MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
The end of an era for ?Falklands Experience'.
AS REGULAR as the arrival of the Rockhopper penguins, one of the sure signs of summer in the Falklands for the last twenty years has been the sighting in the streets of Stanley of Major Ronnie Spafford, leading yet another small group of eager visitors, usually of mature years, but often wearing, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, sweatshirts of psychedelic hue, emblazoned with the words “Falklands Experience”. “Ronnie makes us wear them, you know,” one lady recently confided.
Given his occasionally gaudy plumage and his predilection for skinny-dipping in the sea, some might describe Ronnie as "a bit of an odd bird." Anyone spotting Ronnie for the first time, ambling along Ross Road, sock less, his feet in the open-toed sandals which he wears even in the most atrocious weather, evidence of a hearty breakfast on his tropical shirt and his remaining grey hair streaming in the wind, might suspect that he is some kind of aged hippy, rather than a former long-term career soldier in the Royal Artillery.
What is even less immediately evident from his appearance and benign, somewhat bumbling manner, is that over the years, Ronnie Spafford has done more to promote the Falkland Islands than almost anyone else, is a world authority on the philatelic history of the Falklands ? with Stefan Heijtz one of only two International Gold Medal Falklands exhibitors - and single handedly has almost certainly brought more tourists to stay in the Falklands than any other individual or company.
In the 1960's, observing a fellow officer while away the long hours of evening duty arranging his stamp collection, the idea came to Ronnie that if he resumed this hobby, which he had abandoned as a school boy, it might provide a substitute for more active pastimes, like rugby, for which he was getting too old and offer an interesting and profitable way of investing the savings he was making from his army pay. Looking for a single country which produced stamps which gained in value and were few enough to be able to aim at "catalogue completion" he hit upon the Falklands.
It is tempting to say at this point "and the rest is history," except that for most people it wouldn't have been. In Ronnie's case, however, his amazing determination and doggedness of character meant that this apparently inconsequential decision to collect Falkland Islands stamps was to be life-changing as an interest in the stamps of the Islands grew into an insatiable interest in the people of the Falklands. This interest was possibly kindled and certainly fuelled for many years by the late Mrs. ?Dids' Dickson, formerly of Teal Inlet and mother of Ron and Gerald.
Mrs. Dickson began to write to Ronnie after the Rev Peter Millam, then minister in charge of Christ Church Cathedral had suggested that Falkland Islands residents should correspond with people in Britain as a means of making the Falklands cause understood. At first, her letters came once a month, with every sailing of the RMS Darwin and then, with the introduction of an external air service, with every plane and although in Ronnie's words it "became a bit much" keeping up with this torrent of correspondence, he was by this time firmly "hooked" on the Falklands.
Now, at the age of seventy-three, the list of Ronnie Spafford's Falklands-connected titles is impressive: founder member and currently Vice-President of the Falkland Islands Study Group, author of the definitive work on the Falklands Centenary Stamp issue, early member and later office holder of the Falkland Islands Emergency Committee, Ex-Chairman and Vice-President of the Falkland Islands Association, author of the Falkland Islands Newsletter 1982-1992, Trustee and Ex-Chairman of Falklands Conservation. However, what, I suspect, makes this very humble man as proud as anything is that he is known and greeted affectionately by so many people in the Falkland Islands.
It was this interest in and knowledge of the people of the Falklands that started Ronnie off on "Falklands Experience", the title under which he has marketed his own very personal brand of tours of the Falkland Islands and under which banner he has brought at least one and often two groups of visitors to the Islands, every summer since 1989.
While the prime focus of the "Falklands Experience" tours has remained philately, Ronnie's boast is, "...because I know so many people, I can arrange anything." Over the years his clients have toured battlefields, watched wildlife, dived on wrecks, fished and even shot Upland Geese, as well as being allowed behind the scenes in the Stanley post office and getting to take tea with Betty Biggs in her kitchen, to hear her tales of life in South Georgia.
If Ronnie has a regret it is that he has not been able to get the Falklands into the Japanese wedding market, though he is delighted to have recently recruited a Japanese lady to the Falkland Islands Study Group.
As a measure of the understanding they gain of the Islands, in what Ronnie describes as "the best public relations exercise" significant numbers of his clients leave the Islands enrolled in either Falklands Conservation or the Falklands Association. He feels that it is precisely the general, people-centred nature of his tours which engenders this kind of identification with the Falklands, claiming that the strictly wildlife visitors are, "...not committed to the Falklands, but to birds."
Now, sadly, as I write, Ronnie is in Stanley waiting the arrival of what he says will be his last tourist group and next Friday at Government House, there will be a Tourist Board-sponsored reception to pay official tribute to Ronnie's outstanding contribution both to tourism and to the more general Falklands cause.
While Ronnie is understandably sad about finally giving up running his tours after all these years, he says that, "I would have to give up some time and it is good to end on a high." He also says that he will remain 100% committed to the Falklands and is looking forward to beginning to exhibit his stamps again and to aiding ex-Governor David Tatham in the Dictionary of Falkland Islands Biography project.
Fortunately, for his many friends in Stanley and the Camp, we will not have seen the last of Ronnie, when he finally steps onto the Airbus at Mount Pleasant. Asked whether he will keep visiting the Falklands, without a group of tourists to lead, the reply is immediate; "How could I not? After all I know more people in the Falkland Islands than I do in Weston-super-Mare." (PN) John Fowler (MP) Stanley
Photo: Peter Pepper
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