We all enjoyed the 40th anniversary dinner held at Wallsend on Saturday 6th August.
Apart from a good attendance by members from across the State, we appreciated support from our Patron, Greg Ackman of Mobile One Antennas, Paul Humphreys of H Events and Trevor Millgate of Cessnock Rescue Squad representing the head of the VRA, Mark Gibson.
Our guest speaker was Trudy Hanson who told us 1st-hand of the beginnings of CREST.
We were also honoured to welcome Anna Payne, widow of Bill the founder of CREST who passed away in March 2015.
The function was held at the Wallsend Diggers Club who served up pumpkin soup and cannelloni, followed by melt in your mouth scotch fillet and pine nut crusted barramundi fillet.
In lieu of dessert, Anna cut and distributed our CREST 40th birthday cake and the Club put what was left over in the fridge overnight to be gobbled up at our morning tea on Sunday.
Anna’s guest was Bill Payne’s nephew, Bill Jackson who as a young boy used to accompany his uncle, learnt to operate the early radios and watched history being made.
We were all impressed by the many displays of radios from the beginnings to the present and also memorabilia including newspapers from the time CREST was bubbling up under the surface. Our thanks to Andrew Pain, Terry Matts, Des Cottle, Greg Ackman.
Anna brought along her late husband’s Order of Australia medal from Australia Day 2014, his Certificate and framed photos of the presentation to him by Dame Marie Bashir, then Governor of NSW.
The age range of attendees was 22 to 90. One member everyone was keen to see from the early days was John Manthey, accompanied by his wife Nola.
Thank you everyone for coming and making it a really enjoyable evening.