Coffee in the Arvo

Well yesterday (Sunday) afternoon we had our first "Coffee in the Arvo" cafe afternoon at the Binningup Community hall. I hired a real, ridgy-didge, u-beaut coffee machine from Bunbury, paid $30 a kilo for some decent freshly ground coffee and prepared to remember how to make a latte.

We promoted the activity around town for about 2 weeks before hand and church members were encouraged to personally invite their mates - the idea to create a "proximity space" of some kind and provide an opportunity for us to get to know new people and give locals something a little different to do on a Sunday afternoon.

The end result, around 40 people turned up, 7 from the church and the rest from the community. We started at 4pm and I expected people to hang around until about 5-5.30, but was pretty stoked (and really knackered - I was the only coffee maker!) when the last people left at about 7 o'clock. The atmosphere was relaxed and everyone just stayed and chatted, and stayed, and stayed ...

So, despite what some of the detractors said, our experiment in producing a "proximity space" was a resounding success! From January we are going to run them monthly and hopefully will continue to get a good turnout. There are no cafe's within a cooee of Binningup and nowhere for people to just hangout and chat so it may be this little venture will fill a bit of a hole in the Binningup communities social life - and God only knows where it will lead.