18 members and 1 guest, Tony Nathan, attended (who has been a number of times and joins us again) along with guest speaker Anthony Wilson
Ian Ballantine was chair and after opening the meeting Ian asked everybody to be seated. Ian then presented a wonderful slide show for President Richard’s birthday which was last Wednesday. Ian then invited everybody to Breakfast.
Following breakfast Ian introduced President Richard who welcomed members and guests to the meeting. President Richard also welcomed back Chris from his overseas trip and thanked Larry for submitting the Market Annual Report at short notice on behalf of Charles Agius, Market Director, who is currently overseas.
Ian introduced the guest speaker Tony Wilson whose topic was HMAS Melbourne. Tony started in the Navy in 1969 in Cerberus. The Melbourne was coming in for a refit so he was sent to Sydney to join the ship. Britain offered the ship to Australia when the 2nd world war finished. Ship was launched in 1955 it was the first carrier in the world to have the latest landing system. Previously it was a barrier system rather than a hook on the plane engaging any one of five retaining lines.
It took 5 nautical miles for the ship to come to a halt when traveling at 20knots. As it was all manual time was needed to close the valves by the sailors and that’s why collisions occurred. The crash with the USS Evans was determined to be the US ships fault and not the Melbourne.
Tony had a wonderful experience and was sad to leave the ship in 1971. It was sold to Chinese for scrap metal around 1985. The Voyager crash resulted in over 80 deaths while the Evans was a little less with all deaths occurring on the 2 smaller destroyers. Melbourne was around 20,000 tons whereas today’s carriers are 4-5 times that size.
A motion, recommended by the Board, was put to the meeting regarding a change to the By-laws re removing “nominations from the floor” at the Annual General Meeting. The motion failed narrowly (by 1 vote) with 11 voting for the motion and 6 voting against the motion. A 2/3rds majority of those attending was required. The vote was an oddity as the seconder of the motion left early leaving the 2/3rds majority a vote short. A further motion, recommended by the Board, was put by Peter Guttmann to donate $5500 for Applied Learning Awards. The Club has supported Applied Learning Awards over recent years. The motion was passed.
Tim Lynch did not have time to fine members. Ian called on President to close meeting for the last time. The President thanked all members for coming and asked members to be a Gift to the World and enjoy themselves in the coming week. Report provided by Kevin Davidson.
