By Sarah Schwager
IT took the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony and a threehour train trip to rehearsals to bring Sue Bester and Meredith Bowers together.
The two women, from Gembrook and Kooweerup respectively, had never been friends before, despite Sue’s kids taking swimming lessons with Meredith.
But this Sunday the pair will take to the stage at the MCG celebrating Australia’s ancestors and multiculturalism in the ceremony.
They will be two of 450 people who perform and act in five songs on the night.
“We will also celebrate our icons, both living and nonliving, in Melbourne,” Sue said.
Sue, 45, said that she and Meredith had been rehearsing since the start of January and were among the older generation in the group.
“At one stage, I was doing this fullon dance routine and I looked around and realised I was with a bunch of 15yearolds,” Sue said.
Sue, who is the careers teacher at Berwick Secondary College, and Meredith, who runs the Kooweerup and Pakenham pools, have been travelling to Laverton once or twice a week to rehearse, and nearly every day in the last couple of weeks.
“We’ve been travelling three hours each way on public transport to get to Laverton,” Sue said.
“Meredith and I didn’t know each other before this, but we’ve got to know each other very well after so much travelling on the trains.”
Meredith said the preparation for the ceremony had been very exciting.
“It has certainly been a huge effort, getting to Laverton and so on,” Meredith said.
“But talking to other people, a lot of people have come from far and wide. It’s just great to be a part of it.”
They had to audition and do a onehour dance routine to make the cut at the ceremony, but Sue said many of the crew were recruited from local schools.
Sue has been performing and acting for the last 20 years and has been involved in many local productions.
She said her family, husband Jan Dekker, and children Pietra, 10, Michael, 8, and Kaelan, 5, had been very supportive, despite having to rearrange their school holidays.
Sue said she had tried to get four seats together at the closing ceremony but had not been able to, so the family would have to be content with watching it on television.
Meredith has spent the last week in Melbourne with her husband, Chris, as the pair had tickets to a number of events at the Games, mostly swimming events.