Bill Welbourne

The Booths in BrisVegas for an Australia Day retreat was the flint for party animal Colin ‘Huggiebear’ Huggins who rounded up those of the Brisbane Chapter who could not find their way out of town. Key members had flittered to other commitments … Bodmans to a Victorian wedding; Craineans to the yeehaaa country music festival in Tamworth.

Colin recommended the Wednesday seafood fest in the new Thyme restaurant and I found myself surrounded by plates of oysters, banana prawns, sliced salmon and goblets of reds … and that was just for starters. One look under the table revealed a sight my mother once warned me of. ‘Beware of men wearing yellow socks’. Huggiebear’s favourite.

To my right Dick and Josephine Arnold, whom I readily relate to as we trade discourse on personal training programs. To my left Wendy and Colin Booth, getting full value from their seasonal Accor card and planning to give it a flogging when they visit Hong Kong. Conversation dart back and forth, broken only by frequent trips to top up our seafood concoctions.

Making up our quorum of eight are Bill and Diane Bohlen. Dianne is relishing her newly planned freedom called ‘retirement’ and smarting at Dennis Burrell’s unwillingness to give up the chalk and duster. Diane’s new lease of life has been put to good creative use. Apart from attending to her personal website and assisting with Bill’s YouTube activities, she has produced a fabulous photographic CD of the 2007 Reunion. I think you have to attend one of these post-reunion events to get your free copy!

My son Tony, who recently retired from the Navy and now lives in Melbourne, has been visiting my wife Pam, who's now in a permanent care home due to blindness and other disabilities. Colin Booth told me he will forever remember Pam for an incident at Rabaul Post Office one evening, when she went to collect the mail. Her VW had a flat battery and needed a push start to get it going, so Pam rounded up some willing native boys and in limited Pidgin announced to her startled helpers: ‘Mi laik liklik puspus’. The fellas were last seen heading for the hills! Colin says he weaves this mistaken interpretation as a conversation piece to top any rival speechmaker.