Wiki the Wombat

The fleet fund-raiser night is just days away but who’ll be there and who will win the various prizes?
Sally Allen will be bringing a large party who will be looking to defend their best decorated table title but Tamara’s team have sent me a ‘text of intent’ on this issue.  The funniest name competition is fairly open but this year Jim Cooper will be amongst us; Jim is a former scribe and currently makes his money as a corporate apologist and has some talent in creative composition.
The main prize for winning the quiz will be a bit different this year.
Inspired (if that is the correct word) by the infamous toilet seat prize at the Mildura inter-club talent competition, Emma commissioned me to find a suitable prize that can be presented to the winners each year at the quiz.  What the prize was up to me but given the event is a fund-raiser it had to fulfil a crucial criterion, it had to be cheap.  As it is I decided to purchase Wiki the wombat out of my own cash starved wallet but the prize will be there, the winners will look after Wiki for a year, but who will they be?
Last year Derek Begg captained a UN team of Aussies, Canadians and the club’s only Swede to a tremendous victory.  Before the quiz I suggested to Derek that his team might be undermanned but his response was short and accurate “We are not many, but we are enough” or something slightly less dramatic.
But this year could be different, there are some new kids on the block, there will be half a dozen Phds in the house, three architects, three lawyers, two vets and enough IT geeks to re-launch Microsoft.  Katie Kandalaars with her fellow DS girls will be there and will certainly be looking to get one over the DS men, or as they are popularly titled “Franzi’s boys”.
Franzi herself was missing last year along with her old buddy Julia due to a mysterious problem with their car.  Derek’s team members have never denied sabotaging it, probably because no one has ever asked them if they did.   Will their presence this year alter they outcome?
To quote one of my heroes, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, “We shall see”.
Justin Thomas