[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Originally posted by Douglas Greville
Mate, for the last 3 or more years I have sent the odd email to you, knowing that the address was valid, but never getting a reply.......

Oh don't whinge, you're old enough to cry! You HAVE gotten some replies, but I'll use the spam thing as a good excuse on others... I DO get at least a 150 of the buggers a day now. They scooped 'sunray' off the website and I'm screwed...

Gee, flattery will get you a long way...........

Why do you think I employ it so skilfully?

The Corowa topic is a bit of a mine field and I don't know the whole story, so have no desire to take sides as it were. What I will comment on and it is a tangent, but nether the less relevant: there was once an annual VW meet in England. It's very success was it's nemesis. It became a monster and ceased to exist, never to be replaced, much to the regret of the VW community. Beltring went a different way, a committee that couldn't cope handing off to commercialism. At least Beltring, despite its faults still exists. At the end of the day, those of KVE appear to be fast facing the prospect of their own tiger-by-the-tail. I note there is a "club" and
also a seperate "committee" - de ja vu Beltring!
To keep it as a casual "meet", or to become an "event" with all that involves? At the moment they seem to have a foot in each, I doubt that will continue for much longer.

I'm not going to tread in that minefield either, except to say that in my experience, the acronym K.I.S.S. seems to apply in almost all cases. Hell, if it can work in the army...

You may not be aware that Oz is seeing a sharp decline in community/charity/fraternal gatherings, this usually boils down to 2 reasons.
A) Cost due to insurance and compliance (a deluge of laws at every level of government)
and
B) The snowballing amount of time needed due to the above and the inability of people to allocate that time from the pressures of modern life.

I know only too well, especially the latter - if I could afford to, even just the web work I do could easily be a full-time job! It seems I'm working seven days a week now, at two jobs - the one that pays me, and the one that costs me. Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment...

And don't get me started on Government as a whole!

True, but at least it survived, it is however a good case study and the lessons are there to be learned or ignored.

Methinks Beltring survives only because of the people and in spite of its self-styled bureaucracy. Yes indeed, many lessons to be learned from that...

I see you have been paying attention in your travels: I have met Canadians who get very twitchy at the Aussie use of the term "mob"! :-)

I must confess to being frightfully confused these days... given all that's passed over the years, it seems I must claim to having become part Canuck, part Yank, part Scots git, part Pommie twit, part Aussie, part... I could go on and on, except that the mixed metaphors now confuse even me, and I'm the one speaking them! And this is stone-cold sober...

Oh, do make sure you bring a real hat, Corowa in summer can be a tad sunny and you know what that does to you northern types - I have the picture to prove it. ;-)

I think we've already covered that, except the alleged pic... you know what you can do with THAT, but because there are ladies on the Forum I shan't elaborate on the scatological details!