The Basque Club Of North Queensland - Australia, Inc.

The Basque Club of North Queensland was born in Townsville in 2003 out of a telephone directory. In May that year José Mari “Joe” Goicoechea, a Basque-Australian civil engineer who would become its first president, sent 230 letters to “all the Bascos we could find in the telephone book”, and within a month 260 people replied. On 8 June some twenty of them met at his home, agreed to set up a cultural association, free of politics and religion, and chose the club's name by 18 votes to 2; the founding meeting was held on 10 August at the Wulguru community centre. It was registered as an association on 13 November 2003 and says it started with more than two hundred members and has kept them. The Basque Government recognised it on 19 April 2005, and it was the third Basque club recognised in Australia.