MAYLANDS HISTORICAL AND PENINSULA ASSOCIATION

Rose Moon was a basket maker and lawn bowler, who had only 10% vision.

She began attending the Maylands Blind School in 1941 at the age of seven.

At 15, she moved to the industrial section where the skills she learned include weaving cane for basket work. Her basket-work speciality was a Victorian-style dolls pram named Victoria Rose in her honour.

In 1958, she married Albert Moon, a fellow vision-impaired worker. They had three children.

Rose was a fine lawn bowler and a founding member of both blind carpet bowls and blind lawn bowls in WA. She became President of blind lawn bowls in WA.

In 1993, she and Albert represented Australia in basket-making at the Hong Kong Abilympics (the Abilities Olympics).

As Treasurer of the Association of the Industrial Blind,  she used a vision-enhanced computer to keep financial records. She also used a computer to produce the Blind Bowling Association newsletters.

In 1996, she won the Sir Angus Stewart achievement award for ‘outstanding effort in personal development, independent living skills, social activities and community service contributed by a vision-impaired person’.

In 1998, the Royal Institute for the Blind awarded her a life membership.

She said ‘the Royal Institute for the Blind has always been very important to me. After all, I arrived here as an eight year old girl to be educated at the school that used to be there. I came from Busselton, where they had said I was a slow learner, but that proved to be wrong. It was only my eyes!

Had I stayed in Busselton, I would have been a nobody, but now I am a contributing member of society. I even represent my state playing lawn bowls. The Institute gave me something to live for!

The baby pram is very special, as we believe that I am the only vision-impaired person in the world, who makes these old-style prams. A profession I also learned at the Institute’.

Rose Moon died in 2003.

See our Rose Moon Flickr Album for digitised images and other digitised information.