Life Member Profile – Bruce Piggott
Bruce and Margaret Piggott joined the then Alpine Club of Kiama in 1968 and now make up part of the elite group who have been active members of the club for more than 50 years. From the start Bruce was a keen participant on the slopes and in and around the lodge. In particular he was active in working bees, of which he has attended an unknown but very large number probably well in excess of the number of years he has been a member. Very few working bees have been missed, and he was one of those who attended many during the especially busy times of major redevelopments of the lodge and its surrounds – such as during the mid-1980s when the current lodge began to take shape. Bruce’s most noteworthy working bee contribution has been in the chopping and stacking of wood for the fireplace, in which he has become a specialist with advanced skill levels. He has developed a high standard, some would say world’s best, in his stacking endeavours over the decades of his membership. When the stacking job was done, he would often hold the ladder for Geoff Boxsell, working at altitude to clean the lodge’s windows. Bruce’s contribution to the club has gone well beyond the wood pile and the ladder, though, into active participation on the Building Project Sub-Committees of the 1990s and early 2000s when major re-buildings of the lodge were being devised and implemented. He was also a member of the Fiftieth Anniversary Dinner Sub-Committee which planned and delivered the highly successful 2008 commemoration of the club’s first half-century of existence. In his mid-eighties and a keen skier still, he has skied for Kiama in inter-club events including Senior Interclub races. In the village he has been a volunteer in the day-to-day running of the Kiama Historical Society’s museum, putting in regular shifts there to keep the museum open to the public. He has also been involved in the promotion of the club and the lodge at expos in Kiama. Bruce was made a life member at the club’s AGM in 2020.