That must be quite an accolade when the course and the club, you begin to be asked to host events, and I know you've hosted a junior competition as well?

We did, yeah.

Our president this year is Alan O'Neill.

And I suppose the fact that, you know, our juniors are so important, he decided to have a special day for the juniors.

And several of them participated in a fabulous competition.

And Alan was kindly generously sponsored some lovely prizes.

And it was fantastic to see, you know, the respect that they got by having the juniors involved in the President's Day.

It's from people who are passionate about golf and having somewhere like East Clare Golf Club to do that.

I

mean, these things aren't cheap.

You know, IT staff and all that kind of stuff doesn't come for nothing.

So we did raise a lot of money.

We're not PE backed at all, nor will we be, but we raised some money privately, obviously some of our own money and some friends and family have our own EIS, for example.

And then the grant, I'm actually not allowed, I think I'm allowed to say how much the grant was, but it was a significant sum.

And obviously the money was great.

So in your view, what advice firms still, or where advice firms in your view still overcomplicating things, do you think?

"Dark berry characters, coffee creamer, cocoa nibs, the dark bits in roasting pans, bay leaf and fennel seeds, boulangues crushed on split slate." When you're writing about wine, are you trying to conjure up the taste that's in your mouth, or are you, are you trying to conjure up an overall kind of feeling and a kind of, you know, uh, the, the sense of romance or the sense of sort of sensory overload that you get from a wine?

Yeah, look, it, it's both, I think.

And trust me, I, I know from, um, the good people who take the time to comment on my weekly column online that nothing raises eyebrows more than a particularly poetic tasting note, and, you know, this, this idea...

The, the people that don't necessarily do it for a living who think, "Well, how can you find all that, you know, in a glass of wine?" And I think you need to have, at first, an analytical approach and just to assess the wine on quality and to see that all the things that should be there are there and in the right ratios.

But then I think you need to have the heart of a poet to try and...

You know, great wine should be a, an emotional experience.

Great wine should be something that engages not just the palate, but engages the mind and, and, and the heart because it is capable of doing that.

But where are we at in terms of the Australian wine sector, noting that you've been tasting for The Australian some very expensive and some very cheap wines lately? You know, what's happening? What's the big picture?

Have you targeted these early Group Threes with the fitness edge? Uh, and, and how much more is there if he can perform and win the Bletchingley on the weekend?

Yeah, interesting question.

We certainly targeted it, hence why we backed him up, 'cause we wanted to go two weeks into the, um...

He, he, sorry.

He ran at Sandown then we ran him, um, then I trialed him, then we ran him, then we backed him up knowing that the Monash was two weeks.

So obviously worked out perfectly.

And, um, [clears throat] we've got the Bletchingley.

Now if, if you wanna get involved in your stable and get that inside oil, have you got a few that are still available? I know the sales season's a while ago, but coming into the Spring Carnival, this is a good time for people to snap up shares because it's not far away from seeing horses make their debut.

So in your work, what does it look like when a home that used to work simply stops? And what does it actually take to help someone stay in it?

That's a great question.

You're absolutely right that whilst we work in residential aged care, the vast majority of Australians don't want to move into a nursing home.

And the vast majority of Australians do wish to continue living in their own home.

What you describe is housing, especially post-industrialisation and certainly post-World War II and housing, with modern economic housing and tax policy, housing has become commodified for really middle-class people.

So the mismatch between housing and living, I think we see it daily, affordability, the recent budget kind of highlights that.

What we observe, especially for our heart care clients, is people do wish to live in their own home for as long as possible.

What does this say about housing affordability when people are working longer to stay at house while others wait years for a home that may never come, especially for those who are in their ageing years, I know 55 and over? What does this say about we have to go back to work when we actually can't, but we have to because we need that access to housing, which we said is the basic right, but you're not having it?

um a big help certainly it's with the form he's in at the moment and uh great to hear some insight regarding how much hard work he's putting in at the moment jackson uh race number seven you've got the eight winners edge going around here in the sir john monash stakes he was a good victor last time at caulfield luke curry comes back from holidays to ride he's got a great association with this horse

yeah great to see luke back from from holiday um and yeah as you said he won on him a few times early in his career um so he knows the horse very well which i was um very happy to get that booking uh look he's this horse has come back from injury he's come back super better if anything um And the map looks pretty good for him.

A lot of speed on paper.

I think the nose roll was a key gear change the last start.

It turned to really work well with him.

You see he raced very fresh at Flemington up the straights.

but he's hit up and wanted to be a bit keen.

Wait for age, a new barrier for him to overcome though? Yeah, I

Uh, but if you could just, like, quickly introduce yourself, who you are, where, where you live, and, you know, your running background.

background.Yeah, so I'm from Syracuse, New York, um, or a suburb of Syracuse, New York.

Um, lived there for most of my life.

I grew up as a runner.

I've been running since middle school.

Um, I started running, I guess, I was probably 11 or 12.

I had some initial success with it, and then I had a really successful high school running career.

Mm-hmm.

I suppose, how do you recognise that? How do you build the culture so people think, okay, what's next?

One of the core things for us here is it's important for all parts of the organization to understand how they actually contribute to the success.

And in a relevant conversation, as we mentioned, our co-major partner at Wallachs is to talk about the finance function within the business.

Now, it could be easy for someone that sits within that finance arm to not realise that they contribute to the outcomes of the football club on the weekend.

But if you sit there and you think about all the levels of what finance will do in your business and the efficiencies that that creates, the income that comes through our business, the way that's distributed, the way it supports all the actions, the investment in our football programs and everything that we do, you would actually say that finance as an individual function is incredibly important to the outcome of the club.

Now, you can identify that through every area of our business and making sure that all individuals understand the worth that they play and the importance that they play.

Because ultimately for us, we're trying to win big games of football, which really supports so many aspects of what we do.

Have you got an example where you've actually disrupted be it your own product, be it a tradition, something at Essendon that has actually benefited