FEATURE - Margy makes a difference

by Louise Tasker

It was an intermittently rainy day, when I drove down the windy driveway to park up near Mill Hill Manor. The tall trees dripped over me as I meandered around to the front of the house.  

The house is 100 years old and beautiful with it and has been home to Margy Henderson who has lived here for five years.

Sitting on the front deck of the house, it’s hard to believe the property fronts a street, albeit a quiet one. It’s utterly peaceful with its huge trees that give you the overwhelming sense that you are sitting inside a very secret garden.

It’s a far cry from her earlier life in Sydney.  Margy was born and raised in the Western suburbs. She married and had two children, Rhiannon who is now a singer/songwriter and has her own band, Merpire, and her son Braden, who is a baker’s assistant.  

When this first marriage collapsed, having a strong will helped her to cope as a single parent. She said, “The best advice I was given then was to believe in myself. This came from my boss. He completely changed my life. He saw what I hadn’t seen. He believed in me.” 

That strong will and a good sense of self has helped her through difficult times.

Margy and her second husband Mark moved to the Range in 2021. They had enjoyed a lunch previously at The Edge, and Mark, completely taken by the expansive view that flows from the ridge all the way down and across to the coast, said, ‘I want to live here,’

Margy told me with a smile.

When they were able to, they purchased what was then known as The Macadamery. If you read the Montville History Group’s published book about Montville Buildings, you will find information about the house itself and also about its various occupants.  

Two occupants in the 1950s were the Australian writer Eleanor Dark and her husband, Dr Eric Dark. While living here at the house, then called Bopplenut (after the macadamias that grew in abundance on the property), Eleanor wrote Lantana Lane, a novel based on characters who lived in Montville. 

Margy said, “I’ve read it and really enjoyed it. It’s very funny. We tried to work out who some of the characters are but we weren’t very successful.”

Previous owners of the property planted an extensive garden and installed a dam to provide sufficient water to keep the gardens thriving. Margy has recently been successful in obtaining a grant from Land For Wildlife, through the Sunshine Coast Council, to plant 300 native tube stock. Her plan is to expand the existing rainforest and reduce the amount of mowing required.  

They also bought fruit trees from Fruit Tree Cottage in Forest Glen and the owner's father, Peter, now in his 80s, delivered them. He had grown up on the other side of the Montville Tennis Club and filled them in on historical information of the house.  

Margy says, “Peter had fond memories of playing at our house with Eleanor’s and Dr Dark’s children. All the neighbours played tennis at the weekend, and Peter and his friends would take their racquets in the hope that they'd get a game. While the adults boiled the billy for tea and the ladies brought out their cakes, Dr Dark would usually say,

‘Come on boys, how about a hit?’”

These are the same tennis courts that Margy and Mark joined. And this is the same neighbourhood which enveloped them when they bought the house and a real estate business in Maleny. Margy said, ‘We were really lucky to fall into a great and supportive neighbourhood.’  

Margy continued, “Peter told us that, at age 10, he would ride his horse to school in Maleny, down the very steep hill at the end of Mill Hill Road, across the valley that is now Baroon Pocket Dam, and up the steep slope on the other side. A very different life!”

Having a supportive community and being a part of Zonta were a lifeline for Margy.

When Mark passed away unexpectedly in early August 2024, she was the President of the Zonta Club of the Blackall Range. She is now in her third year of her four year term.

So, this combined with the garden and the house gave her big projects to focus on.  

I ask her what drew her to Zonta. She said she had initially attended the Christmas Dinner

Meeting where members were also packing parcels for women’s refuges. 

“I liked what they stood for - empowering the lives of women and girls through improved health, education, gender, political and educational equality – all things I could relate to, and I liked the volunteers so I joined!”

Fundraising is a big part of what the club does and with this money they are able to send funds to shelters and other organisations who work in specific areas of domestic violence. 

Margy shared, “Bob Atkinson, Co-Chair of DFV Prevention Council Queensland gave a talk at our Area meeting. He said there are 900,000 reports of DV each year in Queensland and 70-90% of police work is DV-related.”

Margy is really proud of how “Zonta Blackall Range has grown in that time, from 14 members to 27 members, soon to be 29”. 

She has also been kept busy with her little companion, Daisy, a beautiful miniature poodle. Daisy has brought back to the house some of the vibrancy lost when Mark passed away. 

“The thing with dogs is they are very good at bringing people to you because people automatically want to stop and chat.”

Mill Hill House is having a bit of a second life too, as it is becoming a home away from home for Rhiannon’s musician friends who come to play on the Range or the Sunshine

Coast. Instead of having to sleep in their cars or on someone’s floor or couch, they can have a proper bed and Margy loves having all these young people dropping in.

Knowing that the previous owners used to open the garden to the public, I asked Margy if she would consider doing the same and she responded with an emphatic no. But then she says she has been asked by a Zonta member to consider it, so who knows. Maybe with a lot of assistance and plenty of time, this beautiful, peaceful part of Montville will be opened again.

Not long before I left, I asked Margy if she has a particular life philosophy. 

“I think we should be kind and honest. Kindness seems to have gone out the window and social media has not helped that. There is so much anger towards unknown people. 

“How can people not be concerned about hurting other people, but it seems so much anonymity enables people to be opinionated about things that, often, they don’t know about.”

We both joked that people have too much free time on their hands, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they joined Zonta!