History
In 1969 Ray Doherty, who was then employed by the Switzerland and General Insurance Company in Melbourne, was seconded to Adelaide for a 6 month stint as Acting South Australian Manager whilst the incumbent of that position took long-service leave. Shortly after taking up this temporary position Ray was sitting despondently at his desk viewing a lonely few months in Adelaide where he had no contacts or friends when the telephone rang, and a stranger invited him to attend a meeting of the Midway Club. Ray took up this invitation and found the Club had been established specifically to embrace as members or guest insurance executives who had been transferred to Adelaide for short or long term periods. This immediately gave Ray a large circle of business contacts, whilst after-hours events organised by the Club also enabled his wife Barbara to tap into a ready-made social scene. As a result, the time they spent in a strange city passed very pleasantly.
Ray returned to Melbourne determined to establish something similar, and this coincided with the arrival of a young Englishman, Phillip Bell, as Victorian Manager of the Dominion Insurance Company. Ray was a friend of the Australian General Manager of that Company, and he asked Ray to look after the new arrival. To set things in motion Ray called a meeting in his office on Wednesday 29th April 1970 to discuss the concept, and invited:
| Philip Bell | (Dominion Insurance Company) |
| Keith Wehl | (Matthew Wrightson and Strapp Insurance Brokers) |
| Brian O’Neill | (Economic Insurance) |
| Stan Curtis | (Leslie N Allen Insurance Brokers) |
| Martin Haines | (Western Australian Insurance) |
Everyone present enthusiastically embraced the idea and it was agreed a draft Constitution should be prepared and presented at the Inaugural Luncheon to be held at 12.30pm on Friday 8th May 1970 at the Mona Lisa Restaurant on the corner of Park and Domain Streets, South Yarra. Each of the founding group brought one interested person with him to the luncheon. Thus it was that the six named above were joined at the first luncheon by:
| Wally Bell | (Bankers and Traders Insurance) |
| Toby Clarke | (Victoria Insurance) |
| Peter Middleditch | (C T Bowring and Swain Insurance Brokers) . |
| John Brock | (Vanguard Insurance) |
| Ian Henderson | (Australian Equitable Insurance) |
| Kevin Shannon | (Century Insurance) |
Keith Wehl recalled some years later the cost per head of the luncheon was $4.00 including liquor! And so in 1970 the Club came into existence with Ray as the Founding President.
It is believed the Adelaide Club adopted the name ‘Midway’ to induct as members insurance staff at the mid-way point in their careers. They had left junior ranks but not yet assumed a senior position. However it is clear the Melbourne Club did not intend to follow this course, for the initial Constitution required members to be “…in a position of status equal to or higher than that of a Victorian Manager”.
Strangely, there has never been any real contact between the Adelaide and Melbourne Clubs. A visitor from the City of Churches many years ago suggested closer ties and extended an open invitation to any Melbourne Midway Club member visiting Adelaide to make contact and attend a meeting, but so far this invitation has not been taken up.
The Constitution of the Club drawn up at that time stipulated that membership was limited to new arrivals in Victoria. This followed the ideals of the Adelaide Midway Club and was intended to help introduce new arrivals from overseas or interstate to the Victorian insurance scene. Importantly, through our social activities, this friendship also extended to the wives of the newly arrived executives. This worked well for many years until the propensity for Insurance Companies to transfer staff reduced, and this produced a dearth of new member opportunities and a consequent stagnation in membership. To overcome this, whilst Club members are still on the lookout for newcomers to Melbourne, our membership is currently and increasingly drawn from Melbourne executives. Another feature of the Constitution was that it was a requirement for the Club to organise a table of members and their wives to attend the Annual Insurance Ball which traditionally raised money for the Institute of the Blind. Unfortunately the day of the Ball had passed, and after a few years it was discontinued and replaced by the Insurance Institute Luncheon, and the Constitution was amended appropriately. Eventually even attendance at that function as a requirement of Club membership was deleted from the Constitution.
Although the Constitution has been changed over the years, the underlying objectives remain:
- to foster good fellowship and provide social contact between members;
- to provide practical advice and assistance between members; and
- to assist the integration into the Victorian insurance community of Members recently arrived from overseas or interstate.
The logo of the Club was originally intended as a one-off motif for use at a social function, but by general assent it was decided to retain it. The word `PAST` on the firmly attached arm of the signpost was designed to represents our memory of things gone by when the insurance world was stable and consistent whereas the `FUTURE` on the rickety arm indicates we are heading into a very uncertain, unsettled and indeterminate era – and how prescient this proved to be!
Broadly speaking the membership of the Club now comprises retired insurance executives, most of whom have been long-term members of the Club, as well as vibrant, young executives who are naturally reinvigorating the Club in the tradition of those that have gone before.