Apologies
    Tony Hoare, Garry Enfield, John Pearson, Paul Kay, Barry Reeve, Peter Olorenshaw, Jeff Stone.

Minutes
    Minutes of the November 2017 meeting were accepted, with the correction of ‘hanger’ to ‘Hagner’, on a motion from Ed Wolf and Gloria Bradley.

Correspondence
    The December 2017 NSW Postcard Collector's Society Bulletin was received.

Treasurer’s Report
    $40 was received from the December 2017 Northside Stamp Fair.
The engraving of club trophies had cost $51.20, which was refunded to the Secretary. We had $587.49 in the Commonwealth Bank and $2,427.88 in St. George Bank.
    Rod Sell suggested closing the St George account and including the money in the club’s Term Deposit, due for renewal in July 2018.
    The Secretary, Graeme Morriss. pointed out that this was difficult and time-consuming because multiple signatures were required. The last change of signatories had taken over an hour at the bank branch.

General Business
    Peter Lehmann’s certificate from his participation in the October PHILAS Open Day was presented to him. Darren Jones was presented with the Ray Simpson Cup and the Pittwater Shield for his winning entries in the 2017 club competition.
    Ed Wolf drew attention to news media reports that Melbourne auction house Mossgreen had been placed in voluntary liquidation.
    Members were reminded that Saturday 13 January would be the club’s annual Summer Day of Stamps.
There would be seven dealers and an auction at 2.00 pm. Setting-up would begin at 6.30 pm on the Friday night.

Items of Interest
    Gloria Bradley showed the catalogue of an exhibition of Statues on Stamps held in Geneva in 2011.
    Judith Jarolimek showed a stamp from the Soviet Union picturing a statue entitled Motherhood Beckons.
    Paul Storm showed some recently-aquired On Tour postcards – a 1900 Japanese hand-illustrated card and a German postcard with a feather tucked under the stamp.
    Laurent Villoing showed a 1959 Europa cover with both French and Swiss stamps; a French cover signed by the stamp designer and a cover from Orleans in France which he had sent to obtain the Return to sender marking.

Display:
    Peter Lehmann showed a very large collection on Camels. There were several species of camel. The South American camel is, when domesticated, called the llama. The only genuinely wild camel is the Bactrian, found in Mongolia and western China. The 700,000 wild camels in Australia are actually feral – domesticated camels gone wild.


John Higgs
13 February 2018

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