Melbourne dinner and tennis; 23-28 January


We arrived in Melbourne Thursday 23rd. We have been so lucky with the weather, avoiding tbe really scorching temperatures thzt seem to have circulated around us. On tbe road journey from Adelaide we had some rain but nothing to spoil our enjoyment or the spectacular scenary.

Melbourne is tennis city at the moment. We decided to chance it and went to the tennis centre which was a short tram ride from our hotel. We got a day pass into the event and the  queued up to get on one of the main courts where we saw a couple of great matches.

The otber days saw us visit much of what Melbourne has to offer, whuch is a lot. Full of construction and amazing pace of development since i last visited.

Monday 27th January


Australia Day falling on a Sunday this was a public holiday. The Melbourne OM gathering was held at the RAC Victoria on Bourke Street. 
Justin Wernham had organised for us to dine at the Bistro which turned out to be perfect for our gathering. 

We were a party of twelve. Six OMs including myself all with partners. At the last minute Dan Penson, a regular at these events, had to pull out. Dan lives some 3 or 4 hours away and is a volunteer firefighter, as is his wife I believe, and they needed to
be on duty or standby. 

Those present were: Justin and Emma Wernham, Robyn and Judy Tillyard, Gary and Kerryn Yorke, Roy and Angela Hanson, Randy and Julie Marshall, plus Gordon and Angela Mizner. 

Several OMs had offered apologies and expressed their wish to be kept informed of future events. 

I updated the gathering on developments with the OMC and also some information about the Foundation. OMs are always interested on such occasions to compare experiences of yesteryear and hear news of connections in common. 

I was very interested to learn about these OMs backstories and what had brought them out to Australia in the first place. I had expected that many would come out for work reasons but it seems that mostly it was for family or ‘new life opportunities’.
Some like Robyn and Roy had been here a long time. 

I was delighted to see that everyone was very appreciative to see the OM President
and hear news.

Standing L-R: Robyn Tillyard (48-52), Randy Marshall (71-76), Justin Wernham (78-82)
Front L-R: Roy Hanson (50-54) , Gordon Mizner (65-69), Gary Yorke (72-78)


L-R: Randy Marshall, Angela Hanson, Angela Mizner, Julie Yorke, Justin Wernham, Emma Wernham, Judy Tillyard, Robyn Tillyard, Gordon Mizner, Roy Hanson, Gary Yorke.

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