May 2018

Newsletter

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

From the President

This is my first message since I was privileged to be elected President of Noosa Bridge Club.

A big thank you to Jane Dalziell for being such a fine President last year.

We also have a new Management Committee including four members who have not previously been on the Committee. It is very pleasing to have some new faces with a lot of enthusiasm and ability. In particular, we have Committee members from various levels of bridge playing which is great for club unity. Please feel free to discuss club matters with me or any members of the Committee.

Our new room at the end of the verandah has been completed. It will provide much needed storage space as well as acting as a bar for special events. Many thanks to members Don Robertson, Phil Griffiths and Peter Althaus for their work and to the Hugentoblers for donating a fine refrigerator. The construction was partly funded by a bequest from Len Sweetman and when in use will be called Len’s Bar.

On the front of the room there is a Community Notice board for members to post non-bridge items of interest, goods or services available or wanted on a non commercial basis. Please submit notices to the office for posting.

I hope you all continue to enjoy playing bridge at our great club. Ross Gyde

This year our Club’s contribution to the Bridge for Brains Research Challenge held each May was $640.00. Thank you to all for supporting this worthwhile cause.

New Members – Anne McEvoy & David McEvoy, Simon Fleming, Dawn George, Anna Irminger, Jennifer Lewis, Abigail Wanigaratne, Christine Young Past Members – Carole Hoffenberg

New Management Committee:

Officer Bearers:

President – Ross Gyde

Vice President – Adam Hertelendy

Secretary – Syl Thiebaud

Treasurer – Gerald Schaaf

Committee:

Ian Callcott Di Musgrave

Pam Hawkins Alexa Parker

Helen Lawson Don Robertson

Ann Mellings Sue Smith

Storeroom & Community Notice Board

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

Member Achievements 10-11 March - SCCBC GNOT 2

nd – Ines Dawes/Di Jones/Susan Rodgers+

3rd

– Maureen Jakes/Ann Mellings++ 7

th – Pam Hawkins/Merrlyn Daly/Tessa Townend/Bobby

MacNee 8

th – Adam Hertelendy/Kyomi Avunduk++

10th

– Angela Hall/Jane Dalziell/Rozanne Thomas/Sandy Long

10-11 March – Qld Mixed Teams 4

th A – Tim Ridley/David Harris/Philippa Barnett/Rosie Green

4th

B – Gayna Ryan/Merrelyn Daly/Bill & Geraldine Howard 15, 16 & 19 March - Noosa GNOT Semi Final 1

st – Philppa Barnett/David Harris/Rosie Green/Tim Ridley/Sam

Halvorsen 2

nd – Geoff Hart/Dick Trollope/Arch Morrison++

3rd

– Tessa Townend/Janelle Kipping/Pam Hawkins/Ross Gyde/Sandra Regan 5

th – Maureen Jakes/Ann Mellings/Geoff Olsen/Di Quigley

6th

– Simon Andrew/Gwen King/Chrissie Baynes/Susan Rodgers 8th – Carole McDonald/Peter Tall/Barry Midgley/Russell Greenwood 10

th – Gayna Ryan/Merrelyn Daly/Susan O’Neill/Carole

Robinson

24 March - SC Graded Teams – B Grade 2

nd – David Delgado/Moira Gibbens/Dieter Bendt/Isabella

Michie

22-25 March - Tasmanian Festival of Bridge 6

th – Adam & Dorothy Hertelendy

7-8 April – Caloundra Graded Teams A 3

rd – Geoff Olsen/Maureen Jakes/Dick Trollope+

B 1st

– Hilary French/Peter Tall/Carole McDonald/Tessa Townend/Janelle Kipping C 1

st – David Delgado/Dieter Bendt/Moira Gibbens/Isabella

Michie/Jean Pearce

21 April – Gympie IMP Pairs A 2

nd – Carole McDonald/Peter Tall

A 3rd

– David Harris/Tim Ridley C 2

nd – Di Musgrave/Syl Thiebaud

22 April - Gympie Teams A 2

nd – David Harris/Tim Ridley/Rosie Green, Philippa Barnett

B 2nd

– Di Musgrave/Syl Thiebaud/Maureen Wright/Bobby McNee

6 May – Hervey Bay Swiss Teams 2

nd David Harris/Tm Ridley++

18 May – BRC Teams Championship – Open Division 3

rd – Ken Dawson+++

Picture of the Month

Coming Events 6 June – Charity Day - Katie Rose Cottage

14 June – Noosa Pairs Congress

20 & 27 June + 3 August - Club Teams Championship

6 August – Charity Day – Noosaville View Club

11 August – Inter Cub Teams at Noosa

9 September – Noosa Teams

Library News

The Library Task Force of Di Blount, Lyndon Sanderson and I have started on a three-step process to revitalise the Club library.

Step 1 is to discard those books judged to be surplus to requirement. There is limited shelf space available, and in recent years we have accumulated books donated by members (notably Garth Wenck) which are currently not on display. The unwanted books went on sale to members at the Club and several were sold.

Step 2 will be to add books from our storage to the library shelves, and computer records, and look around for new recent publications to add.

Step 3 is to begin documenting modern electronic and interactive learning systems. In this respect we would be pleased to hear from members of any such facilities they know of.

Geoff Hart

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

Around the Club

Happy 90th

Birthday

Phyl Moody

Beginners Lessons & Supervised Play The next Beginners lessons will commence on Monday 6 August and will continue every Monday for 8 weeks. They will start at 9.00am and continue for 2 hours. The fee for this course is $80 which includes a copy of Paul Marston’s ‘Introduction to Bridge’ book.

On the first morning, 6 August 2018 the class will commence at 8.30am so registration and payment can take place. Please note we do not have credit card facilities.

There will also be Supervised Play commencing on Thursday 9 August 2018. These classes will start at 9.00am and will continue for 2 hours. The supervised play will run for 16 weeks at a fee of $5.00 p/p per lesson with the exception of students from the Beginners Course. These students receive the first 8 weeks free as part of their Beginners Course fee and if they continue on for the additional 8 weeks after that, they will pay $5.00 each time.

First Aid Refresher Course

A refresher course was held on 17 April for our first aid volunteers. It updated cardio requirements for CPR & use of the Club defibrillator. All enjoyed the course, capably provided by Brett Thompson from Allen’s Training.

gUESs Who?

Photo #1 Photo #2

Photo #3

Answers in next newsletter!

Did You Know … The Club has three times more women members

than men.

11,232 cards were cleaned recently.

Each week we use approx. 300 personal score records & 130 table fee slips.

Since we’ve had dealing machines (2004) we’ve dealt approximately 16,000,000 cards.

Our new storeroom fridge can hold 62 bottles of wine; 72 stubbies of beer, 6 x 2L orange juice & 6 x 1.5L soft drink.

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

Member Profile

Susie

Osmaston

Born in Perth, in the middle of WWII, Susie Osmaston always felt vaguely responsible for the Fall of Singapore, to which her mother constantly referred when mentioning her arrival. The laid-back West Australian lifestyle vanished when her father transferred home to Sydney in 1956. The dream of driving over the hump of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with 360 degree views, vanished when they joined the rest of the traffic sedately going across the middle.

They lived on Middle Harbour; she finished her schooling beside Balmoral Beach and although she received a Commonwealth Scholarship to University her parents refused to let her attend. At the tender age of 16 they feared she would come under bad influences. So after a secretarial course she chose as her first job a charity helping patients from mental institutions assimilate into the community. After mama found her working there alone doing preliminary interviews with gentlemen of No Fixed Abode straight from the asylum, she was entreated to change jobs. So in 1961 she went to work for two psychiatrists. One owned a lovely private psychiatric hospital specialising in alcoholics; his partner was Russian-born and Susie started dating his brother-in-law. Presumably her parents gave up and she was finally allowed to marry a half-English half-Frenchman, 14 years her senior, whose godfather had helped write ‘Larousse Gastronomique’.

The marriage certificate envelope was not long enough to accommodate the multisyllabic French surname and despite the haute cuisine (he held a radiator upside down to glaze her creme brûlées in Melbourne), a couple of years after the wedding he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis so the young bride became a carer. Welfare was fairly non-existent — although the Red Cross could supply crutches at a discount.

Susie had a marvelous job as secretary and later executive assistant to the man whose family controlled ‘The Age’ newspaper. So, despite the allure of discounted crutches she continued working and after another couple of years her husband was too frail for home care and admitted to a series of nursing homes. To support him, she and the cat lived on $11 a week. (The cat nobly gave up milk.) She lived on apples and chicken liver pâté — and countless executive lunches with her very kind employer. To the surprise of the movers and shakers craving editorial influence, he would drag her along, determined to make her eat something. A fond memory remains of lunching at the Florentino with Barry Humphries, who told the attentive maître d’ he had only come in for a pee. Unperturbed, the waiter returned with a sumptuous platter of lobster tails, etc., with one small green legume at the centre. “Your pea, Mr Humphries.”

Those were the days when ‘The Age’ ranked as one of the top ten in the world. Politicians came to lunch; she designed a Mars Bar tree for Gough Whitlam’s pudding; she organised her then bachelor employer’s dinner parties, and recalls sending him out to de-stress one evening at the drive-in with Jim Wolfensohn (later President of the World Bank). Goldfinger was showing; Susie got two of her boss’s friends to dress in gold lamé evening gowns, booked two chauffeur driven limos and the top catering company’s food and waiter. To the delight of surrounding movie-goers, from one car the waiter served champagne and four-course delicacies to the occupants of the other.

The bachelor boss fell for the daughter of an English nobleman. As many of the Aussies could not attend the UK nuptials, the night before he flew to London she organised an Awstrylian pre-wedding reception. The Board room was decorated with Op Shop dusty plastic carnations and ditto tablecloths. Meat pies featured on the menu, together with a three tiered chocolate pavlova (his favourite) wedding cake. Bridesmaids (under a wedding arch loaned by Myer’s) wore hats loaned by My Fair Lady and some very witty editors made hilarious speeches on behalf of the pageboys.

After seven years in hospital, her husband died. A couple of years later she realised her dream of moving to Noosa. Her boss threw a farewell party at jazzman Smacka Fitzgibbon’s restaurant, where the song ‘If you knew Susie’ featured far too much. She and her then partner

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

(still ranking as a ‘half’ when totalling up the number of husbands), three Staffordshire Bullterriers, three cats, a Jeep, a boat, a station wagon, a sedan and a 36 foot mobile home with matching 36 foot annexe, arrived in 1976 to prop on a nearly empty Witta Circle. Two of the bullterriers celebrated their first birthday on site: according to one of Brisbane’s leading dentists (then a very young neighbour) the party was the highlight of his childhood; the hostess in best bikini knew children liked chocolate crackles and adults liked gin and tonic and that was the menu.

Susie took a job doing the PR for Noosa’s main accommodation group, creating (with artist Peter Campbell) a cartoon column in ‘The Age’ about a very social pelican who lived in Noosa. After the couple had built two houses and some units and everything was totally ticketyboo she eloped with a local broadcaster whose ambition in life was to run an FM radio station. She sold her Witta Circle house and built one at Sunshine Beach and helped her new husband (Two and a Half) form a company of investors to lobby for an FM licence. The then minister was very supportive, but the bureaucrats decreed all licences be offered to existing AM broadcasters. So their fledgling company bravely bought 4GY.

A couple of years later, after several legal battles (the good folk of Gympie did not like Noosa people running their station) 4GY was taken over for more than two and a half times what it had cost and the exhausted couple took off for six months’ recovery in Europe. On their return she started writing a social diary called ‘Cassandra’ for the ‘Noosa News’ and took a job as State Electorate Secretary for the area. Although a member of the National Party, MLA Gordon Simpson was an ardent conservationist and helped preserve a lot of the natural beauty of the area.

John Osmaston circa 1991

Meanwhile, Two and a Half commuted to the ABC in Brisbane, spending most weeknights away from home. Inevitably he fell for a workmate; Susie fell into deep despair but after a year of assessing different methods of suicide she (and her beautiful bullterrier Sadie) fell in love with John Osmaston, whose own marriage had suffered a similar fate.

That was at the end of 1991. By then she was with the Noosa Council, doing all their media work as well as ‘Cassandra’. The column ran non-stop in the ‘Noosa News’ and sometimes the 'Sunshine Coast Daily’ for 23 years, come hell or high water. She would rise at 4 am to write it and then return to bed for hugs at 6, becoming very irritated by people who thought it was the only work she did.

The Council job was very demanding. Over 17 years departments, staff and interests grew enormously. She continued alone doing all the media releases, creative advertising, brochures, annual reports, staff newsletters, photography, media monitoring, etc. Enquiries to Maroochy Council revealed they had eight people doing most of that work. One lighthearted memory is the PR launch of the Free Holiday Bus. Longtime Noosan and founding Les Girls star, the late Kandy Johnson had been the inspiration for the movie ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’ and adored her suggestion he sing and dance on top of a bus. In a State where Priscilla clones had previously been outlawed, the pair used the Police Beat office as Kandy’s stage dressing room. To the delight of media cameramen they drove up and down Hastings Street with Kandy in white negligee teetering through the bus skylight on top of a ladder. Sunbus nearly fainted and begged he wear a harness next time.

Eager to retire she delayed to help with the 2007 fight against the State Government move to amalgamate Noosa with Maroochy and Caloundra. She booked half-page ads in the ‘Courier Mail’ with before and after photos portraying ‘Noosa : Beautiful one day, Buggered the next’. Strange to say, the Courier Mail asked her to change it to ‘Ruined the next’. The final push was a demonstration in Brisbane. Council hired every bus in the region and took thousands of residents to Parliament House, marching with accompanying bands and balloons. As the CEO kindly said, it was her retirement party.

With the help of sand sculptor Dennis Massoud, the following day Susie had news helicopters filming Main Beach protestors who had formed the words SAVE NOOSA on the sands. She continued working for the de-amalgamation effort as a foot soldier until Free Noosa inevitably triumphed. Meanwhile they sold the Sunshine Beach view to fund a very happy retirement at Noosa Heads.

2018 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.

Her first husband’s illness had put paid to any idea of children and when she remarried Two and a Half already had near teenagers, one of whom stays in close touch. John (we would not dare to call him Three and a Half) had three children. He and Susie were with one beautiful daughter when she suffered a fatal asthma attack. The pair helped raise his beloved son from the age of 10 and remain very close to him, John’s other treasured daughter and their offspring.

Having played the game for a lot of his life, John had joined the Bridge Club. Susie taught herself to sew and listened to her beloved music while he dashed to and from golf and bridge. He constantly entreated her to take lessons at the Bridge Club. After a lot of tantrums she agreed, if he would come to Europe again with her. The deal was done and at the age of 71, with brain cells fleeing in all directions, she started trying to learn to lead through strength.

Convention Corner

Two-Way 2C Response to 1M The February 2017 edition of Australian Bridge contained an article advocating this useful convention be adopted by 2-over-1 users. Simon Andrew has also promoted this convention in lessons at our Club.

In response to opener's one-major opening, it is proposed that the bid of 2C by responder has two possible meanings:

1. game forcing, either balanced or with long clubs; or 2. an invitational 3-card or 4-card raise in opener's

major

After this start, the opener is required to show the strength of his/her opening bid. There are only three possible responses by opener: 1. 2D shows a better than minimum opening 2. 2 of the original opening major shows a minimum

opening 3. after 1S opening, opener may now show a H suit by

bidding 2H, which also means a minimum strength hand.

The main benefit of this convention is that it allows the partnership to stop at the two-level in a major suit. I find it quite annoying to bid to 3S, perhaps on fit and number of trumps, only to fail by one trick when the opponents were never going to contest.

Here are a few example sequences to show this convention in action.

♠ K Q 4 3 2 ♥ 9 5 3 ♦ 7 3 ♣ A K 8

West 1S 2S (min)

♠ J 7 5 ♥ A K T ♦ Q 8 4 ♣ Q 7 6 3

East 2C (multi) Pass

East has 12hcp opposite an opener, but 12 + 12 does not provide game.

♠ A 8 7 4 ♥ A Q 9 8 4 ♦ Q 5 ♣ 8 2

West 1H 2H (min)

♠ 9 ♥ K T 7 ♦ K J 8 4 ♣ K Q J 6 5

East 2C (multi) 4 H

East probably had high hopes after partner opened, but these were dashed by opener's second bid so East settled for game.

♠ A J 8 5 2 ♥ 7 5 ♦ A Q J 6 ♣ K 9

West 1S 2D (not min) 3D (natural)

♠ K Q 3 ♥ A 8 2 ♦ K T 9 5 ♣ A 7 6

East 2C (multi) 2S (game force) 4D (natural)

from here, by cues and ace ask, 7D contract can be reached.

Once the game force was effected by East's bid of 2S, the partnership could comfortably further describe their hands, ending in a fine grand slam in a different suit.

If any members wish to study more detail in the original article, I shall place photocopies in the plastic file by the dealing-room door.

Geoff Hart