August 2020

What a year 2020 is turn­ing out to be, espe­cial­ly for all of us locat­ed in Vic­to­ria and prob­a­bly even worse for us liv­ing here in Mel­bourne. COVID-19 as we all know is cur­rent­ly going through its sec­ond wave here and as a result, we are now in lev­el 4 restric­tions, which for us in Mel­bourne makes any­thing to do with the club non-exis­tent. We now have a cur­few at night from 8pm to 5am, so things are a lit­tle stress­ful for many. There will be a zoom chat for Wednes­day 5th of August 2020 at 8.00pm and by the time you are read­ing this report, you should have received the zoom invitation.

As we were due to have our Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing this month, I have writ­ten to Vic­to­ri­an Con­sumer Affairs request­ing an exten­sion to hold our AGM and pro­duce our finan­cial report. Going by their web­site, this will be grant­ed and will come as no sur­prise. At time of writ­ing I have not received a response.

Our mem­ber­ship fees which are due, and have been paid by the vast major­i­ty, but there is still a few out­stand­ing. I need to remind club mem­bers that in regard to the Vic Roads Per­mit Scheme, if your car is on this scheme, you must be finan­cial to remain on the Vehi­cle Per­mit Scheme. I will attach a mem­ber­ship renew­al form in this newslet­ter. For those who nor­mal­ly pay cash at the meet­ing, all I can sug­gest is if you com­plete a bank deposit to the clubs Com­mon­wealth Bank account, the details are on the renew­al form. If you are unable to do it on the inter­net, the trans­ac­tion can be under­tak­en by going into a branch of the Com­mon­wealth Bank, all you need is the bank details which are on the renew­al form. Please include your sur­name as the ref­er­ence. For our more vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers dur­ing this health cri­sis it is worth men­tion­ing that you could always get a fam­i­ly mem­ber to do the trans­ac­tion on your behalf, if you are unable to go to the bank.

Over the last month, as I am on the Nation­als Com­mit­tee, a com­mit­tee meet­ing was held. It was dis­cussed the cur­rent COVID-19 issues and the effect that it may have on the Nation­als. We as a Nation­als com­mit­tee have sent a let­ter to all clubs (which is includ­ed in this newslet­ter) out­lin­ing the Refund pol­i­cy if that Nation­als were to be can­celled. I will stress here there has been no deci­sion made as yet. I thought it would be impor­tant to men­tion that here so no mis­un­der­stand­ing or rumours oth­er­wise. If the Nation­als were to be can­celled, they will not be resched­uled in 2021 as the Can­ber­ra com­mit­tee are unavail­able for 2021.

With the next 6 weeks of us in Mel­bourne in lock­down restric­tions, we will have a zoom chat on the des­ig­nat­ed nor­mal meet­ing time of first Wednes­day of the month at 8.00pm. Club Com­mit­tee meet­ings are con­tin­u­ing as zoom meet­ings as they have for the last few months.

In a pos­i­tive note sum­mer is only a few months away and won’t it be reward­ing to dri­ve our ear­lies, in the sum­mer heat this sum­mer and hope­ful­ly put this dread­ed virus behind us.

More impor­tant than ever, please stay safe and look after each other.

Jason.