[Douglas Greville]

Geoff

Originally posted by Geoff Winnington-Ball
[B]I could kick m'self in the arse for not having contacted you earlier, myself! My bad. )

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. Came to the conclusion you were either too busy, your spam filter was culling me out, you were ignoring me etc. But
I can be a persistent sod when I want to......

Thanks for your common-sense approach - in retrospect, and especially given your own sphere of interest, I expected nothing less from you.

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

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.

Which is why I have suddenly taken an interest in the latest
rumblings out of Corowa, for it appears to now be at that
point where others have stumbled - Beltring and the VW mob
to name 2, AND the 2 reasons listed above.

-snip-
conversation, but in a nutshell, that was Beltring's big mistake, at least as viewed by many friends of ours. I tend to concur.

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

Corowa has a long way to go until they reach that scope of operations - and perhaps they don't want to, an organisational nightmare I would think - but within the confines of the Ball Park, and that judged against the current size of the show, the proportions are slowly getting there, and it's good to be able to 'think outside the box' well in advance. Again, though, we're treading into the sphere of a wholly separate topic here, but I will say that I have every confidence, now knowing some of the players as I do, that this gorge can be spanned.

Earlier I did a quick "Google Earth" of Ball Park and surrounds. It
does not lend itself to growth, an arena, or tracked vehicle play
area. I think there are going to have to be some hard decisions
made, hopefully they will be wise ones..........

I have had more than my fill of club politics where I live, so don't
wish to be embroiled in MV ones. They are nearly always devisive
and thus the subject hobby suffers.

Re Corowa '08, I have every intention of joining your mob down there next year! We shall indeed keep in closer touch in the interim.

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"! :-)

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. ;-)

Regards
Doug