Edition 211 of “Orienteering in Newcastle”, the Newcastle Orienteering club’s newsletter, is at this stage rather unique. It is the first newsletter in the clubs history that has been produced by someone other than Allan Wright. That’s (W)right, Allan has been responsible for creating this valuable publication for an incredible 36 years, in fact the newsletter actually predates the club by several months.
During that time, Allan has not only been responsible for the newsletter content, but also all that goes along with that, including the collection of material from numerous sources, the data input and newsletter layout, the printing and collating, the folding and placing in addressed envelopes and the licking of thousands of yucky tasting stamps. No doubt his wife Dot has also been involved in this process and we thank them both wholeheartedly for their dedication to this task over such a great number of years.
As a foundation and life member of the Newcastle Club, Alan is a font of knowledge regarding all things orienteering, especially the history of our sport in the Hunter region. Allan announced his retirement from the post in edition 210 and the article has been reproduced below.
At this stage Daniel Orr has agreed to take on the position of caretaker editor. If anyone else has a flair for this vocation and is interested in a term as newsletter editor (for probably less than 36 years) they should make it known to someone on the club committee.
Note: Edition 211 is now available via the “newsletters” page on the Newcastle Club website.
From OIN210……
Timeline
The first OIN Newsletter was in May 1974, months before NOC was formed. OIN2 floated the idea of forming a club, and announced NOC’s first contest (Clarencetown, August 74). At that event memberships were taken for the yet to be formed club ($1 for local juniors up to $5 for families including affiliation with OANSW – is that why they talk of the ‘good old days’?).
The club was formed in September 1974 and keeps growing – evidenced by membership, events (number and type), participation in organisation of events, event entries, and success in state and even international events.
In the early years the newsletter was mostly prepared on old Gestetner stencils with occasional spirit stencil pages. In the mid 80’s this moved to mostly typed pages being offset printed. Computer use started with OIN89 in 1986 with most pages coming form an Apple 2 via a dot matrix printer. Print quality improved as from OIN176 with Msdos computers and bubble jet and then laser printing. All that remains of the old format is the scanned use of the ‘Orienteering in Newcastle’ masthead on the first page.
The future?
After 36 years and 210 editions, Allan Wright is retiring from the editor’s chair. With the AGM imminent it is time for someone else to take over and decide future directions….hopefully involving some rationalisation between what appears on-line and what is needs to be printed – but with the club still initiating communication with its members (and the many non-members we welcome to our events and essentially look on as potential members).