Each year our staff come together to celebrate our Staff Awards night, its a great opportunity for all of our staff and their partners to get to know each other a little better and celebrate the successes the past year has brought.

This year we held the event once again at Menangle Park Paceway and it was once again another great evening. The night allows us to highlight where the business is heading, what milestones have been achieved and reflect on where we have been. Starting in 1985 with five staff including dad we’ve certainly come a long way!! This year we celebrated group milestones such as staff now totalling over 230, vehicle sales of over 6500, parts sales of $15M and over 40,000 repair orders.

Of course these numbers don’t mean a thing unless you have the staff capable of backing it up, and as was shown on Saturday we certainly do!! Over 40% of our staff have been with us for more than 5 years, and over 20% more than ten years. This allows for great consistency and reliability and the ability for our organisations local culture to be passed on to new staff. We celebrated Mick Multari our head detailers 20th milestone, as well as Steve Auld our group Business Managers 25th year.

No doubt a great deal of our success has been generated by these two guys with Steve being regarded nationally as one of the best Business Managers in the country. We also were able to award our Manager of the Year, Campbelltown’s Holden Sales Manager, Ross Taylor, Dalton Rowell as Runner up Employee of the year and our finest this year went to Jason Penman our Hyundai/Mitsubishi Assistant Service Manager at Campbelltown. Well done to all our award winners, and here’s to another 12 months of success.

You’ve got to love this time of year. The days start getting warmer, Daylight Savings starts and the Fisher’s Ghost Festival hits Campbelltown.

There are not too many regions in Australia that celebrate a murder with a festival, but in Campbelltown we like to do things a little differently! The event celebrates the story of the ghost of Fred Fisher, and is a really a good way to have an old fashioned party, or series of parties.

The festival atmosphere is great, so too are the street parades, art awards, and of course the obligatory Bradbury oval carnival rides and fireworks. It’s a great way for our community to meet together and have a good time, a testament to the will of the region and something that certainly should continue to enthral for generations.

What’s your favourite part of the festival?

On Sunday we hosted our annual Holden and HSV owners club Muscle Car Show. As usual the day was a great success, with the dedicated owners of these cars and local enthusiasts showing off their wares.

With over 55 entrants and some really special vehicles including some rather unique muscle cars. There was something for everyone, and not just the Holden fanatic.

Crowd favourite of the day was the yellow Camaro & the True Blue Torana with local man Wayne Trimby’s yellow “Spot-o“ a feature as well. The Ice Break Coffee race truck was there with their simulator which was a hit with the kids and some dads as well.

We are proud to be associated with such a great and enthusiastic bunch of guys and gals, but special thanks would have to go to organisers like Cy Cripps, Joe Garzaniti, and my own staff with Gary Thompson leading the way.

Well done to all.

Every year the Annual St Gregory’s College Sports Dinner hosts some of Australia’s greatest athletes. This year was no different with special guest, former Wallaby Captain Stirling Mortlock adding his name to a long list of guests.

The evening is a chance for us every day sports fans to get close to and talk with some of our sporting idols. At the Wakeling table this year we were spoilt with having not one but two London Olympians, sailing silver medallist Nina Curtis and gold medal kayaker David Smith. David is an Illawarra boy (almost a local), who started in Nippers at a very young age, and Nina comes from a family of sailors and it seems sailing is in her genes.... It’s interesting each year to hear how different athletes set out to achieve greatness, Nina’s challenge for Rio is that the event she won silver in in London is not an event in Rio.

So instead she is now re-trimming her own sail and setting her sights on dinghy racing in the hope she can qualify. Her story is not too dissimilar to most of the athletes, when faced with adversity they all choose to put their heads down, set new goals and tough it out... a great trait that we can all take to heart.

Once again the Australian sporting public was treated to a wonderful finish to the Bathurst 1000 on Sunday. It’s remarkable how each years racing at the Mountain seems to produce a thrilling finish and the weekends result, where Holden’s Jamie Whincup & Paul Dumbrell were victorious, was another corker.

It was 50 years of Bathurst over the weekend as motoring enthusiasts were regaled with footage of past heroes, spectacular crashes and skin of your teeth misses. For me there were lots of memories of Brocky, and the Commodores so dominant in the past flooding back.

The race on Sunday was another beauty, I was intrigued when one of the commentators produced an analysis that showed the layout of the circuit and the distances involved, meant that the cars were effectively going flat out 100% throttle for some 600+ kilometres. The same distance from Adelaide to Melbourne, a great mechanical feat in anyone’s language. I was pleased to see the winning team come from the red stable but have to say the last 10 laps were great and either of the two first placed teams would have deserved to stand number one on the podium.

Enthusiasts will be pleased to know that the NSW HSV owners club will once again be showing off their great vehicles on Sunday 28th October at our Service Centre in Mill Road, we’ll have details on our website soon.

Some of you might remember a few months back I wrote about attending the Camden Mayoral Ball at the Civic Centre in Camden.

The evening was co-ordinated by Mayor, Greg Warren’s team and Society 389 in an effort to raise funds for a family in the region that was doing it tough.

Well a few weeks back, the fruits of the evening came to bear, when the Gattellari family finally picked up their all new Hyundai Imax people mover. The guys at Society 389 saw the family’s need of transport critical to the ongoing health of the Gattellari family, and with our support we were able to secure a deal with Hyundai to help out.

Unfortunately I wasn’t at the dealership the day of the delivery, (recovering from surgery to fix a broken arm…) but all my staff who were present were wrapped with the enthusiasm that delivering the vehicle to the family brought. It’s always a good day when you can help someone in need, and I’d like to once again thank Adrian and the team from Society 389 and Mayor Warren for helping us help this family.

As part of Volkswagen’s national dealer business meeting I, along with Australia’s VW dealers, visited Melbourne’s Albert Park last week where I had the chance to see & test drive the all new Volkswagen Up! A completely new entrant for Volkswagen in the Australian motoring scene, the Up tackles what’s known as the sub-light segment. Launched at a price that places it squarely in the sights of Suzuki’s Alto, Holden’s Spark, Nissan Micra etc, the Up is a game changer.

Using a highly advanced 1 litre 3 cylinder engine the Up felt completely at home on Melbourne’s freeways as well as zipping around inner city areas. Most of the technology in Up can’t be readily seen, as a lot of the good stuff is in high tensile steel construction and the use of lots of alloys to lower weight. The vehicle will be around the 4 litre per kilometre mark when launched in a few weeks time, as well as an expected 5 star safety ranking.

A leading feature in its class is a new City Braking System that uses lasers to gauge closing speeds on objects in front of the car, as well as prepriming the advanced ABS Braking System the vehicle can take over and automatically brake the vehicle to a stop if the computer detects the driver is reacting too slowly, a real life saver... You can see why the Up was this year’s World Car of the Year.

I have to say I was more than impressed with the whole future planning session that VW took us through, there’s certainly a lot to like about how they undertake their business. Keep an eye out for the Up on the streets of Macarthur soon, I’m sure there’ll be plenty.

For more information head to our Paul Wakeling Volkswagen page!

Sunday saw the Goulburn to Camden Charity Cycle Event once again hit town. Finishing around 11am, the field of around 100 cyclists had made their way north from Goulburn winding through the Southern Highlands over Razorback and into Camden.

A healthy crowd and clear skies greeted these “weekend warriors” who once again had raised large amounts for charities such as Odyssey house, and Goulburn Palliative Care centre. Starting in 2005 and raising over $30,000 in its first year, this years bunch saw the one million dollar mark achieved.... a great milestone for the organizers such as ex-Wallaby Simon Poidevin.

A team from one of the events major sponsors, Campbelltown Catholic Club, once again spearheaded by Graeme Derrig, made it to the finish in flying colours. Having participated in the event in the past, I had to tip my hat to the efforts of these fine Macarthur based cyclists. The event shows once again how the Macarthur area does it best when supporting great charities like these.

Congrats to the Macarthur Cycling club & Camden council for creating a great event.

Once again the Campbelltown Catholic Clubs Cube was the place to be Saturday night.

Whilst many families were gathered around TV’s in Macarthur watching the finals series, many others were joining Mater Dei students, families and staff in celebrating what the school stands for and raising much needed funds to help them continue their great work.

Over 600 attendees were wowed by the school choir, fabulous dancing and great MC’ing by Steve Edge. The main act, provided by a generous supporter was the one and only Marcia Hines... however all these acts paled in comparison to the touching tale of young Harry, and his parents’ story of their life, living with a child with serious health issues... lots of tears were shed.

I’m pleased to say the evening raised in excess of $260,000... Macarthur is truly a great place to call home.

In the upcoming weeks, as a community, we’ll be asked to vote at the local government elections for our next batch of new councillors. It’s a challenging time, how do you balance what each person or party stands for and what does it mean for you?

For many their vote is an extremely personal topic, and I’m sure not going to mess with that. However, there is one thing I would ask you to consider, and that is the role that our lga’s have in how our local businesses are run and what they can achieve economically and socially.

I’d like to hear in the next few weeks not just the normal run of the mill, no airport, more roads, better infrastructure speeches.

I’d really be interested (and so should you) in hearing how each of these people are going to help local business survive and thrive, how they can help drive local employment and create stronger partnerships with the business community. How they will ensure as much of the expenditure they have is directed in a fiscally responsible way to locals who can help in turn drive more throughput.

I know it’s not the normal stuff to hear, and perhaps a little controversial, but what do you want from your leaders?