After a lovely 2 week break, Progressive Training is back and ready to serve you in any way we can.

We hope you had a fantastic Christmas and New Year and look forward to working with you this year.

Call (9964 9497) or email us or browse our website to see how we can help you and your organisation soar to new heights in 2014.

Before we know it Christmas will be upon us – a scary thought, I know! This edition is one of the last for 2013 with just one more issue of Newsline to be distributed before the end of the year. Keep an eye out for our Christmas issue!

I have just returned from a wonderful five week holiday in Europe where I spent my time enjoying the Netherlands, the magnificent scenery of the Rhine and Moselle rivers and the history and architecture of Germany and France. The Bavarian area of Germany is something else! Hope you enjoy the few photos (of the more than 1200 that I took!) that have been included in this issue.

The team here did a magnificent job of keeping everything in perfect running order while I was away and I thank each and every team member for their contribution. Plans are underway for our Management Team meeting to be held mid-November – this meeting will concentrate on our plans and targets for 2014 and beyond. Our internal audit will also occur early in November.

In August Geoff headed off to Christmas Island to conduct an audit for the Department of Training and Workforce Development.

Christmas Island is a natural wonder - a remote tropical island famous for its unique red crabs, robber crabs and spectacular bird life. It is an Australian Territory which lies way out in the Indian Ocean 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth and 500 kilometers south of Indonesia's capital Jakarta.

Lyn and I have just returned from our third visit to Italy. There is something special about this country that we both love. Maybe back in history a friendly Roman took a liking to a lovely welsh lass and that's where the love of Italy started for the Davies, who knows.

Yet again Lyn turned her hand to travel consultancy and turned out a fantastic holiday for us both.

We began the Italian leg of the holiday in Turin. Arrived at around 11:00pm then up and off at 7:00am the next morning (what jet lag?). Here we took in a number of cathedrals, Egyptian museum (best outside of Cairo), Mole Antonelliana and of course the Shroud of Turin (only the copy).