Meeting 20 May 2003
We lunched on May 20th at the RAC Club: Downer, Woods, Cherry, Gardiner, Moor, Walker-Powell, Venner, Main, Clarke and a new friend, David Brown (1957 – 1966 Whitcombe), were there. This meeting recorded, so far, the largest number of OP’s at our meetings. Tony George, Jan Webber and Ben Humphrey sent their best wishes from the United Kingdom. Ben told us the news that Pompey has been promoted. It has certainly been a long time coming; if I remember correctly Pompey went down in 1959. One or two of us remember Pompey’s greatest hour when it won the FA Cup in 1939. Today, it would be hard to comprehend the excitement then; the whole town turned out to welcome the victorious team on its return.
A significant part of the lunch was spent passing photograhs around. Cherry bought a series he took when he recently followed in Shackleton’s footsteps by tracing his voyage from the Antarctic Peninusla to South Georgia via Elephant Island. I wonder if any OP has been further south than Cherry?. Gardiner bought along a photograph of Drayton Boy Scouts in 1951. Among the OP alumni were Michael Craddock, Rudge Penley and Roger Tresias. There may have been more.
David Brown has been in Australia for close on 20 years and is part owner of a battery company, Battery Energy. In a previous life when he worked for Lucas in the UK he help develop a battery for an electric car that was able to reavel 80 miles on a single charge.
The drought seems to be coming to an end. It not doing so in the way we expected, which was in a succession of downpours. Instead rain is creeping inland from the coastal regions east of the Great Dividing range.
The next 4 meetings are on Tuesday 12 August, 18 November 2003, 17 February, and 18 May 2004 . Those of you with flexible travel plans please make a note; we would love to see you. Gap year students and backpackers in Australia should not be deterred by the thought of an unsought expense; I am sure we can work something out.
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