By Margaret Maccoll
It was a case of being in the right place at the right time for Ron West when he discovered
Pomona’s Majestic Theatre while looking for a venue to stage the Sydney Film Festival’s travelling film festival in 1974.
Ron, the festival’s technical officer and organ player, got a call from film critic David Stratton to find a location on the Sunshine Coast to stage the travelling film festival, giving him only 10 days notice.
“Someone told me about a theatre in Pomona. I got hold of the man who owned it and begged him to say yes,” he said.
Crowds of 180-200 people turned up for each session making the venue the most popular of all visited by the travelling festival.
Ron bought the theatre that year and owned it until 2006.
He almost shut it in 1985 when competition from the newly opened cinema in Noosa Junction took away their customers.
Just in time he got a call from the entertainment officer at the then Hyatt Coolum looking for something with a touch of nostalgia for a group of travel agents.
“I put on a screening of Rudolph Valentino in Son of the Sheik and played the organ,” he said.
“I just made it up as I went along. They all fell about laughing.”
Word of the act spread and Ron continued running silent movies for the next 26 years.
The Majestic Theatre was one of 30 buildings to be viewed on Saturday as part of the inaugural Sunshine Coast Open House.
The theatre is now being operated and restored by volunteers, including Ron, from Pomona Arts Incorporated. The group has three committees, responsible for the theatre, railway station gallery, and arts and crafts market.
Theatre volunteers Don Clark and John Brooks have spent the past five years restoring the theatre’s organ. Don who retired from Channel 7 technical department brought the organ to the theatre from Brisbane to replace one that had been destroyed in a flood in 2012.
“It came from the Royal Theatre in Chester in England,” Don said.
“It was imported to Australia by Blair Linnet and put in his garage. He passed away 10 years ago. I knew about the organ and I negotiated with his family who donated it to the theatre. We began to take it out of the garage five years ago and bring it up here.
“It had to be pulled apart to the last screw and restored.”
There are some pipes still to replace and Don expects it to be completed early next year.
Also open to the public in town was the Pomona Fire Station opened in 2015 but built with a traditional facade to fit in with the historical buildings in the quaint town.
The crew at the high tech station have multiple roles fighting fires, attending to road crash rescues and assisting ambulance officers.
Captain Sam Spink said extreme drought conditions earlier in the year had made for a very busy time and a crew “on tenterhooks” fearing for disastrous fires but recent rains had alleviated the situation.
At Cooroy a steady stream of visitors viewed the Cooroy Butter Factory, constructed in 1930 to replace a demolished timber factory. Built at a cost of 10,000 pounds and comprising a butter roller, churn room, cold storage and pasteurising room it quickly became one of the model factories of Queensland.
Increasing production costs and a decline in the dairy industry forced the factory to close in 1975.
Bought by Noosa Council in 1991 it became an arts centre, and in 2016 management was handed to the community Cooroy Future Group.
Visitors to the Open House had the chance to tour a range of architecturally diverse, well-designed and historic buildings and were able to learn more about them thanks to informed volunteers.
