In 1982 we decided to complete the Universal Hall, as Vance Martin had managed to get the third World Wilderness Congress 1983 booked. This meant not only completing the Building but turning it from a private Building to one for public use. (This story is told in detail in A Scottish Tourist Board Grant to complete the Universal Hall.)

When the final plans for the upgrading and completion of the Universal Hall were finished there were lots of jobs that just had ‘By Others’ written beside the description. For instance, there was the whole café area which had no cabinets or equipment, just basic lighting and no fire proofing. We must have had some basic plumbing, certainly that was all connected.

The wonderful original Hall builders started to return, and of course Lyle Schnadt was to be our main builder with James Hill as Master Carpenter.

This was all in the contract that the Scottish Tourist Board was helping to fund the project. James’ main work was to construct the curved staircases. George Ripley had chosen a very new material to make the sides of the staircase and the upper foyer, ‘Perspex’. This was so new as a building material that we all wondered if it could be bent at such a deep curve without breaking and how was it going to be held up and take the considerable strain?

Between Lyle, James and George they worked out that they would have to bend both the wood and the Perspex at the same time, placing the Perspex between layers of laminated wood to form a banister. James needed more skills to accomplish this so he went and studied with a local boat builder, Frank White, to learn how to steam and bend wood.

Once the Trustees had agreed to the whole project, I pointed out that as I was the only person who knew exactly what was in that grant proposal, it would have to be carried out to the letter, as the Tourist Board could ask for part of their money back within the next ten years unless we did what was in the proposal, and also held events for the public as was promised. I knew that various enthusiastic members of the Foundation would come up and want to change things and that could be very expensive! So that is how I became the Project Manager as well (a title Sandy Barr thought up for me rather than Focaliser!).

When the builders were gathering and we were starting to clean up the empty front foyer, one of them suddenly appeared quite upset questioning why I was the Project Manager as I was not a builder or an architect. He was right of course, it was very unlikely – but the gods had put me in charge.

The guest department had sent over someone they thought could help with the carpentry, and I had asked him to start making the round holes in the foyer ceiling for the light fittings. In the meantime, this same builder had looked at the proposal and wanted to know who these ‘others’ were, who was supervising them and felt he should be doing that. Fortunately, Gordon Cutler stepped in and said that he was supervising ‘the others’ for which I was very grateful as I hadn’t really thought about it, thereby diffusing a stressful atmosphere.

Meanwhile the lovely guest just kept on carving perfect round holes in the ceiling amid all this confusion going on. I asked him if he could give us more time and stay longer, this is what we needed – capable self motivated people. This was dear Dennis DiVito, who eventually became a full member and married Virginia Lloyd Davies. Dennis created the first Kitchen in the Café and Eric Franciscus found and ordered all the kitchen equipment. The ‘By Others’ were arriving fast.

Some of them were from other departments within the Foundation, such as Jonathan Levi and Leonard Sleath who did the wallpapering in the Foyer, with expensive hessian wallpaper that I thought would not show pin marks too much.,

Pauline Tawse, the artist who had originally bought the Park Building from Captain Gibson, the Caravan Park owner, and then generously gave it to the Caddys with the grounds, came forward with some colour schemes for the interior designs. She had a very great love of nature and a good sense of what worked in large spaces so we chose the colour of Autumn bracken for the foyer wallpaper, the green and brown of the forest floor for the carpets and the purple of heather was already there in the seating. ROC had always said we needed gold, green and magenta in our sanctuaries and we definitely thought of the Hall as a sanctuary.

To comply with the Tourist Board’s requirements we had to add disabled lavatories. These were now built but needed the decorative tiles placed around the basins. Lyle was beyond busy and I was pushing him to stay on the time lines I had drawn up week by week. Lyle didn’t really understand that I had carpets etc coming in and that certain finishing trades could not be held up, so he got his daughter Sarah Schnadt, to place the tiles, and they are still there.

A professional interior designer from Australia was living at Cullerne during this time, and he had had real challenges with the Community with his ideas for colour but despite the considerably difficult atmosphere Ruurd offered to talk to me, and gave me his tickets for the Trade Fair for Interior Designers in London. I needed to go and find a good carpet for the Hall. He explained his thinking to me and confessed that he had completely misread the soft Scottish light and was still thinking in harsh Australian light when he had his arguments over colour schemes.

About a day before I was due to go down to London to the Fair, again the guest department sent me a young man who was literally on the way to his plane, but he worked for the Australian Wool Board and had the knowledge I needed to choose the right carpet. Literally in five minutes I asked him for the language and information I needed to let the companies think I knew about carpet manufacture. Again serendipity.

Once I got to London and entered the Fair, I was asked if I was an architect or an interior designer. I said, ‘I am neither but I am the person who says what the money gets spent on.’ They let me in immediately! There at the Fair were many many carpets so, armed with Pauline Tawse’s colour scheme and George and my agreement about the kind of design required, there it was, the perfect carpet and the company was prepared to weave the amount we needed to the Australian Wool Board’s standards which is much higher that Britain’s. We were on course.

George and his wife Frances found some lovely hotel crockery from a Pottery in the South for the Café. They personally drove down in their own old car and gently carried this incredibly heavy load back to the Hall to save delivery costs and time. These were the original cups and plates in cream with brown flowers.

Meanwhile we had no drawings from George for the auditorium doors, which had to be fire proof, and we were running low on funds. Eventually Richard Brockbank, a superb woodworker living within the extended community, offered to make them pretty much for cost and covered them in leather which, although we knew some people would object, look lovely still. So another ‘by other’ task superbly carried out.

Soon after the staircases and the Perspex were installed (only one small crack near the top!) I was standing one evening in the upper Foyer and looking at the fir trees outside which were much smaller then and thinking about how George had always said there was to be a stained glass window there. His wife Frances had done a design but it was felt that no-one knew how to install a stained glass window and we had at that stage neither the funds nor the time before the third World Wilderness Congress was due to open in about two months’ time.

As I stood there I noticed a man holding a large scroll like a building plan looking up at me. I went down to meet him and discovered that this was James Hubbell, a very well know American architect and stained glass window expert. James gifted us a magnificent design for the stained glass window and two for the doors. James told me that he wanted only the best German glass to be used and that he had made enquires and the German factory had the colours needed in stock!

I said, ‘thank you thank you but even if I had the money for the glass, we open in about eight weeks and I have no-one here with the needed skills to make and insert them’. James responded with, ‘Well I have a student who is better than me at making stained glass and she has a boyfriend who is learning how to do it, so if you find their fares and accommodation and buy the glass they will come and make and install it.
Serendipity. I took the plans down to the CC where dinner was being served, showed the designs and asked if anyone wanted to take on this wonderful project. It needed to happen now as I had no more time myself. Roger Doudna and Terry Killam took it on, found the funds, the air fares everything and, of course, the Foundation agreed to looking after the two young Americans. Janet Banks, a local stained glass artist worked with them.

So as James Hill was finishing the staircases and adding framing for the stained glass, during the day the stain glass makers were making the stained glass panels in what is now the Dance Drama Studio, and installing a panel every night. They got very little sleep and that whole window was installed in six weeks! TRULY MIRACLES ALL AROUND.

We were coming close to opening time for the third World Wilderness Conference and I had not planned on having front doors at that stage as we had no design and no money left. But Lyle could not bear his beautiful Hall to have the temporary front doors for the Conference.

He found some left over oak from the whisky barrel houses and he found wonderful door handles and installed the open angel wings from the off cuts of the main stained glass window with, I’m sure, the help of ‘others’. It was a wonderful surprise for us all on the opening morning.

All night we were cleaning the Hall and the gardeners brought in wonderful tubs of flowering daffodils, the whole building was singing. Those of us who had worked all night hid in the bushes in the Park garden as a coach load of people pulled up at the freshly gravelled entrance with its Angel wing doors.

The first lady went up to the door chatting and, as she took hold of the handle, she suddenly stepped back and looked up at the building. Everyone behind her had to stop too and they also gasped, they literally gasped.

That’s what ‘the others’ helped us to do. Gasps of delight were all we needed. On time, on budget, but not without the expertise and willingness of all ‘the others’ to give to the whole.