These pics were taken at our Millenium dinner.

The majority of the GGREC weekenders arrived at their choice of accommodation during the Friday, half staying at the Erica Caravan Park while the others were at the Mountain River Lodge in Rawson. The Erica group came over to Rawson for a BBQ dinner that night and a review of the proposed schedule for the next few days.

Saturday morning we awoke to a beautiful sunrise over the hills, thanks to Kate and William waking up at the crack of dawn, and the promise of a warm sunny day. We all arrived at the Walhalla Cemetery car park at 10 am for one of the locals, John Aldersea, to take us on an historic walking tour of the town. John was born in Walhalla in 1945 and lived with his family in the general store until he was 14 years old. His love of the town was illustrated by the fact that he never lost touch with the town and its’ people and had moved back a couple of years ago. It’s great to hear about a town and its’ history from a person so passionate about it. This tour set us up for the weekend highlighting the many places of interest for us to explore further at our leisure.

After lunch at the General Store, great pies so I was told, some of us braved the track up to the Cricket Ground. (I was sure it was a 4WD track but Dave talked me into taking the Commodore up it!) After throwing a few frizbees around we all meandered back down the hill to catch up with the rest of the group for a trip on the Walhalla Railway. While not as nostalgic as a steam railway, the little diesel engine took us for a nice trip up the valley and back. They are currently working on the extension of the line all the way to Walhalla township. That night we all met at the Erica Caravan Park for a BBQ dinner and a great social evening.

Sunday morning the clouds soon covered the mountain tops and we had fine drizzle off and on all day. Luckily this didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm and a group of us decided to check out the Thompson Reservoir. Our three year drought has taken its toll and the reservoir is very low. William decided to fall asleep on the drive back so we headed to the lodge at Rawson for a late lunch and a leisurely afternoon chatting with Val and Ian VK3VIB. We then headed back to Walhalla for the gold mine tour. Donning hard hats we bravely ventured into the hillside. The guide explained the mine had 27 levels and was 1000 metres deep, as deep as three Rialto towers below the ground. We managed not to lose anyone in the labyrinth of tunnels although Paul VK3TGX and Marianna took their time coming back to the surface. We didn’t ask what they’d got up to! That night we all met at the Miner’s Café in Walhalla for dinner. While the service wasn’t all that quick, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Most called into the lodge at Rawson for coffee afterwards and a discussion ensued on where our next trip away would be.

The GGREC labour day weekend away.

Our long weekend away at Walhalla only lasted one day. Sure there were intervals of light and dark, sun and rain and even a couple of barbecues, but subjectively it only felt like a single long and pleasant day. It really began on the Friday afternoon when we joined the pre-public holiday exodus from Melbourne. One half of the group established camp at Erica Caravan park, the second half were accommodated at a horsy type motel lodge at Rawson. The third half of the group was made up of Club members who came along on day trips. (maths was never my strong point)

Here (and in no particular order) I describe the rest of the weekend.
David VK3XMF had boldly organized the trip. This went very well. His phone calls , faxes, e-mails, letters and flyers all came together ensuring that we were all in approximately the same place, at the same time and knew what was going on. I think that there are a couple of vacancies at SOCOG that he could fill quite nicely.

At the extremely bright and early hour of 10:00 Saturday morning we all met at the Walhalla city limits for a guided tour of the town by one of the 17 local residents, John Aldersea. Leaving no stone unturned we walked to the other city limit some 2 km away while soaking in the history, culture and very-small-rocks-in-the-shoes, of the town. As Walhalla is at the bottom of a valley, you can traverse the East-West city limits simply by crossing the road.

The weather was sunny and ice cream perfect for much of the weekend, as I am sure Stephen ‘five scoops’ Harding can attest. The bright drizzle of Sunday afternoon was just enough to make spiderwebs glisten and create brief rear wheel spins whilst driving up some of the steeper roads.

Much of Sunday was spent wondering around the Thompson Dam site. The water within was conspicuous by its absence. Levels appeared to be around twenty percent of its rated capacity. Ivan VK3ARV and myself contemplated returning to the town via a back track from the dam. The initial crossing of the Thompson River looked a bit too daunting. It was half a metre deep and fifty metres wide at that point, so we took the woosy way out on sealed roads. This was a good decision as we only just made it to the train station in time to catch the last ride of the day around the mountains. The group was scatered among various carriages, but this mattered little thanks to the proliferation of 2 metre hand held transceivers on board.

In our spare time we seemed to do a lot of eating. There was a barbecue at Rawson, another barbecue at Erica, much cappuccino sipping and meat pie eating at the Walhalla general store and a big multiple course Sunday night dinner at the café next door to the general store.

Saturday Night at Erica went well. After our meal we settled back on this warm evening under the tarp of Steve and Maria’s caravan exchanging stories and anecdotes. Later, Ron VK3EXJ produced his reflector telescope, a large eight inch home brew model. We spent some time looking at the moon between the passing clouds.

Our itinerary also included a tour of the ‘Long Tunnel Extended Gold Mine’.
At the tunnel we trooped a few hundred metres into the mountain with hard hats on and pupils dilated until we encountered the subterranean machine hall. This was also the top of the main shaft which dropped down 900 metres lower. I don’t mind saying that this was a really bad RF site.

On the 20th of February, about 20 members of the GGREC went to visit the Australia Post Letter Center in Dandenong.

It was a very interesting tour. I hadn’t realised the enormous volume of letters that went in and out of the Center in one day. The banks of sorting machinery were very fast and efficient.

Ross viewing the automatic letter sorting machine in the Mail Centre.

One machine we saw was printing bar codes onto prepaid bulk mail, (Melbourne Water, Telstra, Readers Digest etc.) it sorted the letters into trays for each different Post Code. Some of the hand written envelopes looked like they had a pretty rough time of it going through a machine that was sorting out the bent and oversize letters.

The tour was a comprehensive one that lasted for two hours.

The guests numbered twelve, Colin VK3HR and Bobbie, Peter VK3VB and Pat VK3OZ, Reg VK3UK and Jenny, Ian VK3VIB and Val, Ivan VK3ARV, Mike VK3KTO and Nareé plus Frank a friend of our very fine hosts Helmut VK3DHI, Dorothy and Sheila the dog.

The food was delicious it consisted of a BBQ and fabulous cakes, Cheese, Marble and Chocolate.

The atmosphere was building up, its not every year that we say goodbye to the end of a Millennium, then celebrate the brand new beginning.  What will it bring???.

Unfortunately between being an excellent host cooking, filming, playing Darts looking after a beautiful but frightened dog the host fell in a hole, but was not seriously injured.

There were Darts competitions, Ivan and Mike won the last comp.  There were claims of cheating, but Mike could not help having long arms, although they have never been measured!  He said his Father came from Longreach!

Just prior to midnight fire crackers were let off and enjoyed by everyone except the dog Sheila.  Then we heard on the radio that it was the hour and there were kisses and hand shakes all round, then a couple of phone calls to Germany, to wish friends of Dorothy, Helmut and Frank a happy new year.  It would have been approximately 4pm in Germany.