At a recent club meeting Lion President Barbara Gray welcomed a special guest from down under: Lion Keverall Sturgess from the Riverside club, Launceston, Tasmania, who found us from our website. Kev is on a sight-seeing holiday in the UK, and came to visit Burton Latimer, where his great grandfather lived before going to Australia. We did not find if he bought his own ticket or the judge gave him one. Kev told us about his Lions club in Tasmania, which has 50 members, but like us the number of active members is reducing, and they are thinking about inviting ladies to become members. They raise money by selling the tickets at the football matches for a fee, and they have made a very large catering van, as the crowd at these games is about 20,000, and they take $8,000 at each of the five interstate games. One of their main community service projects is to offer accommodation to relatives visiting patients in the hospital, because of the distances involved.
He was very impressed by our website and in particular the MIAB & YLIS projects and hopes to introduce them to his club.
We all think that Tasmania is very small, as our maps show it like a pimple on Australia’s bum, but is larger than Scotland, with poor roads between towns. He really enjoyed visiting us and our friendliness, and offered an invitation for us to visit his club. Barbara exchanged banners with Kev, and Region Chairman Lion John Gray presented him with the DG’s banner on behalf of Simon Moss.
