Wow, happy Edition 10 everyone! What a milestone for what began as a small group of six volunteers with $5000 'seed funding' from the Brown Hill Partnership Group and now regularly involves 29 Brown Hill locals and is financially self-sustaining!

Edition One of the Brown Hill Community Newsletter was six pages and was delivered to around 1700 letterboxes around Brown Hill by Australia Post in May 2016. Since then, we have made it to a bumper edition of 24 pages, with Edition Four being 16 pages and also including the eight-page Edition 1 of the 'Brown Hill Directory'.

Through additional funding from the Brown Hill Partnership, the Progress Association developed this Online Community Hub, which includes loads of information about Brown Hill and, in particular, an extensive community directory.

Another significant achievement has been the inclusion of paid advertising in the newsletter. Not only does this help to promote local businesses, but it also allows the newsletter to be financially self-sustaining, meaning it can continue into the future.

Thank you to Caledonian Primary School for their support as the contact for submissions, location for committee meetings and provision of wonderful stories written by students.

We would also like to thank the local groups and organisations that submit interesting stories, images, news and dates for the diary to share with the people of Brown Hill.

We are very grateful to our advertisers for financially supporting this project.

Thanks to our dedicated volunteer delivery team! Recently, we have farewelled from the team Bernie, Laura, Louise and Sue who have delivered since the team was formed for the delivery of Edition Five in February 2017. Over the year, we have welcomed Anne, Barry, Glennis, Carolyn, Dianne, Heidi, Ian, Jo, Laura, Penthea and Rhonda to the team. A huge thanks to our ongoing volunteer delivery team members, including: Brendan, Jodi, John, Liz, Merrilyn, Sandra, Sharon, Stephen, Sue, Tania, Trish and Victoria. Thanks also to Alice, Brian, Hazen and Rachael for helping to coordinate the volunteer team and get boxes of newsletters to them on the night before delivery starts.

Keep an eye out for our new 'Brown Hill Community Volunteer' vests. The vests have been funded by profits generated through advertising in the newsletter. They are fluorescent yellow, with 'Volunteer' and the Brown Hill Progress Association logo on the front and 'Brown Hill Community Volunteer' and 'brownhill.vic.au' on the back. Each of the newsletter delivery volunteers will have one to wear when they do their rounds. Make sure you say g'day when you see them coming!

Thank you so much to our very talented and patient proof-reader, Jock Freeman. He makes sure we release a good quality document. Also to Julie Hayes for her assistance with preparing some of the stories.

We would also like to thank Rachael Houtsma for managing several of the Brown Hill community social media pages on Facebook, including the 'Making Brown Hill', 'Brown Hill Community Newsletter' and 'Brown Hill Community Festival' pages.

Sarah Greenwood-Smith, Brian Green (Brown Hill Lions Club), Geoff Dickson (Caledonian Primary School), Alice Barnes and Tania Busse
Brown Hill Community Newsletter Committee