A brisk sunny morning greeted us as we arrived on a wet oval with views almost like Scotland.

Please come and join the members, relations and friends of the Clan MacRae Society of Australia and New Zealand for the Clan MacRae Bathurst Highland Gathering & Country Fair and Dinner on Sunday 25th March, 2012, from 10am to around 4.30pm. Note - You don’t have to necessarily come all day, you can come after lunch and stay for the informal dinner in the evening.

In 2011, our daughter Angela, was accepted as a  presenter at an international education conference held at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

Angela, a PhD student with a research scholarship from the Australian Government, apart from being extremely  intelligent, is well organized beyond belief.  Thus, she set in place a schedule of 42 days travel, with all flights, transfers and accommodation booked and accounted for, with a number of side excursions to places of interest arranged for each location.

The Clan MacRae Society’s very capable Honorary Treasurer, Maxwell Browning, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. The honour was announced in the Northern Daily Leader newspaper on Australia Day 26th January, 2012.

He was an employee at Armidale’s WHK Cameron’s Chartered Accountants for 55 years from 1955, Mr Browning became a partner in the firm in 1969 and served as the company’s chief executive until his retirement in 2006.

2011 has been a busy year for the Clan MacRae Society of Australia and New Zealand with many highlights, some sad losses and a number of firsts.

Early in the year the Society was blessed by the visit of our Scottish guests, Life President of the Clan MacRae Society in the U.K. and Scotland, Mrs Marigold MacRae and her daughter Baroness Miranda MacRae Van Lynden in March. Our Society held functions in Armidale, Katoomba and Bungendore and their presence was appreciated by all who attended.

This is a book you might enjoy reading. It can be ordered from any book shop in Australia from distributor Peribo.

Written by John Rowland DSO, DFC Squadron Leader.

To read John is a pleasure and he is a wonderful story teller.

John flew Hectors, Halifax, and Lancasters. His first flight was in 1940 over Dunkirk. Quite a few Australians flew in his squadron helping in the great struggle.

I travelled to Sydney with our President Alan McRae to attend our regular quarterly Clan MacRae meeting held in Sydney at the home of Sue Catterall, in the lovely suburb of Wahroonga on Wednesday 16^th November 2011

This photo was taken in either 1944 or 1945 during World War II when Gordon McRae was serving in the Australian Army Pay Corps.  Gordon was visiting his sister Jean McRae who resided at Roseville in Sydney at the time. 

Gordon Russell McRae was the youngest of five children of Alice and Francis Lewin Duncan McRae. Born on Thursday, 11th November, 1920, in the Walcha Hospital on the New England tablelands in northern New South Wales he was to be the last of the McRae children. Ironically, Gordon was born on Armistice Day, just two years after the First World War finished.