Greetings to all our Club Members
Naseby is still a great place, and now other people are starting to discover it. Pretty soon the population will break through the 100 barrier. Next thing will be traffic lights at the towns one intersection.
This years Cunnamulla trip was as usual a great experience. We had the regular John and Jill Smith this year joined by Jim and Dawn MacDonald, making the trip from Naseby. Of course there was the normal hoard of Australian Ranfurly/Naseby members, which means a great time, with a lot of good hearted banter, ridiculing and ribbing.
The organisers of the competition did their usual great job of organising, catering, oh, and also running a great shoot. They also excelled themselves and managed to book about five thousand billion flies to share the weekend with us but even that cannot take away a great weekend. This competition has to be experienced, before you can understand why it is so good even with a 10 hour drive from Brisbane and all the flies.
The club had its traditional mid winter dinner at the range. As usual this was well supported and attended by local members. A great traditional roast dinner was enjoyed by all, which was needed to warm the insides, as outside was, although unusually for this time of year not white, still pretty cool. The great dinner was followed by the clubs annual meeting. Positions of President (James Hazlett) and secretary (Jim MacDonald) remain unchanged.
The mid winter dinner was such a success, that a quarterly dinner at the range has been organised where everyone will bring a plate. Another rather laid back social gathering. Dinners will be run in conjunction with a shoot, as it will be warm enough that your pistol barrel will not be frozen which is a good thing.
Shooting will be getting under way again, now that Spring has arrived. It is always great to see the spring flowers making their appearance, and the whole countryside coming to life again.
The club has recently had its range inspection, and has passed without requiring any major work, which is rather good, after what several other clubs have had to do to bring their facilities up to standard.
The club will also be holding an open day in the next month, to encourage some new people into the sport, and our club. This is something that needs to be done a lot more regularly in all shooting clubs. We really need a whole lot of new people in the sport to ensure we are not legislated out of existance. We must ensure we look at the mistakes of other countries, learn from them, and ensure the same short sighted legislation that will achieve nothing, will not be forced upon us.
People should start thinking about upcoming competitions. We have the Masters Games in Dunedin in February, the NZ Nationals (probably in Christchurch) in March, both good practice if you are intending to go to the biggie of the year Cunnamulla. Even the Olympics will tend to be an anti-climax after Cunnamulla.
Our postal results have been a bit slack over the past few months both what have been sent in, and also our speed at getting them up on the site. We will remedy our end, so please make the effort, and send in the results.
Hope we see you all around the ranges in the near future.
Happy Shooting
Jill Smith
Club Captain