Geoff Hamilton introduced our guest speaker of the day, his cousin Andrew Hamilton. He noted that they grew up together on neighbouring farms and while Geoff could build a few things … Andrew went on to build himself an airplane. Geoff said that Andrew was here to speak to the club about an outback air race that he and Fiona participated in as a fundraiser for the Flying Doctor's Service.
 
Andrew started his talk noting that the club was pretty hard up for speakers, but he would be glad to help out his cousin. Andrew told members that listening to Exchange students brought back memories of his time as a Rotary GSE team member with Simon Terry and Michael McCormack in 1992.
 
 
He gave members a history of how he built a kit plane. He noted at the time, sales of kits planes were out numbering manufactured planes by a factor of 15 to 1. It took Andrew five years to complete the construction of the plane.
 
After building the plane, he found he was not using it as much as he hoped and came across a Outback Air Race to raise money for the Flying Doctor's Service. The minimum amount required for participants to raise was $2000 per person so he and his wife had to raise $4000.  On the first trip he and his wife raised $20,000 and there were 18 planes entered. The total amount raised  was three hundred thousand dollars. The race is held every three years due to the amount of planning involved. 
 
 
 
In his second trip, Andrew was exploring places he could visit between the starting point in Esperance  and the finish at Hamilton Island.  He found Davenport Downs Station … the largest cattle property in Queensland and it was owned by Paraway.  He was familiar with Paraway since he had been using their breed stock on his own farm.
 
He contacted the local Paraway manager in the Riverina and asked if he could stop in at Davenport Downs during the race for a visit.  The manager agreed to arranged the visit.  It turned out that all of the entrants of the race visited the site and Paraway and their owners, Maquirie Bank came to become sponsors of the race...to the tune of $50,000,  which grew to a total of  $165,000 in donations from affiliated companies. In total, the last race brought in over six hundred thousand dollars ($600,000) for the Flying Doctor's Service. 
 
Pat Ingram gave a vote of Thanks.