Lamington Recipe 1985

The perfect recipe: Joyce Ryan’s legendary lamington recipe was able to feed the masses in an effort to raise money for the charity. If you ever need to bake 1200 lamingtons, the secret is now yours.

“Anything under 100 dozen was not worth the effort”

Joyce Ryan was one of Coffs Harbour’s most dedicated community volunteers and according to her daughter Barbara Feltrin, Royal Far West “was her everything.”

As a way of raising funds for the organisation, Joyce would help by setting up street stalls, where buttons (badges), cakes, and other donated goods would be sold. Joyce would take orders for 100 dozen lamingtons and have them all sold before the day of the sale!

“Nothing was ever too hard for Mum,” said Barbara Feltrin. “She believed that everything was possible. You did not need a lot of money to do it, you just put in the effort. She was an excellent organiser and if she was going to do something, she did it well. She would put in 200 per cent. If there was a lamington drive on, Mum’s theory was anything under 100 dozen was not worth the effort. Mum was humble and down to earth and if she gave you her word she kept it.”

Joyce wore her 50 cent Royal Far West Children’s Health Scheme badge wherever she went. “She couldn’t help telling people about it. If they ever said, ‘I’ve got nothing to do,’ she’d say ‘Well, you can come and help!’”

In 1992 Joyce was awarded her Royal Far West Children’s Health Scheme Certificate of Life Membership for outstanding services rendered. Ten years later, she was crowned Winner of the Advocate’s “Female of the Species” competition. Her great granddaughter Farren Feltrin’s nomination letter highlighted the important work Joyce did in the Coffs Harbour community, including at the Royal Far West Op Shop. “My great grandmother is a very special person to everybody,” Farren said. “She looks after people she doesn’t even know,” a quality shared by so many volunteers from the Royal Far West.

Recipe for lamingtons. Includes the price of ingredients and a grocery / to do list.

A digital copy of this recipe was received as part of the Royal Far West exhibition, 2019. 

Its inclusion in the permanent museum exhibition led to formalising the acquisition with a Community Collections - Loaned for Digitisation Form.