MERINGA’S MOTHER OF SUGARCANE CELEBRATES 40 YEARS T
urning 40 years of age is special. Celebrating 40 years working for one organisation, at one location is quite an accomplishment. At SRA’s Meringa Station, it’s a club with esteemed membership, including the likes of Warren Owens, Jeff Smith, Dr Nils Berding, Dr Jim Skinner and David Calcino; all now retired. On 13 April, another SRA team member joined the club; but she’s not like the others. Vivien Dunne (nee Ligasacchi) and Viv to family, friends, and colleagues, is the first female 40+ Meringa member. She was recently reminded of her first day at the then Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations and the reaction from the ‘blokes out the back shed’.
Cane Matters / Autumn 2022
“Jeff Smith, a supervisor at the time, recently recalled introducing me to the permanent field hands and the language I was greeted with,” Viv said. “We can laugh now but back then this wasn’t just a workforce completely made up of men, but they were all men who hadn’t worked with a woman before and they couldn’t understand what I was doing there, so it wasn’t the friendliest of welcomes.”
36
But that wasn’t going to put Viv off. She knew she wanted to be there and was meant to be there. “I was born in Gordonvale hospital and at the age of two, my parents, Mario and Ester Ligasacchi, moved to the 83-acre cane farm that dad had cleared from the bush at Wrights Creek south of Edmonton, just up the road from the station. We lived there with my two younger brothers. My early schooling years were at St Therese’s in Edmonton and then, five years at boarding school at Mt St Bernard’s College in Herberton.
