John Goss OAM

John Goss was recognised for his services to motorsport in this year’s Queen’s Birthday honours. He was presented with his Order of Australia medal by the Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, at a special ceremony at Government House in Yarralumla, Canberra.

As it happens, this was not the rst meeting between Goss and the governor general – it turns out that they’d actually met over a beer in a Sydney pub some decades earlier!

The governor general even recalled their previous meeting when time came for Goss to step up to receive his award.

“He remembered meeting me about 30 years ago in a little pub near Victoria Barracks in Sydney,” Goss told AMC. “At the time he had just returned from active service as a major general in the army, a young soldier, and I was there with a couple of friends. It was a pub where the senior officers went.

“I was introduced to him, and we chatted for a while because he had some interest in motorsport. I was surprised at the ceremony that he remembered me.”

In the midst of the formal, high protocol awards ceremony, the governor general asked Goss about his ’85 Bathurst win, and that it must have been ‘an exciting few laps towards the end’ with the Jaguar’s broken seat held together with cable ties.

“I corrected him and said it was more like about 45 laps!” Goss said, amid much laughter from the assembled gathering of fellow awardees, friends and family.