History of Monaro Country Lavender We are Australia's oldest Lavender Group and were formed in 1994. We have held three conferences featuring international guest speakers, numerous seminars and workshops and have established our headquarters on the Railway Land at Bombala. Our membership is scattered all over the South East of New South Wales from Canberra right up to the Snowy Mountains and down to the coast. We have our retail outlet - Lavender House - in the old Sisters of St. Joseph school building which is situated in Railway Park Bombala. Mary McKillop stayed in this building for a week in the late 1800's. Sometime later the Sisters moved up the hill to new premises and State Rail took over the building to house train drivers overnight. The rail stopped in 1986 and the Bombala Lions Club took over the building with plans to open a folk museum. The memorbillia the Lions Club collected make a perfect backdrop for all the lavender products. Our distillation facilities and education rooms are housed in the old station buildings just a stones throw up from the retail outlet. Over the years we have approached lavender growing in a scientific manner and have amassed an incredible amount of information regarding lavender growing. We regularly work with research bodies in a bid to expand uses for and the marketing of this fascinating herb. Our members are passionate about lavender and the art of distillation and we work together to create what we think are some of the best lavender based products available world wide. Members are constantly exploring new ways of production and results are shared. This exchange of information ensures that all our members are kept well informed and enables us to be supremely confident of all our products. A number of our members are involved in projects that are looking at future directions in the essential oil industry. These projects are very exciting and will lead to members producing a range of unique alpine essential oils in the near future. The establishment of export markets will be of real benefit to Monaro Country Lavender Co-Op Ltd and will further support the expansion of our group and ensure that we remain Australia's leader in lavender. Current executive are: Rob Cash - President 02 6458 5289 Mandy Rowley - Secretary Jan Illingworth - Technical Advisor