More than meets the eye: Volunteers on Coochiemudlo Island
Coochiemudlo Island Coastcare Dunecare session with both island and mainland volunteers working in April 2026. [Photo from Coochiemudlo Coastcare Facebook]
National Volunteer Week: a timely shout-out
Every year in Australia, National Volunteer Week is scheduled to celebrate and acknowledge the important role that volunteers play in communities. In 2026, this dedicated week is from 18–24 May.
When it comes to getting things done on Coochiemudlo Island, volunteers are the backbone of the community. People help their neighbours out, regularly. There are those who rescue wildlife in distress. Others deal with dead turtles that wash up on our shoreline and report these sad events to the relevant Queensland government authorities which contributes to research data. There are the volunteer admins on the Coochie Community Facebook page, and those who help out boaties and with vessels broken from moorings. Acknowledgement and thanks must also noted for those with the Coochie Auxillary Fire Station, the first responders, the SES, and others who provide invaluable, and varied, emergency services on the island.
There’s also liaising with local council about community and island issues, input towards social connection, organising cultural events, looking after the island’s natural environment, and providing transport, medical, and shopping services on the island. These services are offered by the island’s volunteer organisations which outlined below.
As a start, we look to the national context, specifically Meals on Wheels, one of Australia’s best known and loved volunteer organisations.
Meals on Wheels in transition
Australia’s first MoW service started in 1953 with a single volunteer delivering meals, on a tricycle, to senior citizens in Melbourne. In Queensland, the service started from a backyard in Ipswich, without government funding, and meals were delivered for two shillings each. These services grew and more local groups formed, driven by the same mission — to help people live independently with dignity. Overtime, MoW expanded nationally through donations and, eventually, with government funding.
Today, MoW is primarily funded by the federal government’s Home Support Program. However, in some areas, MoW volunteer numbers have dropped off while the demand for meals has increased. To manage the shortfall in volunteers, the HS Program is transitioning from providing locally cooked meals to providing frozen Lite n‘ Easy meals to their clients — once a fortnight. This transition started a few years ago in some areas throughout Australia (Integrated Living, 30 June 2021).
In March 2026, Tegan Taylor from ABC RN (Life Matters, Can a frozen delivery replace Meals on Wheels?) interviewed a volunteer, from a MoW service in regional Victoria, who expressed her concern, and sadness, about the Lite ‘n’ Easy transition that was about to start in her area. Her worry is that the value-adding that MoW volunteers provide during the meal drop-offs — wellbeing checks, social connection — will fall away. Also, that some clients will have difficulties with the online component of managing their Lite ‘n’ Easy service.
Meals on Wheels on Coochiemudlo Island
At the time of writing, 8 residents on Coochiemudlo receive meals from the Victoria Point MoW. The manager, Lori Wilson, reported in April that there is no such plan to transition the Victoria Point MoW service to Lite ‘n’ Easy frozen meal deliveries.
To me, this came to me as good news! And I thought, gosh, the island is lucky … but with an important proviso and acknowledgement that ‘our luck’ involves a lot of work, time, and generousity — from volunteers.
After the island’s longtime MoW volunteer recently moved away, Lori has managed to recruit two new island-based volunteers to continue with meal deliveries. Lori said, “We do sometimes struggle to find volunteers. Other (MoW) services might be reducing their cooking kitchens due to the rise in costs of produce, however, we pride ourselves on the fresh meals cooked daily in our kitchen at Victoria Point. The other 11 services that are a part of the Meals on Wheels Brisbane South amalgamation provide a mix of kitchen-cooked and frozen meal suppliers. We also freeze our own freshly cooked meals … to ensure consistency for our clients”. See the contact details for MoW Victoria Point.
The quality of our island lifestyle would decline without volunteers
The last Australian Census happened in 2021 when the population of Coochiemudlo Island was recorded as 850, with the predominant age group registered as 60–69 years. Of course, many of us are older than that. The average household size is less than two people which means that many of us live alone.
It will be interesting to find out what the 2026 Census reveals about our demographics when it happens later this year.
Coochiemudlo’s volunteer organisations
When it comes to our health, wellbeing, the environment, and cultural experience, volunteer organisations on the island all contribute — it’s hard to imagine island life without them. They all offer social connection, one way or another.
Running an organisation reliant on volunteer workers isn’t a walk in the park. Aside from managing service provision, teams, scheduling, and raising funds, it’s no surprise that resource shortfalls are a perennial problem.
Not all volunteer organisations like those on Coochiemudlo Island can operate smoothly over years without a brief hiatus. None of us can work consistently like machines, paid or unpaid. Often it takes ‘new blood’ to join committees to help steer and propel things along.
The island’s organisations are listed below, with an estimate of their regular volunteer numbers.
Environmental / Heritage
Bushcare— 20-25 volunteers: Assistive regeneration of the island’s native bush including combatting invasive weed outbreaks.
Coastcare — TBA: Preservation of the island’s natural environment and ecosystems including a focus on erosion and invasive weed managment.
Heritage Society — 12 volunteers: Focus on curating the island’s heritage and history with an interest on both our environment and culture. They organise events, and advocate and educate where necessary and possible. The Heritage Society worked to get heritage listing of the island’s Emerald Fringe and this took years to achieve.
Native Nursery — 13 volunteers: Propogation, provision and sale of native plant species on the island. They also provide Bushcare and Coastcare with tube stock of native species
Recreation / Practical services
Isle of Coochie Golf Course — TBA: Manage and maintain the golf club grounds with the help from their volunteer team. They hold events and staff the bar to raise funds. Islanders and visitors enjoy the grounds.
Recreation Club — 12+ volunteers: Dedicated to supporting a wide range of recreational activities for the island residents including the gym, tennis, pickleball, pilates, bingo, croquet, Op Shop.
Shopping Service and Fuel Run — 14 volunteers. This service is now open to all island residents. For a small fee, the service picks up residents’ Click and Collect shopping from Coles at Victoria Point, then return to deliver the bags to their doors. This happens twice a fortnight, in the shopping service’s dedicated van. Then once a month, in a ute, volunteers do the ‘petrol run’ to the mainland and back with residents’ fuel cans to fill.
Coochie Progress — 45 volunteers: Wide range of service provision as outlined below …
Coochie Progress
The Coochiemudlo Island Progress Association is featured here because of they provide so many services to the community. These include medical and transport services.
Since its inception in the 1990s, Coochie Progress has had a huge input into the island including the push to get mains water and sewerage connected to the island.
Elizabeth Rankin is the current Coochie Progress president. She took on the role in 2020 after it looked like the organisation was winding down — or even ‘shutting down’ — after decades of community service. A big shout out to Elizabeth and other Progress volunteers for their tireless work which covers the following services.
Community bus
The Coochie Bus
The community bus hit the island’s roads at the end of 2021.
Prior to that, community members had identied a need for transport services on the island and had spent years mulling over ideas and the best approach.
To date, the bus has provided more than 75,000 passenger trips, mostly starting from and ending at the ferry terminal. There is also a has a wheelchair lift installed.
The community bus is a 12-seater van, the maximum seat number that drivers, with a standard car licence, can legally drive on our roads.
The current van was bought secondhand for $35,000, with money from the Gambling Community Benefit Fund. Donations and sponsorships were contributed by individuals and local businesses. No other grant money has been received to run this service which generally runs five days/week from 7am – 7pm although . Coochie Progress raises funds to keep the bus operating, including maintaining the bus which again requires a lot of volunteer hours and hardwork. Russel Austerberry, John Rodham, Peter Rankin and others have been stalwarts with dealing break downs and the rest.
Over the years, and countless kilometres clocked, at a pace no faster than the 40km/hour, the bus is falling apart.
Elizabeth and other Progress volunteers are focussed on acquiring a replacement bus. An electric van would be perfect — but cost-prohibitive. Secondhand, suitable EVs are not yet on the market — a new EV van that for our island service would cost about $200,000.
But, impressively, Coochie Progress has raised enough money to replace the current van with secondhand petrol later model van.
Costs of running the bus include: fuel; phones; maintenance; public liability and volunteers’ insurances; permit from local government.
Volunteer work on the Coochie bus includes: driving; organise rosters; training; phone-call bookings and logs; book keeping; maintenance and cleaning; fuel pickups.
RFDS Medical Chest on Coochie
Over years, community members have discussed the need for a health service on the island. In 2025, Coochie Progress set up the RFDS Medical Chest to provide bulk-billed telehealth sessions from the Royal Flying Doctors Service — for anyone on the island, 24/7. If medication is required, the on-call doctor fills out and logs a prescription from the wide range of medications stored in the medical chest on the island. The patient is given a prescription order number to quote when they phone a Progress volunteer.
Volunteers are rostered on to answer calls, confirm the prescription details, then drive to the medical chest and deliver the prescribed medication to the person who needs it.
The following is the RFDS listing available on this site, in Community Contacts page.
Community advocacy and government liasion
Maybe the best example of Progress’s community advocacy is when they addressed the island’s water transport issue in 2024. The spotlight was on our ferry service because of Amity Trader’s rising costs, especially the ‘landing fee’ per trip paid to local government, which, at the end of the day, would have to passed onto island residents as increased fares. Also, there was potential that the night-time ferry service would have to wind-up earlier. Progress met with Amity Trader, and local and state governments, and organised a community meeting with the stakeholders in attendance. The outcome was impressive: we now have cheaper ferry fares and a timetable that does provide, within reason, a schedule for residents returning home from evening events on the mainland. See the Ferry Issue article from 2024.
Raising funds for events and training
Every year in December, Coochie Progress organises a lunch for volunteers on the island to coincide with International Volunteers Day. Funding for this is applied for through the Redlands City Council Community Benefit Fund.
Coochie Progress applied for the funding and organised First Aid and Manual Handling Training on the island, in 2026. Twenty-five residents completed this training
Coochie Progress also auspiced the Art Therapy Grant submission that resulted in two art therapy sessions held on the island during 2026. The grant was from a government fund allocated for communities affected, in 2025, by Ex-Tropical Cylcone Alfred.
Equipment hire
Tables, chairs and gazebos are available to the community to hire through Coochie Progress.
Medical equipment including wheel chairs and crutches are also available to hire.
See details about this Equipment Hire.
Markets
Coochie Progress organises about five markets a year on the island. This is an opportunity for organisations and islanders to set up stalls to promote and/or sell what they do. Markets also provide an attraction for visitors to the island.
Quarterly public meetings
Coochie Progress also holds quarterly community meetings to consult and inform us about what’s in the pipeline.
From time to time, Coochie Progress gratefully receives financial donations from local businesses and community benefactors.
Island volunteers at work: Random snapshots of community events
See contact details for the island’s organisations …
Acknowledgements and thanks to:
Elizabeth Rankin for her time meeting with me, and for the information about Coochie Progress
The organisation presidents/coordinators for responding to my request for information
Albert Spiteri for editing assistance.
