Yanchep stalwart Barbara Morgan celebrates 90th birthday

LONG-TIME Yanchep resident Barbara (Hebe) Morgan celebrated her 90th birthday this month with two parties.

Her growing family met on March 2, and almost 40 local friends arrived on March 3 for a ‘drop-in party’ with light refreshments.

Mrs Morgan arrived in Yanchep 45 years ago direct from England with her husband, Derek Moore Morgan, and two young daughters.

Before long they were joined by the remainder of their six children.

Mrs Morgan said Yanchep “was a sand heap” but living there was a challenge she and her family met.

In 1976, seeing a deep need in Yanchep and Two Rocks, she founded and ran Yanchep Community School.

Support from the Bond Corporation enabled her to teach students in the sail loft at Two Rocks Marina.

Mrs Morgan said the school filled the need for easily accessible and acceptable education, starting with 46 teenagers. “At its peak a few years later, the school had 80 students aged from four to 17,” she said.

When the school had to leave so that the America’s Cup training could begin, she hoped to get a permanent building in Two Rocks, but the school eventually moved to Wanneroo and closed after seven years.

Mrs Morgan has always shown an interest in the cultural development of the area and in 1982 she founded and for a while ran the Wanneroo civic choir, of which she is still patron.

Dr Morgan was a classical musician and his wife, a trained classical singer, joined him as a music reviewer, writing for the West Australian newspaper throughout the 1980s.

Mrs Morgan joined the Two Rocks Yanchep Culture and Arts Network and developed an interest in fiction writing while worked in the UK.

In the 1990s she began writing novels, and has published a dozen books including an autobiography and short story collections.

Recently she has unearthed several short plays written nearly four decades ago and presented two entertainments at the Yanchep Inn last year.

She hopes to do similar performances this May and June.