Fleet Air Arm Association of Australia

Federal Council Annual Meeting 2011
Secretarty's Report

Fellow members, another year has passed and here is my Annual Report for 2011.

A number of changes to both the States and the National Executive Committees have taken place over the past year. Our National Vice/President, Peter Welsh, resigned for personnel reasons and he will be sorely missed. He has given a considerable amount of his time to the Association and we as members thank him for his efforts. Captain Paul Folkes RANR has been nominated by the NSW Division to become our Vice President and will be an excellent person to have on board. Hopefully he can inspire some of the current FAA personnel to join the Association and thus keep the traditions going.

Victoria and SA have new Secretarys, namely Malcolm Smith in Victoria and Roger Harrison in SA (though Roger suggests he is not new but has been recycled). In Tasmania we have a new President, Secretary and Treasurer. Alan Dickie has replaced Tas Browning as President, Tas retiring from the position and the National Executive and members owe him a vote of thanks for his work in keeping the Association active down in the Apple Isle. I am sure that Alan will keep up the good work. The new Secretary is Maureen Douglas with husband Jack as Treasurer. We wish them well and assure them we will assist whenever possible.

On the subject of Tasmania, the Reunion - although not well attended - saw representation from most states and those that went had a good time and caught up with old comrades. Tas Browning, Geoff Singline and Garry Sommer are thanked for their efforts.

Membership of the Association currently stands at just around the thousand mark. Whilst this is a reasonable number of members, I feel that we should be doing much better as there are many old salts out there who are not in the Association. Further to this, the number of current serving members is very low and we need these people to keep the Association strong (many of us are not getting any younger). I encourage all Divisions to do their utmost to boost our membership.

Our Quarterly Magazine Slipstream is well received by not only our members but by many other Associations. Currently we are printing 1100 copies of the magazine each issue and thanks to a few dedicated workers we get most of them to the right addresses. Most of the returns are "No Longer at this Address" and folks, if you don't tell you Divisional Secretaries or myself, we do not know where you have gone. We have also started to send each issue to all serving birdies who are on deployment overseas and the feedback on this will be interesting.

In conclusion I would like to thank all members who have assisted me over the past years and look forward to the same in the future.

Dick (Pincher) Martin, National Secretary.

To read other reports, see Federal Council Annual Meeting page.