‘Having a purpose’: Community changer retires, but work doesn’t end here

“We see people who come in, especially for emergency relief, who don’t have any money to feed their families... just to see them going out and saying ‘This is life saving, we couldn’t have eaten this week without this.”

Jan Carlson fell in love with the lifestyle of Maryborough and Hervey Bay, and she’s been in almost every role you can think of to better the community.

From a former Maryborough councillor to leading Hervey Bay’s biggest outreach for those in need, Jan Carlson’s career has been built around serving the community.

Now, aged 66, the local who’s inspired and helped many out of dark times in their life, has retired.

Moving to Maryborough in 1983, Jan knew this was the area where she wanted to raise her son and she hasn’t looked back.

“I love this area, there's no way in the world that I’d move ... I think it's the best lifestyle that anyone can imagine and I‘ve done a fair bit of travelling overseas, but it’s a truly beautiful area here,” Jan told the Chronicle.

Jan, who now lives at Kawungan, was running a shop while serving as a Maryborough councillor from 1988 to 1991 - a position which “wasn’t like how it is now”.

“When I lived in Maryborough, I had a little restoration shop that used to sell all the restoration bits and pieces for antique furniture and for old houses, and while I was doing the shop, I was also a councillor, they used to call them aldermen back then,” she said.

Jan later worked for Queensland’s Department of State Development, spending about 15 years helping small local businesses.

“I was helping small businesses with marketing material, financial management, I used to run lots of workshops and help different industries develop new markets and develop new products.”

Through this time, Jan also helped her now late husband - popular jazz musician and hairdresser Bob Carlson, with financial management of his former Bob‘s Cutting Edge in Torquay from 2003 to 2008.

Bob Carlson, Jan's late husband who sadly passed away after his battle with terminal illness.

Amid Bob’s brave battle with motor neurone disease (MND) Jan decided to take some time away, caring for him until he sadly passed away.

The pair had been well known and loved on the local jazz scene after Bob started the Hervey Bay Jazz Club in 2004.

“Not a sort of person to be sitting around idly,” a grieving Jan had “thrown herself” back into community work, where from 2013 until this week, she was Operations Manager of We Care 2, the city’s largest homeless outreach and discount supermarket which also helps with emergency support and links to local services.

WC2 is the community care arm of New Life Christian Church in Hervey Bay, which Jan, who is open about her faith, has attended for 20 years.

Her membership in the church led her to volunteer with the organisation years before she secured a full-time role.

Jan Carlson (middle) with her team at WC2 on her last day of work.

WC2 has four programs dedicated to helping those in the community.

“The biggest of those”, Jan said, is their low cost food centre, of which Jan was in charge, sourcing food from supermarkets all across the region to provide affordable options for those in need.

“In 2004, WC2 was a very small shop down in Main Street, they just had pantry items ... Now, we have 10 staff and quite a range of volunteers ... when I started there were only two (staff members),” she said.

The outreach also had a home on Torquay Road before expanding to the site where the church also shifted to at 217-229 Main Street, Urraween.

It also runs a breakfast program, where a mobile food van offers a meal to the homeless in Apex Park in Pialba three mornings a week.

“We feed anywhere between 20 to 30 people ... we have a free counselling service, so we employed two counsellors – for general counselling, family counselling, addiction counselling, you know, anything like that – who operate four days a week,” Jan said.

“We also have emergency relief, which is partly funded by the federal government, for us to be able to give out free food to people that haven’t got the money to put food on the table at all.”

Asked why she wanted to do all this for region she wasn’t even born in, she told the Chronicle it was about “having a purpose”.

“The thing that has really kept me going and driven is when we see people who come in, especially for emergency relief, who don‘t have any money to feed their families, just to see them going out and saying: ‘This is life saving, we couldn’t have eaten this week without this”, that, to me has been a real highlight,” Jan said.

Jan Carlson with WC2 Office Manager Tamara.

“It’s just been a real highlight for me to be able to say that I had a part in helping those people improve their lives ... we want them to improve their life and become a bit more resilient so we help them.

“The other high points for me in the journey, is also seeing the volunteers that we have that come in ... I had one who gave me a big hug yesterday and said to me: ‘You have made such a difference in my life ... when I came two and a half years ago, I was on antidepressants, this just changed my whole life, I’ve got a purpose now’, in turn, we’re helping (volunteers) by giving them a purpose to get up in the morning and do something and not just sitting around – that’s really rewarding for me.”

Jan serving a customer at WC2’s low cost food centre.

And after 50 years of official work, Jan has no plans to slow down, her mind already on ways she can continue supporting the Fraser Coast while still getting in some well-deserved rest.

“I won‘t be sitting around doing nothing, I have to keep busy, I’ve got a few things in mind,” she said.

“I‘ll be probably be helping a couple of businesses or a couple of not-for-profit organisations to get some grant funding.”