History of Casey U3A

Presented by Milan Trnacek, updated by Colin Whitney                             

The history of Casey U3A is forever tied up with the builder of Fiddlers Green Retirement Village, Mr Jennings who was an active supporter of the U3A movement. Being a good businessman, he also identified a commercial value of housing the U3A at the Retirement Village.

After discussions with residents, the inaugural meeting took place on 25th September 1990 and Jim Lacey was appointed President of the Steering Committee. The name selected was Jennings U3A of Berwick. An important decision was also made that the membership will be open to non-residents.

Classes commenced in February 1991, some of them are still current such as Painting, Current Affairs Literature, etc.

The first Annual General Meeting was held o 16 September 1991 and the first Committee of Management was elected. The meeting passes that Jennings U3A be incorporated and join the U3A Network Victoria.

In 1995 Jennings sold the Fiddlers Green Retirement Village so the name of the U3A was changed to Berwick and District U3A Inc.

The membership and the number of classes have grown and when we celebrated the Tenth Anniversary in 2000, we had 208 members in equal proportion, 50% residents of the Village, 50% outsiders.

In 2003 we again renamed our U3A to Casey U3A Inc as our membership came mainly from the area covered by the City of Casey.

A committee of 12 volunteers runs the organisation and they would very much encourage you, the new members, to participate fully in whatever field you can.