People often ask why Boonah and the greater Fassifern has such a strong, supportive community.
The simple answer is that its strength and its values are the rich legacy of the people who have willingly given of their character, their skills, their time and their commitment to volunteer organisations.
Margaret Oppermann was one of those people.
She was involved in a seemingly endless round of church and community groups from the time she was a teenager.
In the years before she was elected as a Boonah Shire Councillor, Mrs Oppermann was awarded Australia Day Citizen of the Year (Boonah Shire), Queensland Countrywoman of the Year (QCWA) and selected as a judge of the Keep Australia Beautiful Tidy Towns competition.
She was also on the executive of the Lutheran Youth of Australia and the Queensland and Australian Lutheran Ladies Guild.
Her involvement on the local front included the Red Cross, Little Theatre, Lutheran Ladies Guild, CWA, the Boonah Shire Disability Support Group, the Community Radio, the Boonah Shire Art Gallery committee, the Boonah Swimming Club, Mt Alford P&C and School of Arts Committee, the Boonah Hospital Reference group, the Aratula Friendship Club and the Boonah Garden Club and so many more.
Mrs Oppermann and her friend, Boonah businesswoman Sheila Bartholomew, were the guiding lights behind the formation of the Fassifern Historical Society and the development of the Historical Museum at Templin.
Such was her determination and involvement that at one time she was described as an … “an immovable force for this community”.
MARGARET WAS BORN into the Flavelle-Little family in November 1930. On one side; the family business was medicine, on the other was a generational family of jewellers.
She was born to an unwed mother in the era when such births were not spoken of in the social circles in which her mother’s family moved.
Initially, she was fostered by Dr Charles and Dr Alexia Lilley but when their marriage broke down, Margaret was fostered by the principal of a kindergarten in Brisbane. When she was four-years-old, Pastor Anton and Pauline Hiller, agreed to foster her. Years later, they would formally adopt her.
Pastor Hiller was called to the Dugandan Lutheran Church in 1919 and ministered to the congregation in Boonah and Dugandan for a total of 32 years. The Hillers were an older couple who were busy in church and community. At times, their medical skills were as much called upon as their pastoral duties. Margaret usually spent her school holidays at the homes of other Lutheran ministers in the region. But on some holidays, her birth mother, Mercy Flavelle Little, who had in the interim become a nursing sister, came to stay. Margaret remembered those as “the best of all times” in her youth.
MARGARET LOVED SCHOOL despite some bullying about her birth, she enjoyed gaining knowledge, singing in concerts, learning to dance and the gardening and forestry activities of the project club.
In the early 1940s, the war years, when she was in Grade 6, her adopted father was imprisoned as an accused ‘enemy of the state’. In his youth, Pastor Hiller had spent an 11-year apprenticeship with the Lutheran Church in Switzerland where he studied both theology and medicine. As part of his duties, he ministered to poorer congregations in Germany and on graduation, he worked as a Lutheran Missionary in India, New Guinea and at the Hermannsburg Mission in the Northern Territory.
Pastor Hiller was interned at Enogerra and then sent to South Australia. Mrs Hiller followed to continue her battle through the courts to free him. Eventually, he was absolved of all charges and freed but in the interim Margaret spent a lot of time alone at the parsonage, supported and cared for by the congregation, but shunned by others as the daughter of a so-called German spy.
LIFE AFTER THE WAR fell back into a more comfortable rhythm. Margaret won a scholarship to St Peter’s Lutheran College at Indooroopilly where she completed her secondary schooling, sang in concerts and made friendships that lasted a lifetime.
She also sharpened the organisational skills first taught to her by Pauline Hiller who ran numerous bazaars, concerts and fetes in the Boonah School of Arts to raise money for repairs to the church and parsonage. In turn, Margaret became involved in the Lutheran youth groups. Later, she was elected to the executive of the Australian Lutheran Youth of Australia and helped organise State and National events.
It was her involvement with the local Youth Group that would lead to her marriage to Coochin farmer, Colin Oppermann. She was 16, he was 23, when they met. The dislike was mutual but dislike became friendship and then love. They were married six years later.
Before her marriage Mum had first worked in solicitors offices and then at the Fassifern Guardian where she was Acting Editor when Miss Stanley took a sabbatical.
AS WAS THE CUSTOM of the time, Margaret gave up work after her marriage and as their three children grew, she became involved in P&Cs, sporting organisations and of course, continued her involvement in community and church groups.
Colin and Margaret’s marriage was not perfect … that is only the stuff of fairy tales. But it was a marriage of love and friendship; and remained so until Colin died in 2003.
MARGARET OPPERMANN had no defined life targets that must be met. Her only ambition was for her children and their families.
Yet she achieved a lot. An amateur historian who authored two local history books and wrote chapters for ‘The Fassifern Story’ in 1988, Margaret was in her 60s when she applied to enrol in university to study for a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Australian history.
She was awarded her degree in 1999. She was 69 years old.
Margaret served on a number of Government reference committees due to her involvement in the community and never left a state or interstate committee room without making sure everyone knew that the Fassifern was “the best place in the world to live”.
SHE WAS GIFTED with a pure rich soprano voice. And she loved to sing.
Her adopted mother, Pauline Hiller was a trained nursing Sister and she was also an accomplished opera singer and gave her daughter classical singing lessons.
On stage, in community theatricals and concerts, Margaret’s voice was that of a controlled, classically trained singer.
In the small Lutheran church at Mt Alford, her voice was more sotto voce. It wasn’t considered good form to raise the rafters in a Lutheran church. But sometimes, her tight control would slip and she’d take on that high ‘C’ with gusto.
In her latter years, she didn’t sing in public as she would contend that her voice was not what it once was.
But in her younger days, when there was no audience other than three young kids, when there was no need for perfect control and perfect enunciation … in those times, she’d sing with a voice that was mesmerising.
MARGARET AND COLIN’S CHILDREN, Barbara Dyer, Wendy Creighton and Stuart Oppermann believed they were fortunate in their parents.
“They taught us there were no barriers to what we could achieve. If we wanted to achieve it, then we simply must find a way to do so,” Wendy said in the eulogy given during the funeral service on Thursday, February 11.
“They taught us by example that hard work and commitment would take us a long way on the path to those achievements and we would value them more, because we had earned them.”
MARGARET WAS 86-years-old when she moved into High Care at the BUPA Aged Care Home at Pottsville Beach in northern New South Wales.
It seemed strange to some that after living almost all her life in the Boonah district, she would choose to move away, but her grandson Casey worked there. He, and in time his wife Valentina, worked at BUPA and visited her almost daily, making sure she was well cared for and supporting her through the worst of her illnesses.
Margaret died in the Tweed Hospital in the early morning hours on Thursday, January 21. Casey was holding her hand.
In her last 12 months, pain was a constant when the painkillers wore off.
Death was the blessing she wished for, but perhaps a blessing also lay in the preceding months of chemical-induced sleep. During those dreams she relived the many highlights of her life. She told her daughter that in the review of her life she’d found that God had blessed her with a life in which love and happiness were to the fore.
Left to mourn her are her children and their partners – Kevin Blanch (dec’d), Michael Creighton and Sandra Oppermann; her 10 grandchildren and her 14 great grandchildren (one dec’d).