Oh what a night! For those members, guests and visitors who attended our Rotary Centenary Celebration Dinner at Amora Hotel, I am sure you will agree it was a fantastic celebration of all things Rotary, both the Centenary of Rotary in Australia, but also the 2/3 Century of the Rotary Club of Camberwell.The Amora Hotel provided an ideal venue for our gathering, we were welcomed with a drink at the bar followed by lots of chatter. To open the meeting I read the Ode followed by a minute's silence, to commemorate the men and women who have served our nation in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Kerry Anne then read the Acknowledgement of Country. After the toasts and welcomes, our DG Philip Archer spoke of the amazing Rotary R100 projects focussed on safe families, children's education, homelessness and mental health. The work done by the wider Rotary community (District and beyond) is just amazing. You can't help being a proud Rotarian hearing of such activity in these critical areas of need.
After the meal, the highlight of the evening was our panel of eight senior Club members being interviewed in a "question and answer" session by five of our female members.
The panel of Peter Allen, Michael Blood, Richard Gray, Graeme Hope, Don Jago, Ron Lear, Michael Mullins and Peter Pratt represented an astonishing 264 years of Rotary membership and experience! We were privileged to hear them tell of projects and experiences in response to questions from our interviewers Anita Bejerano, Kerry Anne Frost, Brenda Innes, Kemi Shobowale and Josie Tramonte (an impressive group in their own right!). I could write 10 pages of highlights from the session, but landmark projects such as the Art Show, DIK, FoodBank, Friday Night School, Servants (especially the Les Brown House), Seeds of Peace, Hawthorn Makers Market, Myeloma Australia and ROMP stood out, as did the Club's involvement and support of The Rotary Foundation, Camp Getaway, Rotary Youth Exchange and Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.
Specific highlights for me: Michael Blood cast as 9yo soprano Little Bobbie Breen in a joint Club social meeting with RC Horsham; the hard manual work of the Art Show pre-computers and pre-Exponet setting up and dismantling the panels; $66 million worth of goods recycled by DIK; Kerry Anne's poem to Don Jago; the excitement in the Ugandan village when the first DIK container was unpacked; and Geoff Heath and Michael Mullins setting up what became the amazing national FoodBank organisation.
With such a wealth of lived experience in the Club, and amazing projects conceived, developed and grown, I realised we need to capture and preserve these memories, and to that end I will raise the need for a Club Historian at the next Board Meeting. Our new website is the ideal location to archive all these stories and photos where available - preserved forever and accessible by all. Volunteers?
So a huge thank you to Annie Murphy and her Fellowship Committee for organising such a wonderful event and venue, of course thanks to the panellists and interviewers, and thanks to Fabienne for the original concept. After such a wonderful, uplifting meeting, we should all be proud to be Camberwell Rotarians.
Just a few reminders: get your Working With Children card as soon as possible, and send the soft copy your receive to Secretary Fabienne - it's easy as new member Yvonne told us. It's required by District, and most importantly it's now a requirement by Swinburne for all volunteers working at the Art Show. And speaking of the Art Show, I don't need to remind you this is our major fund raiser for the year, it's a massive project and requires the involvement of every club member. We really need to make it a financial success this year to rebuild our almost-depleted Charity account. So please plan your holidays, trips etc so that you are available for the period 5 - 20 July.
That's it from me, I will be away in Bright next week so have a good two weeks in Rotary.
