The Reunion
Steve (Dolly) Gray, Morrow 46th
The Chase
After a while of hosting Happy Roberts and Alec McCowan at different times, and over
a few drinks the subject always got onto whoever they had been in contact with from
Leeuwin days. After one particularly heavy drinking night, I decided to do something
about it. With the power of the Internet, I sent out an initial email to about 8
people that I knew from Leeuwin. The majority were email addresses from the Up
Periscope website and the email mentioned the possibility of a future reunion.
The initial 8 email addresses turned into 12 then 16. The email momentum just kept
going, then, somebody had an email address for Bob Smith. Bob had the foresight to
put together a nominal roll for our intake, with discharge dates, date of birth
details. Working on the assumption that most people would have ended up back in
their home states, I appointed different people in each state to chase up their
people. Special thanks to Col Bott and Neville Stone who chased up some
particularly hard ones to find. Also the lady at my local electoral office, when
she found out it was a Navy Reunion and not a School Reunion, she couldn't help me
enough.
It became quite exciting chasing down individuals, working the phone books,
websites. Although it was sad to discover who had passed away in the mean time,
with more from Morrow that we could confirm. I believe there are others that have
passed away but we have been unable to confirm details. It was also disappointing
to track some people down who didn't want to be contacted. But in the end it was
their decision. So out of an intake of 186, we managed to account for 130 plus
members.
Place time and Venue
I decided to hold the reunion in Nov 2004, but in the meantime I had spoken to
Mouse Hitchings who wasn't travelling very well so we decided to bring the first
reunion forward. It was very quickly decided to hold the reunion in Sydney.
Thanks a lot to LCDR Rick Neville, we where able to hire the Senior Sailors Mess
at HMAS Watson. Rick also obtained the RANR band, which where quite well received.
Unfortunately Mouse Hitchings passed away a month or so prior to our first reunion.
A few of our intake attended his funeral.
30 years
It was a memorable night, although in hind site we didn't really need much
food or music as everybody was busy catching up with old mates. Around 105
attended the Friday night meet and greet. It was much harder finding a suitable
venue for a more formal sit down dinner for the Saturday night. But thanks to
Russel Sage we booked into the Paddington RSL Club. 110 people attended this
function, including a few who couldn't make the Friday night. Who will ever
forget the look on Steve 'Egg' Halls face when he made his late entrance.
Also a special thanks to Happy Roberts for doing the Ode, Russell Sage
remembering the 'Do Dah' song from all those years ago.
Other notable attendees where some of our Divisional Staff - LCDR Clive
Mayo RAN Rtd and ABWM Ian 'Simo' Symington RAN Rtd. Clive made a very heart
felt speech and was very touched by 'Elvis' Miller's presentation of his mounted
tattoo letter to his parents.
The only real negative point was the lack of time at each venue, or was it
that we where having too much fun catching up with everyone? It was an
unbelievable weekend, one not to be forgotten for a long time. Personally I
would like to thank everybody that I asked for help, nothing was too much trouble.
Also a special thanks to my neighbor and former Bravo class mate Chris Stockman.
I voted Chris as co-signatory for the Reunion Cheque account.
Thanks
Also a special thanks to Chris Parr and Stephen Bennetts for their work on our
wonderful website. As you can see they have put in a lot of work with the website,
there are still a few things to do, but we have made a start.
Need your help
The next project is to formalize each state with a State Vice President to look
after the intake membership in each state. Each rep will need to gather contact
info of all available JR's and liaise with me for reunion schedules as well as
supplying pictures and post reports on their respective reunion meets to myself.
So please could I have a volunteer for each state. The Contact page will list all
Vice Presidents of each state and this info will also be included on this page.
Reunion Pictures
Please forward any jpeg images of past reunion along with list of names of
each member to so that both he and Steve Bennetts can upload them
under the Gallery Reunion pictures.
All the best,
Steve 'Dolly' Gray. 13 September 2009
President Reunion 46th