Facebook Post by Koos de Wet 17 November 2021
Thursday November 11 at 11h00, SAMVOA Queensland and Northern Territory Chairman Shaun Winson and fellow Samvoan Giles Parker laid a wreath at the Greenbank RSL together with Australian Veterans at a ceremony to commemorate Armistice Day and pay tribute to all those who lost their lives in battle.
On Saturday November 13, 2021 , this was followed up with a family event when we met at Biddiddiba local private aerodrome south of Brisbane at 3341 Beaudesert Nerang Road near Beaudesert for a social get together on a near perfect, cloudless day following days of storms, rain, hail and flooding in some areas in and around Brisbane. Talk about luck with the weather.
And what a perfect venue it turned out to be - right next to an almost manicured grass runway of near 700m flanked by mowed grass embankments on either side, a small creek passing close to the "braai area", trees providing good shade, a large, all weather covered braai facility open on three sides with cement floor, heavy wood seating and tables and a beautiful view of Tambourine mountain not far away. Far removed from the city and its noise and bustle - a proverbial isle of tranquillity in the country.
It would not require much imagination to say it felt like a WW1 airfield with the long grass runway surrounded by green paddocks all round, an ex WW2 hangar with its half round, corrugated sheet metal roof only some 60m away with the doors open and some rag and tube aircraft noses poking out and a modern hangar with an assortment of model aircraft and modern aircraft at the other end, old soldiers swapping war stories and the only thing missing being the noise of Sop with Camels or the Red Baron in his red Focker Fukker Fokk... oh, just forget which one.... Talking about the Red Baron, what many may not know is that the Red Baron was not actually shot down by an Australian, but he secretly flew to Australia to "sort out" the cheeky Aussie who had taken a pot shot at him. What really happened is that he landed atop Mount Tambourine where his plane can still be seen today (photos attached), did not like what the locals called beer so opened his own brewery to brew "proper beer" and then stayed on. The plane and the brewery are still on top of Mount Tambourine today, only 9.6 km away from where we were braai-ing (4 x 2,4km away for our West Australian Samvoa family because we know they are very fond of everything with a 2, a 4 and a comma in it.)
Here in the East we are of course also fond of our 2's and 4's and commas, but we are more laid back, more practical and definitely more sensible (for our age anyway) about how we use and apply those numbers.
For instance, on Saturday, the local temperature was 24C, we had two times 2,4 metres of boerewors to braai, numerous multiples of 2,4kg of chops to braai, numerous multiples of 2,4 litres of beers and soft drinks to keep everyone hydrated and numerous multiples of 2,4 decibels of lovely music provided by our wonderful local musos, Al and FOS, so let no one ever doubt how many 2,4 s we are also doing over here!
There was also another interesting point worth mentioning and that was the cleverly located and well camouflaged "processed beer relief" facility located in the nearby creek nogal. Very military indeed. Well concealed (2,4m below ground level) and cleverly hidden from prying eyes. And you had to be quite fit to get down to it and back up again so it turned out to be a very effective beer intake limiter.
Wives, partners and family enjoyed catching up, evident from how the conversation levels and noise of people enjoying themselves progressively increased as the day wore on and glasses were kept at a level no lower than 2,4cm at all times to avoid any dehydration whilst Al and FOS provided non-stop, foot tapping, sing along music from a bygone era when one could still make out the words and hum along with the tunes.
Nicky Winson, Shaun's wife, braaier extraordinaire and holder of the highly regarded "Golden Tongs" award, aided by vet Mike Hayes took care of the braai-ing side of things and every 24 minutes or thereabouts (WA note) plates of delicious boerewors and perfectly cooked chops would be put out for people to dish up together with lovely salads which just seemed to appear from nowhere.
We were also honoured and delighted that Doug McIlwraith , the owner of the property, veteran car fanatic and truly, unbelievably talented light aircraft builder joined us and showed off some of his magnificent old cars to much oohing and aahing of course. Still don't know why all old cars had to be black though.
And in this happy and enjoyable vein the day continued until all too soon we were getting to late afternoon and the time was approaching to start making our way home after a wonderful and truly enjoyable day.
To Shaun, Nicky and all the others who helped make this day such a success, a big thank you and salute from all of us.
Koos
PS: All West Australians please note - even the name of the place (Biddiddaba) where we held this braai had a 2,4 - 2 B's and 4 D's - just saying of course ......
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