Published on: 17 August 2015

Class of 1980Thirty old boys attended our reunion at Claremont Yacht Club including 12 boarders and 18 day boys. We seem to somehow have become a class of jet-setters, with Digby Yeowood and Brett Brown jetting in from Queensland and Tony Hutchinson, who many of us had not seen since 1976, flying in from Broome. Andrew King was off to Dubai on the Saturday morning and it was good to see that some of our FIFO members, Ben Doust and Richard Strauss, managed to amend rosters to attend. Big efforts were made by Rob Grylls, Phil Smith (who arrived to an arousing reception complete with a grey mullet), Gary Dring, and Neil Worrell, all of whom had travelled many hours by car to attend. Mark Chapman, James McGlew and Claude Infirri all held court telling fabulous stories. It was nice to catch up with Steve Ansell, Tim Burton, Michael Dodd, Matthew Flaherty, Michael Gough, Trevor McCracken, Tom Moyes, Matthew Nelson, Tim Reynolds, Peter Smith and Chris Yeo.

Andrew Bartley gave a wonderful speech and Peter Richmond led the toast to absent friends. Dean Oliver commented that he really enjoyed the reunion and is looking forward to seeing others who were unable to attend, at the 40th reunion. The number of names mentioned of people who were not there that others wanted to catch up with was unbelievable! It was agreed that a more concerted effort will be made to track down ‘missing’ old boys before the 40 year reunion. Many thanks to Dusty Evans and Paul Masters who along with Andrew Baird in the Old Boys’ office helped organise the event. Click here for the photo gallery.

Michael Guest