on your farm?’ And because we were from all over Victoria there was a real variety of farm pursuits and weather conditions and some of them would say we’ve done this and we’ve done that and something else.
Valerie went on to play a significant role in the CWA, becoming State President, then National President and later World President. She sat on state and national advisory councils for women’s affairs and received numerous prestigious awards in recognition of her valued contribution to raising the status of women everywhere. But no matter what her role was within the organisation, she made sure she was always available to work at the Royal Melbourne Show. Valerie Fisher passed away in 2013.