President’s Message – November 2017

 

Just another day in the life of the Club’s President, Vice President and Editor.

Late in September, Richard arrived at my place from Seymour early in the morning and we then drove to pick up Graham at a pre-arranged meeting point at Narre Warren.

The three intrepid bearded club aficionados then drove to meet with Focus Print Group manager Stuart Anderson in East Oakleigh for a meeting regarding the cost structure of Sprocket.

Following a fruitful meeting with Stuart we then were given a tour of the printing plant which was a real eye opener. The scale of the operation was impressive to say the least and we were all very impressed with what we saw.

After a quick coffee at the local Industrial Estate café, it was off to Cabrini Hospital in Malvern to pay a visit to Vern Dalton who is recovering in hospital.

Vern didn’t have any grapes for us to devour so after an hour visit we headed off to Hallam to meet with David Howard, the son in law of recently passed Life Member Allan Woodbridge.

David is part of the KH Equipment team who primarily manufacture Austart Air Starters and are also the manufacturers of the fabulous Irving Vincent motorcycle.

David was kind enough to pass onto the Club all the records of the Inverloch Investigator Rallies held over 20 odd years by Allan and Joan Woodbridge and family, which we gratefully accepted to be added to the Club’s archival records – thanks to David and the Woodbridge family.

Following a briefing from David about the nature of the business we were taken to the board room to inspect the display of six magnificent Irving Vincents, the ex-Bob Satterley Vincent that was hugely successful at Goodwood in 2014 and the ex-Kenny Roberts Junior Yamaha flat tracker, resplendent with traditional speed block paint work. What an unbelievable display, every corporate boardroom should look like this.

David then took us on a tour of the machine shop – painted floors clean enough to eat off, decorated with plants and a distinct lack of staff numbers due to the state of the art high tech machines in use.

We were then taken into the Irving Vincent inner sanctum and met with Barry Horner who was preparing the racing outfit to be piloted by Beau Beaton at the Australian Super Bike final round that weekend. The outfit was entered in the F1 & F2 outfit races but not competing for points as it was being run for testing purposes only.

Once again, immaculately clean work areas, extremely well set out and an absolute credit to management and staff reflecting how much they enjoy doing what they do.

Thanks David for your time showing us around and sharing your passion with us.

We wish Vern a speedy recovery.

Ian Snadden
President CMCCV