Ron, with Peter's kind permission, I thought I would copy you in on a nice coincidence that occurred recently and maybe you would like to include a mention in your newsletter. Just a bit of human interest.

My wife, Dianne and I have just returned home after a two week cruise on MS Volendam, around New Zealand with Holland America Line. As it turned out, on the first formal evening (tux and gongs), I got talking to Peter Pagett and we very quickly discovered we had both been at Leeuwin together in the 7th intake. Not only that, he was pals with my 'squarie' at the time, WROT Dianne Bennett who later became my wife. Dianne was with me on the voyage of course, and as you can imagine, we had plenty to talk about. What a small world!

Peter didn't make it to Freo' for this year's reunion but this chance meeting did fill in a gap for him. We were able to answer a lot of questions of each other about long lost buddies and I have some nice photos from back in '63 that I will forward separately to Peter. Anyways, in the mean time, here is a couple of happy snaps from on board MS Volendam for the record.

I thought I might mention that wearing the gongs was the trigger for us to start up a conversation on the Volendam, otherwise we wouldn't probably have gotten to know each other. I mention this because it does prove the old saying that folks shouldn't be shy to wear their gongs when going formal - not just on ANZAC Day. "Wear them, 'cause you earned them".


Peter Pagett & Neville Thomas. MS Volendam, Dec 2008.


L-R Dianna & Peter Pagett, Neville & Dianne Thomas. On board MS Volendam, Dec 2008.


Smooth sailing in 2009

Nifty Nev Thomas
R94130





To read further details of the the Avey's trip around OZClick here to download this file


To read details of the Avey's overland Aussie trip click here

 
Russel and Joy Dale were pleased to spend an hour or two with Dave "Larry" Kent at Leeuwin in April. Though they grew up together in Ballarat, joined the Navy together, spent the year at LEEUWIN, then rarely crossed paths until the 63 reunions. The Dales reside in Grovedale Victoria and Dave lives in Bundaberg.