Gary Halliday posted on August 07, 2009 12:30
Our last meeting was once again well attended; however a few members seem to have gone AWOL. I’m told our search and rescue team should locate them soon and return them to the fold.
Our special guest Margaret Favelle, in her capacity as spokesperson for ROMAC gave us an insight into the wonderful work carried out world wide by this organisation. Their Mission is, “To provide medical treatment for children from developing countries in the form of life saving and/or dignity restoring surgery”. Our VVP team that leaves for Vietnam next week has details of two children in Tay Ninh Province that may be candidates for a ROMAC assisted project. Margaret also detailed a shoe box campaign, she hopes our club will adopt on our next visit to West Wyalong.
On the subject of West Wyalong, we were also privileged to have the company of their Lord Mayor, Tony Lord. Tony explained some of the difficulties still facing the community and why the proposed “Theatre System Project” would go a long way to helping with morale in the region. The proposed project will cost in the vicinity of $11,000 and Tony hinted that local council was willing to contribute financially. Our treasurer Gary Halliday added that a bigger and more expensive system could be purchased, if more Rotary clubs were to become involved, besides ours and Cabramatta. This may be necessary as the screen may have to be quite large due to this project taking on the proportions of an epic bigger than Ben Hur.
Our club also unanimously decided to award Paul Harris Fellows to Gerard Kevin Butler and his wife Rhonda. Kevin and Rhonda are sheep farmers hailing from Kilmore East in Victoria. Following fires that started on the 7th February taking out Kevin’s property fences, he set about rebuilding them the very next day. He then found assistance to help neighbours’ undertake the rebuilding of their own fences that were burnt out. That phase of the project took on monumental proportions, entailing the construction of over 400 kilometres of fencing by more than 3000 volunteers putting in 7,500 volunteer days of work, all based out of Kevin’s own property. The fine work carried out by Kevin and his army of volunteers can be seen at www.blazeaid.com.
Locally, Shann O’Connell was unsuccessful in her bid to become team leader of The GSE team to Nova Scotia in 2010. Undeterred, Shann has used the experience as a learning curve for a future attempt at the job. A proposal to host a wine tasting/ fund raiser was also tabled and may be an interesting project to undertake with another willing local club.
The farmer’s markets roster for Saturday 15th August has Richard Watts, Adam Whyte and Kevin Walker tossing the snags for charity. It has been decided that customers ordering a sausage on a roll should be given two sausages on a roll contrary to what was ordered. That is, if the first sausage is too small. Confused? Then just convince them to buy a bacon and egg roll instead.
Our dynamic duo, Mr Kevin Walker, (Raffles) and Mr Joe Cauchi, (Sergeant) extracted $115.00 and $53.95 respectively from their victims.
The Raffle was won by Gary Halliday, who also took out second prize therefore gifting him a $190 bonus. Third prize went to Pat Murray.
Next week, our guest will be Kerry Baker from Rotarians against Malaria. It will also be my last meeting before heading off to Vietnam with my good friends, Joe, Jim and Max for two weeks.
Important Information - The raffle jackpot will be $10.00 on 18th August.
Charles Hili