Competition – naming our newsletter (24th March)

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The competition was to name our newsletter. The prize was a three course meal cooked by our professional chef, Vasundhara Kandpal. The judge was Dianne Parslow.

We received 42(!) suggestions. In alphabetical order:

  1. AirWaves
  2. Bush Telegraph
  3. Corona Weekly
  4. Dispatches from U3A Nillumbik
  5. Isolation Communication
  6. Keep Going U3A Weekly
  7. Keep Going Weekly
  8. Keeping Connected
  9. Morsels
  10. Nibbles
  11. NU news
  12. NUws
  13. Our Link
  14. Stay Connected @ U3A
  15. Stay-Connected Weekly
  16. Staying connected
  17. Tales of Nillumbik
  18. The Link
  19. The Nillumbik U3A Grapevine
  20. The Unicorn (short for ‘University …Coronavirus’)
  21. The WEEKLY Newsletter
  22. U Me Link
  23. U3A Community Link
  24. U3A Connector
  25. U3A Keeping in Touch and Staying Positive
  26. U3A Nillumbik Community Report
  27. U3A Nillumbik Tales
  28. U3A OZ Just Because!
  29. U3A Pony Express
  30. U3A Un Journal Hebdomadaire (French for ‘weekly news’)
  31. U3A Unite Weekly
  32. U3A Way
  33. U3A Weekly Bulletin
  34. U3A Weekly, CV Series
  35. U3A Weekly Watch
  36. Us Together
  37. Weekly Bulletin
  38. Weekly Corona Bulletin
  39. Weekly Corona Express
  40. Weekly Express
  41. Weekly U3A Gibber Gabber (gibber-gabber means ‘idle talk’)
  42. Weekly Words Until The 3rd Agers Win

And the winner, as chosen by Dianne Parslow, was Deb Thomson for Weekly U3A Gibber Gabber! Gibber-gabber apparently means ‘idle talk’. Congratulations Deb! Note that we’ve slightly amended the wording to NU3A Gibber Gabber, where the ‘N’ stands for Nillumbik.

Dianne also awarded an honourable mention Karenne Lack for The Unicorn (a concatenation and then shortening of ‘University … Coronavirus’). Congratulations Karenne!

Commiserations to the rest of you who entered: Alison O’Keefe, Carol Seymour, Gail Clayton, Joy Quinn, Julie Temple, June Rushton, Karen Coulston, Lesley Alves, Louise Currie, Lyndell Whiting, Maree Papworth, Margit Alm, Mary Cumbo, Nola Marshall, Renato Deschamps, Sophie Skenderis, Susan Palmer and Trisha Weller.

Mike Wilson subsequently wrote in to say that Gibber Gabber is the name of a local community magazine in Woomera, South Australia. Lucky that we put that ‘NU3A’ at the front of our name! Deb Thomson then replied: “Mike Wilson is quite correct – I borrowed the name ‘Gibber Gabber’ from my childhood. My family lived in Woomera from 1960-1966. My father worked on the rockets, which frequently went up and then … came down, sometimes sideways! I still have a copy or two of my parents’ 1960s Woomera Gibber Gabbers, somewhere. When musing over what name our U3A newsletter could be, Woomera’s Gibber Gabber crept into my mind. Imagine my surprise when I found out that ‘Gibber Gabber’ actually means something (idle talk)! In the 1960s, the newsletter was a very welcome addition to our isolation with 5,000 other inhabitants of Woomera. No television up there then.”

To which Mike Wilson replied: “As a young bloke it was always my ambition to work on rockets at Woomera … However, it was not to be … I visited Woomera last year and saw a lot of things in their museum that I used to work on and with … in a museum. In a museum – I must be getting old!“