__ON THE WALLABY – 28th December 2007_

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. - John F. Kennedy, President of the Unites States of America

GOODBYE 2007, G’DAY 2008

My first question is, of course, where the heck did 2007 go? I guess when you get to my age, that of being, as my late father put it, “on the bell lap”, time does move faster. He reckoned life was all about four laps of twenty years each so when you hit 60, the bell is ringing.

Be that as it may, it only serves to drive me to make each day a winner, for as the old adage goes, “you live every day as if it is your last for one day you will be right!”

So how was 2007 and how is 2008 looking?

2007 was a good year. It was certainly one where I had to “pull my finger out” and really knuckle down to some hard work in both the auctioneering field and in building our Fountain Auction Academy.

With the former, it has been a most satisfying year, for the offices I am now auctioneering for (and most of whom are part of our FAA (Fountain Auction Academy) Office Group) have seen their businesses grow between 45% and 75% . This has been a result that has given Sam and I great pleasure.

Our Academy is now conducting real estate auction marketing courses across Australia and into the USA and hopefully, at some stage this year, South Africa.

We will be launching a number of initiatives that Sam and I believe are both innovative and valuable and these include:-

• using the Internet through the medium of WebEx to conduct online training

• an annual Conference based in the beautiful Southern Highlands where we now live and

• the creation of an effective FAA Membership program.

December also saw me become President of the Bowral Rugby Club , the “mighty Blacks” and we have the challenge in 2008 of re-gaining the Club their former glories.

The year also saw some incredible political changes with the Iemma Government being re-elected, as much through the incompetence of the Liberal Party as the absolute lack of skills of Iemma et al.

The biggest however, was the turfing of the Howard Government and John Howard, in only the second time in Australian history, losing his seat as Prime Minister. Good riddance I reckon for now hopefully we will see an end to “wedge politics” and playing on fear that was so much a feature of John Howard’s time at the wheel.

As an aside, and following today’s tragic news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, it says much for the Australian psyche and character that a government can lose by some 16 seats and transfer power with nary a ripple. We do indeed have much to be thankful for in this great nation!

That PM Kevin Rudd and his team have a veritable financial tsunami heading towards them, as former Peter Costello commented during the election, is not in dispute by anyone who cares to read more than the ”goss” magazines and I hope, for all our sakes, he and his team are up to the challenge.

The US sub-prime loan fiasco still has some time to run and on reading the financial papers over the last week with interviews conducted with people far, far more savvy than myself financially, there is still much trepidation out there.

The US election shenanigans continues to bemuse me as mega bucks are spent in finding out who the candidates will be for the Democrat and Republican Parties.

It always astounds me that for a nation who are so “gung ho” in building things, and boy, they sure can do that, they have such an amazingly complex political system for voting.

Anyway, here comes 2008 so on behalf of Sam and myself, we’d like to wish all our readers all the very best for a happy, healthy and profitable New Year.

Carpe diem

Tony

(Author: The Complete Guide to selling Real Estate by Auction and the e-book The Vendors Guide to selling Real Estate by Auction)

tony@fountainandco.com

Bowral NSW Australia

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