President’s Report - April 2025

President

26 Mar

Greetings everyone

Well Melbourne is certainly full of weather surprises – from a beautiful day for our early morning run to UK Motors to a more precipitous day for our Drive and Be Driven – Bring your other car. What can we say – Melbourne’s weather always keeps you guessing and laughs at any attempts to plan.

Thank you to everyone who attended our Ladies and partners evening, a very enjoyable night was the overwhelming feedback. The Florence Thomson tour is certainly a unique event and I don’t believe there is anything like it on the Australian Motoring calendar that celebrates Women in motoring so well. Thanks to Maureen Ross for her presentation and all she and her committee do to keep it going. I also wish to thank John and Helen Reis for organising the sweet treats for the Ladies and Partners and the incomparable Ralph Plarre for the special cakes for the evening.

I was also my great privilege to present Wayne Spittle with two trophies on the night. Wayne and Lorraine unfortunately were in Singapore and missed our Christmas Picnic and Club and Concours Awards presentations. Wayne won the V8 Trophy at the 24 Concours and he was also the recipient of a Distinguished Service Award. Wayne, ably supported by Lorraine has been instrumental in re-engineering our club database both on a state and federal, this together with his tireless work on the newsletter and social media makes him a most worthy recipient – Congratulations Wayne and Lorraine.

As mentioned earlier the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the participants in our Drive and be Driven Day. The vehicles attending were – let’s just say diverse with everything from a classic Lotus Elan to a Chevrolet Silverado, Ralph Plarre gains another mention here being the worlds fanciest uber eats driver, turning up in his Ferrari with fresh pies and pasties to warm our spirits. Thanks again Ralph. Those who attended were treated to a display of handmade timber models thanks to a Men’s shed colleague of Eddie Newton. Fred has been making these since he was 15 and the detail in each was quite mind blowing, we will see if we can talk Fred into bringing these along to a club night too.

There are lots of activities happening in the club at the moment – please check out the calendar in the newsletter and update your diaries. I will mention one event in particular, that being the visit to Werribee Open Range Zoo on Easter Sunday. As many of you may know the Elephants have been relocated from Melbourne Zoo and we are hoping they will be on display for our visit. We have organised a RROCA Vic Safari bus, but numbers are limited so please book in early. If there is overwhelming interest, we will try and organise a second safari so please help us by booking in now.

To keep your appetites wet a few of the things we are planning are: