ANNUAL REPORT 2008

It is hard to believe that our sixth year of operation is over. It has been a successful, but tragically sad, year with the loss of our wonderful club patron, Smoky Dawson, an icon of Australian music, who was always proud of his association with Belrose Country Music Club. Then, as we were still recovering from Smoky’s passing, we suddenly lost our highly-esteemed lead guitarist and backing band leader, Mark Kirk, in a great shock and sadness to us all. We really miss them both so much. We were also saddened at the death of Lyn McKenzie, President of the Central Coast Country Music Association, who performed at Belrose in April 2007 with her club. Tributes were arranged at our concerts for other regular supporters, Les Scott (guitar), Bob Plummer (radio) and Cath Aylott (member) who passed away this year also.

Despite this sadness, Belrose is proud of the many successes by our artists. These include new albums, award nominations and performing achievements in the country music business. We even saw a couple of Tamworth Golden Guitars won by regulars Alan Caswell and Drew McAlister, a Starmaker finalist (Dean Johnston) and top-line billing for others such as Amber Lawrence, Nikki Gillis, Bryen Willems, Tracy Killeen, Angela Hayden, Ian B. McLeod, the fabulous Tall Timbre and Dianne Lindsay. Congratulations to these and the countless other singers, musicians and groups too numerous to mention here who see Belrose as a special place to demonstrate their skills. We are most grateful to everyone who performs ‘for the sake of it’ and without payment. The real rewards are huge.

We are also extremely fortunate to have had the services of the outstanding musicians who have made up our backing bands, especially Mark Kirk, Steve Shepherd, Darryl Hennessy, Carl Sullivan, Nick O’Neill, Gary Brown, Alan Tomkins and Les Scott. Many thanks for your fine work and to Alan Ford and George Siedlecki for taking over when we needed you, ensuring a very positive future for Belrose.

It is essential to congratulate and thank the line-dancers led superbly by Rosalie Mackay, Carl Sullivan (also sound, stage and performer), Nola Jones (treasurer), Barbara Dunstan (secretary) and Carolynne Pitt (website), all of whom are committee members, and highly regarded in the line-dance world both individually and with their respective teams. They always add that essential element of musical enjoyment and colour to our concerts, so important to the fun atmosphere we aim for at Belrose.

Other members of the great team making Belrose so successful are the rest of the  committee: Terie and Bob Gray, our artists’ liaison and sound technician respectively; and Deb Kennedy-Holmes who has been a tower of strength in her PR and co-compere role. Alex Melville does a great job setting up the room and stage for each show. Thanks and congratulations to you all.

The Belrose Bowling Club continues to support our club despite their own financial constrictions. The use of the auditorium, PA equipment and vouchers help considerably with the maintenance of performance standards which ensure good crowd numbers. Thanks especially to Liaison Officer, John Clement, for being such an effective go-between.

The sponsorship provided so generously by Windowline and Express Glass have been greatly appreciated.

BCMC has received excellent assistance again from media outlets including Radio Northern Beaches who not only promote BCMC in their programmes (Barry Williams and Des Simmonds), but also Andrew Goodman-Jones records our shows for replay on air. Barbara Morrison on 2SER.FM has assisted us from our inception and we also get fine coverage on Saturday Night Country on ABC Radio with John Nutting. Special thanks are extended to Rod Bennett for his invaluable support at The Manly Daily over our six years and our website, maintained by Carolynne Pitt, has taken our show all over the world.

We can be justifiably proud of our second year in the top five Clubs and Associations’ Achiever Awards – next year for sure!!!

“Enjoy country music and foster talent” – we certainly do!!

Geoff Williams

President