In 2004 I happened to contact Bob Deahm, a fellow Drawing Office inhabitant and one who chose to leave the company and head to pastures new when we closed in 1975.
The circumstances that led to our personal reunion were pure luck and fate: John Inglis happened to run into Bob in Melbourne - I had been in touch with JI sometime previously - he passed Bob's contact details to me and, bingo!, after 30 years we touched base once again and met up in Sydney in November 2004.
It was during this weekend of reminiscing that we hatched the idea of having a company reunion in 2005, which neatly coincided with a lapse of 30 years since Arnolds' doors shut for good.
So over the next couple of months we managed to track down over 40 employees, most of whom were delighted at the idea of getting together once more in Chippendale.
Some of those we contacted couldn't make it, for a variety of reasons.
Bob and I were also saddened to learn of John Gray's passing, John being one of our good mates in the drawing office during the 1960s.
There were many who we just couldn't track down, irrespective of the internet resources at our fingertips in 2004.
However, using the resources of emails, Google (Facebook was less than a year old back then) and numerous phone-calls we assembled a group from across Australia - WA, Victoria, Queensland, NSW and the ACT were all represented.
So on the night of Saturday 18th. June 2005 31 ex-employees, some with wives & partners, got together in the Landsdowne Hotel in Chippendale and had a loud, happy and wonderful time reminiscing, catching up and renewing old acquaintances after a 30-year pause.
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