It was celebrated on March 8 and women from all walks of life were acknowledged for their contributions to their communities.

Farmer Jan Wild, from Muswellbrook, is one of those unsung heroes.

While she resists praise, describing her volunteering as “just something you do,” she is a powerhouse.

She is one of the co-ordinators of the Golden Oldies movies, is a member of the Upper Hunter Museum of Rural Life, has been a long-time member of the Country Women’s’ Association and has been volunteering for more than four decades.

Jan arrived in the Muswellbrook area in 1971 with her young family and started to ‘muck in’ from the get-go.

“I wasn’t a person who ever went to a pub and I noticed that women needed companionship in their community groups.

“In those early days I had young children so you went to parents’ groups and mothers’ clubs and that’s where you built your connections,” she said.

During the 1970s Jan said her children were her focus, but through them it was possible to get involved.

“When you’d go into, say, a scouting group or your church group or your children’s school you’d find there’d be positions on committees that just weren’t being filled.

“In those days there weren’t [government] grants like there are now and so you got involved to more or less keep the books and keep things running,” she said.

Jan Wild said she recalls many people participating back then.

Culturally, Jan has participated to bring enjoyment to the region’s elderly with the Golden Oldies and to preserve their history.

Tuesday’s are the time the district’s senior citizens get together, watch an old time movie and share a meal and a chat.

Out in the kitchen at the Aberdeen Bowling Club is Jan Wild and the team of volunteers, cooking up a storm.

Many on that team are members of the Upper Hunter Museum of Rural Life, a community organisation working to raise funds for a cultural venue and museum.  Jan Wild is one of them.

“The Glenbawn Collection is not being looked after in the manner that it should be looked after because of the vermin damage and the moisture in the old site since they extended the wall of Glenbawn Dam.

“These old items need to be preserved and we need a special place for them to be housed to make sure the artifacts are preserved and kept together,” Jan said.

“At the moment we know there is a wedding frock down in Maitland and it really should be with the Collection, or housed up here somewhere close to it until we can find a home.”

Home is important to Jan Wild and so is the cooking that is done there because it’s an important part of the way she gives back to her community.  Enter the CWA.

“When [the family] shifted to Hilltop in the Rouchel area, the woman who lived on the same property where we lived was in the CWA, and she invited me along and I ended up being Secretary of Aberdeen CWA before that branch closed,” said Jan.

The rest is history, with Jan reaching delegate level within the Association, mentoring, judging and teaching young women how to cook.

In went the question, ‘What’s the largest scone bake you’ve ever done?’  The answer was just a little staggering.

“I’ll have to get the calculator out, but I think it was 64 batches of 15 scones for the Aberdeen Highland Games about three years ago,” she said.

Tap tap tap and, yes, the answer was 960 pumpkin scones and they weren’t cooked in an industrial kitchen they were cooked in Jan Wild’s little oven at her home.

“When I did that I pre-boiled the pumpkin and added the butter and sugar and froze that into empty margarine containers.

“On the day of the Games it was just a matter of defrosting them all and one batch after the other just add your flour and your egg and your milk.

“Then I had three trays going into the oven and coming out so it was a bit of a production line and, you know, it was a 100-year-old recipe given to me by Marion Miles,” Jan said.

That’s the point where this journalist didn’t know what to say next.

It seemed the right time to make a swift exit.

Eighty CWA ladies would descend on the area in the coming days and Jan Wild said she might need to do “a little cooking!”