Keeping it together all those years...

The Willoughby Tomiki Aikido club was kept together by a hard core of 1st Kyu (brown belts) which comprised Ed Watkins, myself (David Harvey), my (now ex-)wife Rhonda Harvey, and the youngest of us, David Lee.

In many ways it shouldn't have been a big deal, but prospective students do expect the club instructor to be wearing a "black belt". Funny that...

Every time I would travel from Sydney to Melbourne to train with John Gay sensei, he would change the core Tomiki Aikido techniques we had learned yet again, and the gradings we all needed to make Dan Grade slipped further away.

John Gay never showed us the Dai Yon kata, and he even interrupted procedings when I hired a video camera (they were very expensive back then) and flew down to Melbourne after arranging to video two of his black belt students performing it. (Forgive me, ladies, but I have since forgotten your names.)

John Gay did not stop the women, but he picked very minor errors in their Aikido demonstration afterwards, and gave a lecture to the video camera. He said that if the kata was not performed perfectly, it should not be recorded at all.

Ed Watkins, who is a retired fireman, ex WWII Military Policeman, amateur wrestler and yoga teacher, was the only one of us with enough time to spare. He drove to Melbourne and stayed for six months with John Gay and his (then) wife, Leonie. (John and Leonie later divorced. She is now Leonie McFarlane.) Eventually, Ed returned triumphantly to Sydney with his Aikido black belt.

But when Ed made another trip and came back with yet more changes from John Gay to our Tomiki Aikido techniques, I swore enough was enough. Some of the basic 17 had been taught to us five different ways. I wanted no more changes to my Aikido because they only served to confuse me. I had been a brown belt (1st kyu) for seven years, and I was quite prepared to remaim the same grade forever. I just couldn't cope with any more changes to my Aiki.

After a vote of hands, I took half the students and formed a breakaway Tomiki Aikido Club, which trained at the North Ryde RSL Youth Club, in Magdala Road.

Unfortunately I handled the whole thing badly, and in the process I managed to lose the friendship of David Lee, who chose to stay with John Gay. Naturally, I incurred great wrath from John Gay but sadly, from Bill Fettes when he returned to Australia about two year later.

Eventually, Alan Ames, who was by that time a Third Dan, visited Sydney and proceeded to grade me to black belt, in spite of John Gay's fury.