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Last Week’s Speaker
Well, what an interesting and inspiring talk from Nora Duane, member
of the Rotary Club of Drummoyne, last week. She has really thrown
herself into serving humanity through Rotary, after being a member
for less than 18-months to-date. She spoke of her polio eradication
expedition with a working party in India recently, and how that has
really opened her eyes to the important work of Rotary in doing good
in the world, and truly making a difference. The message is… you
really can change the world through Rotary membership; all you have
to do is get involved. Great story and great message for us all.
Weekly Meeting Format
Last Wednesday evening I verbally reported on some decisions the
Board had made regarding our weekly meetings, as we reviewed format
and content, with a view to modernise. In summary, we agreed the
following:
We will remain meeting on Wednesday evenings
We will remain at Strathfield Golf Club
We will retain the Toast to Rotary at the beginning of meetings
We will retain the National Anthem at the end of meetings
We will retain the Fines Session, although revert back to the Roster
System, where everyone in the Club has a turn (or two) during the
year
We will retain the Raffle
So… not a lot of change really! And that’s fine; at least we had a
discussion about it and confirmed what we are currently doing, we
believe is good. The move to a 7:00pm start seems to have received
universal support, which is also great.
The one thing that has changed (and will continue) is that I will
commence the business of the meeting midway through dinner, to buy
back some time and help to ensure we finish on time.
We also formally endorsed our support for the Catherine Sullivan
Centre’s (CSC) fundraising initiative for their phonetic-based
literacy program. This will be largely achieved via a Gala Ball to
held on 6 April 2018 at Le Montage Function Centre, run by the CSC.
We will assist with selling tickets (making up tables), providing
prizes for auctions and raffles, and other fundraising efforts on
the night.
President’s Meeting
You also heard both Paolo and myself mention that Paolo was heading
down to Fairy Meadow (just north of Wollongong) last Friday evening
for a District 9675 President’s Meeting, representing me and our
Club, as I wasn’t able to attend. We will hear a brief update from
Paolo during his Director’s Update tonight.
Rick’s Run for Rotary
 Well…
it’s done! Had a tough run on Sunday morning. The first
30km was fine, but the last 12km were a bit hard, and I slowed down
considerably towards the finish. Raymond has published a summary of
my performance on the Club website if anyone is interested. (Here it
is at the end of this section) It was actually my slowest run
to-date. I guess it’s the oldest I’ve ever been running a marathon
too! Anyway, it was all about supporting Australian Rotary Health (ARH)
and their funding of Youth Mental Health Research. We managed to
raise $4,700.00 through my supporter page, which is a great effort.
I came in a clear third in the overall fundraising leader board for
the event, and would like to personally thank all those Rotarians
and their families that supported me and ARH through donating to ARH
via my supporter page. Thank you all very much! I’m thinking that
towards the end of this Rotary year we may bring back to our Club,
representatives from ARH for a special presentation of overall funds
we will have raised to support them through the year. There may be
other events we participate in that will add to this total; we’ll
see.
Tonight’s Speakers
And so it’s finally here! The long awaited and highly anticipated
High Speed Rail (HSR) presentation – Regional Connections – from our
very own Paolo Giammarco, who will be accompanied by PP John Elvy,
complementing Paolo’s dissertation on the HSR with a discussion
about the property market impacts of such an enterprise. Strap in;
it’s going to be a rollercoaster ride tonight!
Rick
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