Jacqueline Davis has sat at the Long Gully Uniting Church pipe organ almost every Sunday for more than 35 years.
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The 86-year-old is retiring from her role as official organist with her last performance on July 11.
Ms Davis said she has mixed feelings about finishing in her role with the church community a second home for her.
"I've been away before but we came back. We have always been a part of the community, even when we lived in Ararat and Horsham," she said.
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"It's been like a second home to me because I have grown up here. The memories go way back. I had a grandmother who lived here and I always visited church when I came to Bendigo before the (Second World War). Later on I came here after we were married."
Ms Davis stayed with father's Bendigo relatives at the start of WWII and attended Sunday school at the Long Gully Uniting Church before the family relocated to Horsham to see out the rest of WWII.
She later returned to live in Bendigo in 1976 and returned to the Long Gully Uniting Church as a Sunday school teacher.
When the church community found she could play the piano, Ms Davis was roped in as a reserve pipe organist before taking over when Wilbur Darby retired in 1986.
"Wilbur Darby was the organist and he wanted to give it up," Ms Davis said. "I'd been playing the piano and I got conned a bit. If Wilbur was unavailable I played."
Ms Davis taught herself to play the organ.
"It's an instrument, I wouldn't know the ins and outs of being an organist. I just taught myself," she said.
"Having played the piano, it was a challenge to (go to the organ) but it was something I tried. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I make a noise."
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Long Gully Uniting Church caretaker Paul De Graaff said Ms Davis would be hard to replace.
"Her tone sounds so beautiful, Jacqui just knows how to play it," he said. "I have only heard one person other than Jacqui play it. It was gentlemen here for open day and he played but Jacqui had a better note for it.
"She's going to be very hard to replace. It's hard to get someone as good and as regular as her every Sunday. There's no one as good as her."
Ms Davis' daughter Bronwyn said her mother had tried to get her own children involved but without success.
"It's always been Mum's thing and it was good for her to have this as part of her life every Sunday," Bronwyn said. "She tried to rope her own kids, she has seven, and we dutifully went to Sunday school but that was about it."
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