This just in:

Wow, June already!

When we started planning this month’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, it seemed so far into the future as to not get too worried about it.

All of a sudden, here we very nearly are! As I write this, we are three weeks from a great celebration of friendships, a shared love of our cars, and a rosy future for the brand we all love.

It would be extremely remiss of me not to mention the hard work and inspiration of the organising committee, and to thank them all for their input, involvement and drive to get to what will be a fantastic event; Brian, Mel, Tom, Greg, Neil, Seth, Elliott and Evan, you have been awesome, and we have a lot to be very grateful for, thank you all!

So for those unable to make it, we’ll take photos and share them next time round.

And once all that excitement is over, all of a sudden, we are into the second half of the year, and the middle of winter!

As I may have mentioned, I will be flying over to work from the UK for three months (as a bit of a social experiment in working Australian hours from the other side of the globe), leaving shortly after our jamboree, and in time for Goodwood FOS. Funnily enough, the other end of my visit is bookmarked by Revival, where Lord March is kindly celebrating the Lotus 75th. While it clearly won’t be as star-studded as our affair, I feel I should go along in the spirit of supporting the event 🙂 So, if anyone else is planning to be over at the same time, make sure to get in touch!

Here in Sydney, assuming the weather forecasters are right, we can start to look forward to a slightly more “normal” weather pattern as El Nino re-establishes in the Pacific, which will hopefully mean that both the Shannons Classic (Sunday August 20th) and the All British Day (Sunday September 17th) can go ahead without the risk of being washed out, as has sadly been the case of recent years. As ever, we’ll be getting tickets for the club, so please drop a line to Evan on the committee email address ([email protected]) if you are interested to come along. Shannons will be celebrating 75 years of Lotus (and as it happens also Land Rover), so we will have an extra few spots as we can have cars on pit lane as well as in the paddock; and with the promise of finer weather, the All British Day returns as our annual excuse for a picnic!

And don’t forget, our Tyre Kicks continue on the second and third Sundays of the month. In a break from tradition, the 16th July Tyre Kick will take place at Evalence’s workshops at Unit 13/12 Cecil Rd, Hornsby NSW 2077, starting at 9am. Come ready to learn how to make your car really shine! Charlie Frew’s kit is top notch, and he’ll have the coffee machine and bbq on for us.

In the motorsport world, we have round 2 of the CSCA sprints on June 17th (two weeks time!), so if you’ve not got organised, now would be a good time to do so! And then round 3 is the CLA-organised round this year, picking up the baton from the Morgan Club for the day before the Shannons Classic (Saturday 19th August). We will need plenty of flag marshal volunteers please, so even if you can’t run in the event, if you’d be kind enough to offer to serve as a flaggie, your help would be hugely appreciated. Please drop a line to the Motorsport team on [email protected] to start to organise things.

And before we know it, I’ll be back from Blighty.

But while there, a lovely friend (my navigator on Perth to Sydney last year, Nick) has offered me the use of his Alvis Speed 20 – for those needing a prompt, you can see it up above.

It is with great sadness that I am writing to let you know that our great friend Mike Basquil passed away on Wednesday morning, May 17 2023.

Mike had been in hospital for a couple of weeks and his body was finally saying enough. His children Therese, Fred and Sarah, along with his extended family, were all at his side yesterday.

Mike’s fight for life after his lung transplant in 1997 has set new records and his help to the transplant team at St Vincents has no doubt helped save many lives. He was able to fulfil many of his dreams in his last 20 years.

Mike was not only a wonderfully warm, humorous, caring and considerate person, he was also a fierce advocate for anything he saw as right, and a staunch defender against things he felt to be wrong. He was exceptionally generous with his time and efforts for the local motor sport community and was an organiser par excellence. So good, in fact, that he was requested by and provided help to many clubs, including those he wasn’t directly involved with.

I was immensely privileged to know Mike from very early in my time in Australia, and to have spent many happy hours in his company at home, at the racetrack, and at the many Club events he so assiduously attended.

His passing will leave a huge hole in the fabric of many lives, and our thoughts go out in particular to Therese, Fred and Sarah, to the rest of his family and his many friends.

We will be in touch with details of his funeral.

Best regards,
Ashton Roskill