Visitors: Michael Thorne – guest speaker, Meg Davis guest of Sanjana. Kat McMillan, guest of Dan’s, Andrew Webb – Kathy’s husband (yes, there is one)
Welcome From President Lynda Burch.
Birthdays– Mary O’Sullivan. Anniversaries – Michele and Simon Beaton currently enjoying a hot summer in the UK, and Greg Brownless – 25 years, also enjoying a hot summer, but in France.
Max Whitehead – is an ex-member of the Club and well worth a google. More than just a google though, he will be our speaker 22
nd July. Take the opportunity to bring a guest, but please let Mary know by cob Monday 18
th July - Email:
mary.osullivan@eves.co.nz – you may not get this before 18
th, however try.
Notices: – Les encouraged everyone to sort through their unwanted rubbish treasures at home to donate to our forthcoming auction.
Kopurererua Valley planting was on Saturday – hope everyone turned up to dig.
Good bye and good luck – Nathan Capper’s last meeting today. We will miss your energy, but wish you well.
Guest Speaker: Michael Thorne, National Sales Manager Protective Coatings - Fireproofing, for Altex Coatings founded and still based in Tauranga in 1954 – now part of the Resene group. NZ’s largest manufacturer and distributor of high performance industrial and marine coatings. Based throughout Australasia supplying coatings, linings and fireproofing systems, throughout the world. We saw a video of how fireproofing coatings work. So watching paint dry did prove to be quite interesting.
Altex manufactures and specifies quite a range of heavy duty products. They have recently completed building a purpose designed research and development and fire laboratory.
And are now working with Work Safe and FENZ to build a new $7m factory. This is proving to be a very long and complicated process.
They are involved in many large infrastructure projects and Michael told us the sad story of the Sky City new conference centre building. They were a major supplier of product, only to have a major fire before completion. They underwent a huge investigation into suitability of product and application, which they passed successfully. We heard the fascinating tale of the rise, fall and rise again of this building as it now has had to be built twice; once before the fire, then deconstructed, then built again. All because a careless worker left his blow torch running. Great to hear the story of one of Tauranga’s most successful companies.
Sergeant Session: Brett Hobson, told us that in 1988 auto sales in the USA showed the three big auto makes amounted to 95% of sales. They were Ford, GM, Chrysler. Today that number is less than 40% and still falling.
Surprisingly there were a whole lot of other facts about todays date:
Sir Apirana Ngati died – but that was on 14th. He was the first Māori to graduate from an NZ University.
However, did you know that:
- The world’s first speeding ticket was issued in 1902 for travelling at 45mph
- Money may not buy happiness but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than a bus.
- If all the cars in NZ were placed end to end it would probably be Labour Weekend
- If you think nobody cares, try missing a mortgage payment.
Raffle: ?
Parting Thought:
“It is not the strongest of a species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most resilient and responsive to change” Charles Darwin
(Oxford) and Bill Bonthron (Princeton), with speculation that the world record might be broken. Bonthron had won that year’s intercollegiate 800-m and 1500-m events impressively. As a warm-up for the Princeton-Cornell meet, Lovelock and Forbes Horan (Cambridge) competed against a Yale-Harvard team over a mile. Lovelock won the race in 4 minutes 12.6 seconds, an intercollegiate record.