LFMBEC.org

Hi all,

Have been trawling through old emails, CDs, letters, folders, boxes, rubbish heaps, etc in an effort to fill all the gaps on the website.

So far have managed to find pretty much all of the reports, but not all the "Welcome Speeches".

Am pretty right for photographs, but it'll take me another day or two to get them all up on the site - I'll put out a call for help if I have any major gaps to fill.

As for the rest of it (Hospital, Art Gallery, etc) - will continue to update over the next few days.

Welcome to you all!

Thank you all for coming. We welcome several new Members and hope they have a wonderful evening.

There was no prepared or written speech of welcome. After our Guest Speaker rang at 2.00 p.m. on the afternoon of the Dinner to advise of his inability to attend owing to illness, closely followed by a call from Tony who advised that he too would be unable to attend as his father was unwell, I went into panic mode closely followed by a severe depression.

Nevertheless, I gathered my wits by the evening and, ex tempore:

• Welcomed one and all.
• Delivered apologies for our Guest Speaker and Tony.

Good evening all. Tonight we are missing several regulars. Among them are numbered John Snowden, lurking tonight in that seething cesspool of a metropolis to our south … Launceston. Phantom artist Glenn Ford was regrettably committed elsewhere. My own son Daniel, money extractor extraordinaire, accepted an offer from his art teachers at the last moment to go and paint for a few days at the artists’ colony of Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River.

Welcome to you all, but a special welcome to those from interstate. After an all too long absence we are pleased to see Stephen and Violeta Baggs from Victoria, our wine benefactor from South Australia, Richard Lindner, accompanied by his charming wife Shirley, Jon Cookson from far north Queensland and Anthony, Stephen and Andrew Gillies from the Northern Territory. We are tickled pink to have you all here at one time.

Welcome also to our Guest Speaker Roger Fletcher and his wife Marie. Tony will welcome you more fittingly later in the evening and until then please enjoy yourselves.

Thank you all for coming. And thanks to Dr Di Dio for being here. We'd like to hear how he's going to explain to his wife why it took him an hour to get here from Artarmon.

This Dinner is so jam packed with delights it gives me the courage to tell you that but two weeks ago, unlike my usual organised self, there was nothing … no Guest, no Goody Bag, no restaurant, no artwork … nothing.

Thirty six hours ago we were expecting 45 guests in a smaller room upstairs. After a phone call from Tony who then disappeared using the lame excuse that he had to operate on some poor soul in a critical condition, and a subsequent attack of the panics by me, here we are downstairs and numbering around 60 … a record for us and a sure sign that the Lee Falk Memorial Bengali Explorers Club is a force to be reckoned with … although in which sphere of human endeavour I'm not sure.