The celebrations took place 'as advertised', between 19th and 22nd July inclusive, it was a real blast! But quite 'full on' for us who are rapidly approaching (but have not reached) their second childhood.
Amazingly we got through all 4 days with no major hitches at all - I'm still quite surprised and more than a little relieved that it all went so well. Of course I really shouldn't have been surprised with such a dedicated band of committee members and a large number of willing volunteers. To all of you an enormous vote of THANKS!
And of course we would have been wasting our time if YOU hadn't turned up in droves. The last counts I had were
151 for Day one registration (That was a nice day to catch up with old friends)
I suspect a few more actually came along.
212 for Tid & HSK including 75 on the coaches on Day two (I suspect we were
outnumbered by the press). Glen did a great job at TID, and the plaque and time
capsule at HSK were really nice and relaxed!
282 was the official figure for lunch on day 3. That was a great success I think
- hopefully not too many speeches and presentations so that people could only
come on that day were able to catch up a bit. I was really taken by surprise and
touched by Brian Hale's great poem and superb memento - thank you very much
Brian :-)
134 signed up for the films at Questacon - perhaps a few less actually came
along. Anybody who didn't come along missed two really good movies, but many
were probably all 'Apollo'd out' by then! And we had a live feed from the solar
eclipse in Japan thrown in as well!
I have left the pages for each day on-line (including a collage for each day courtesy of my better half) and also the attendance list.
So I will be 79 by the 45th and 84 by the 50th Anniversary - I'll be there. I'm confident that someone else will take over the organising!
Thanks again to all who made this such a success - best wishes - JohnS
P.S. Betty is already posting a mass of photos on her Picassa Web site. Check them out at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/esaxon1941
John Saxon 17Dec2009