NATIMUK'S naughty-but-nice calendar is turning heads and raising funds for the local show, says SIMONE DALTON
It was after her third attempt at getting funding for an office, toilets and underground wiring at the Natimuk showgrounds that the sad truth was exposed to Judith Bysouth.
"Toilets are not sexy enough; they are not politically popular," the Natimuk Agricultural and Pastoral Society secretary says.
Judith might be a softly-spoken grandmother but she is also a woman of action, and stripped of traditional funding avenues, she devised a plan to take to the show committee.
"I told them it would be easier to do a nude calendar and bare our soul," Judith grins.
It was a streak of genius.
And while there is nothing too raunchy about what locals dub the "nude-but-not-rude" calendar, it certainly is a stark(ers) departure from cake stalls and chook raffles.
To Judith's surprise, the show committee took to the idea "like kids to a lolly scramble", even if they didn't say too much at first.
"Allan MacInnes moved it (a motion for the calendar), Michael Sudholz seconded it and nobody made eye contact, and it was done," Judith says.
What the two farmers didn't know at the time was that Allan, who's also the show's safety officer, would become February 2009's pin-up boy and Michael, a shearing competition organiser, would star on the cover and as March 2009.
By the next meeting, Judith had "signed up' a dozen calendar boys and girls, attracted sponsorship to cover printing and gained the free services of Horsham photographer Annie Murray.
They hope to raise $40,000 from the sale of the 18-month calendar which is on sale now.
Judith led by example, stripping off for January. She was starkers, with her only laptop for modesty.
All models had some connection with the show or the football-netball club and had agreed to pose nude in various locations around town.
There were volunteers, competition winners, sportsmen and women and even the local doctors.
Judith's naked ambition had created a monster.
No-one knew that the shoot would take place in the two coldest weeks of July or that it could, as in Rhonda Lear's case, stop traffic in the main street.
Rhonda, who is July's pin up girl, simply beams in her Lady Godiva pose astride a rocking horse outside Natimuk's Mahogany House gift shop.
Local farmer Bob Mackley may never have baked that chocolate cake for last year's show if he'd known it would lead him to shed his gear.
'The bloody thing won," he says, earning him a place as October 2009, sitting with his cake and a saxophone in a dry Natimuk Creek.
"The (cold) weather was no good for my fragile male ego," Bob says.
Glenda Klowss, who calls Natimuk her second home, features in the speed-knitters photo at the Natimuk Hotel bar for May 2010.
"We were lucky because we had a heater," Glenda says.
