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Birch Foundation
We collaborate with local businesses, service providers, volunteers and community organisations to build stronger connections, encourage inclusion and make a positive difference in the lives of those we support.
At the heart of everything we do is a simple commitment: Bringing Hope Every Morning, Noon and Night.
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Distinguished and Famous people from Cowes
🌟 Florence Oswin Roberts
Florence Oswin Roberts ran Broadwater Guest House near Lovers Walk in Cowes and took a strong interest in protecting Phillip Island’s wildlife. Family oral history records her concern for native plants and animals and her involvement in establishing a koala reserve. That commitment also influenced younger members of the family, including Jack Oswin, who later served on a koala reserves committee. Her name survives in Oswin Roberts Reserve, connecting the island’s walking tracks and wildlife habitat with an earlier advocate for their protection.
📚 Manning Clark
Manning Clark attended state school at Cowes during a childhood shaped by his father’s changing church appointments. He later remembered Phillip Island through cricket, fishing and rabbit-shooting with his father, experiences far removed from the lecture theatres in which he made his name. His six-volume A History of Australia gave the nation’s past a dramatic, character-driven treatment that reached a large audience and attracted substantial criticism. The island belongs to his formative years: a place of outdoor memories before he became one of Australia’s most recognisable historians.
