A 2027 anniversary conversation series.

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About The Civic Stage

The Civic Stage is currently in development.

Its first public series will take place in Geelong in 2027, marking the 50th anniversary of the Eric Ormond Baker Charitable Fund. In the year leading up to that anniversary, the project is being shaped through writing, archival research, filmed conversations and careful public reflection.

This development period matters. The Civic Stage is not being launched as a finished event product, but as a conversation that needs to earn its own room. The articles, stories and notes published here will help establish the question, the historical context and the civic tone of the 2027 series.

At the centre of the project is a belief that public life still needs places where people can think together across institutions, sectors and forms of experience. The Civic Stage is being built slowly so that the eventual room is not only well attended, but well prepared.

Some of the material published here will look backwards, including to the life of Eric Ormond Baker OBE and the civic world in which he lived. Some of it will look to the present, asking what forms of responsibility, generosity and leadership are needed now.

The Civic Stage is not intended to answer the question on its own. It is intended to make room for the question to be shared.

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About Eric Ormond Baker OBE KStJ JP

Eric Ormond Baker OBE was an Australian businessman, civic organiser and philanthropist whose life moved through many of Melbourne’s major twentieth-century institutions. His story is not only one of personal service, but of a civic culture in which workplaces, charitable bodies, ambulance services, returned-service associations, sporting clubs and public committees helped sustain community life.

Born in South Melbourne, he began work at the age of twelve after leaving school to help support his family. He joined the retail world that would become closely associated with the Myer Emporium, one of Melbourne’s defining department stores, and over time came to understand the institution from the ground up.

During the First World War, Baker served with the Australian Imperial Force. He was wounded at Fromelles, returned to active service, was commissioned as an officer and later served as adjutant of the 59th Battalion. Like many of his generation, he returned from war with a deepened sense of duty, comradeship and institutional responsibility.

After the war, he resumed his career with the Myer organisation, where he would spend more than fifty years. He rose to become Director of Staff and Associate Director, with responsibilities that extended beyond commerce into personnel, staff welfare and the social life of a large workplace community. Contemporary accounts of his retirement describe the regard in which he was held by Myer staff, including a farewell attended by hundreds of employees.

Baker’s civic life reached well beyond Myer. He held long-standing roles in St John Ambulance, the Victorian Civil Ambulance, the Lord Mayor’s Fund, returned-service organisations, hospital and benevolent committees, sporting associations and public appeals. Across these commitments, a consistent pattern appears: he helped organise, sustain and serve institutions that depended on trust, continuity and shared responsibility.

His service was recognised through his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, as a Knight of the Order of St John, and through his long service as a Justice of the Peace. Yet the more enduring measure of his life may be found in the organisations he served, the people he supported, and the charitable fund he established through his will.

The Eric Ormond Baker Charitable Fund continues as a perpetual charitable fund supporting community, educational, scientific and benevolent purposes. In 2027, the Fund will mark its 50th anniversary.