Meal: The traditional Christmas schnitzel, gravy, salad, and chips. 

The Roman philosopher Epictetus once wrote, ‘I have to die.  If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later.’  It was in this stoic vein that Rotarians sauntered into the bowlo for the last club meeting of the year.

Dillo introduced the Pres and then invited reports;

·       Greg recently caught up with Abbey Titmus, who is our National Youth Science Forum delegate.  Abbey has had an orientation session in Ballarat and an official reception in Government House with the Governor.  Abbey will travel to Brisbane soon to spend ten days in the NYSF biology stream.  We thank Greg for organising this wonderful opportunity for Abbey.  We wish Abbey well and look forward to hearing all about her experience.

·       Tony D reported that 1561 containers were recycled from the Jericho Cup.  While this was a disappointing number, we have learnt much from this first attempt.  Hutto has organised forty 240 L wheelie bins with lids from Wheelie Waste.  This will allow us to have a much better attempt at collecting containers at the Woodford Cup on New Years Eve.

·       Bob continues to investigate the SLSC barbeque idea.  It will be very difficult for us to do this on our own so Bob is putting feelers out to the other clubs.

·       Matt thanked Sam, Robbo, Glenn, Ron and Greg for helping deliver the Sinclair Wilson gifts to Brophy, Emma House, and the Salvos.

·       Ron reported that he recently caught up again with former exchange student Iko, who says hello.

Bob introduced our guest speaker Noel ‘Nobby’ Reade.  Noel invited members to a concert on January 20^th at the Lighthouse Theatre.  The concert features the Screaming Eagles and the Bob ‘Bongo’ Starkie Skyhooks show.  The concert is raising money for the Brighter Days Foundation. 

The Brighter Days Foundation raises funds for Epidermolysis Bullosa.  They fund research and support families with a child with EB.  There is currently no effective treatment for EB, it causes enormous suffering, and sufferers have greatly reduced life span.

Tickets are $79 each and available from the lighthouse theatre for members who wish to support the cause.

We thank Noel for; 1. Organising the benefit concert, 2. Coming to speak to us and, 3. Looking after Nooka in his time of need.

The meeting concluded with an excellent fines session from Rowan.  Rowan conducted the fines session while apparently recovering from a serious concussion.  He based his fines on the unlikely two subjects of prostate examinations and the Spirit of Tasmania.  If you do ever find yourself late one night on the Spirit of Tasmania receiving a prostate exam, be warned that the other person is probably not a real doctor.  Rowan asked one group for the build year of the Tasmanian ferries, advising that it was 'some time between 2000 and now’.  Despite this helpful clue, members failed to guess the correct build year of 1998.  It was different, but somehow it worked; Rowan raised more money in fines than we have for quite some time.

Editor’s note; Members asked our guest speaker, Noel, about the current state of play of EB research.  I have no specific insight to provide, however I think the prospects of a cure are far from hopeless.  EB is an inherited genetic disorder, and the obvious solution would be gene therapy.  Modern gene therapy techniques using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) can selectively modify DNA in living organisms.  This is an area of medical research that is new and is attracting a lot of funding and effort.  Gene therapy using CRISPR recently demonstrated a cure for both thalassemia and sickle cell anaemia, two inherited conditions that previously had no cure and cause immense suffering.  Funding research into EB could very plausibly produce a cure.

Container recycling.

A very big thank you to all those who helped out around the Woodford Cup.  Thank you to those who helped set up the bins before the races, those who helped during the race meeting, and those who helped sort and transport the containers in the days after.  A big thanks also to Brendan, who constructed a fantastic custom sorting table for us at a moments notice.  This will certainly streamline the sorting process for us.

Once again, collecting cans at the racecourse proved to be a learning experience.  We certainly applied the lessons from the Jericho Cup and collected a much greater volume of containers this time around.  We are still collecting more rubbish and having more containers go into Wheelie Waste’s bins than we would like, but not nearly as much as last time.  A new challenge was that we had perhaps 1500 containers stolen from the racecourse on Tuesday morning. 

Our final figure for the Woodford Cup was 6,216 containers collected.  Without the theft this might have been around 7,700.  This was below expectations, but at this rate would still put us on track to collect 50,000 containers over the May Race Carnival.

Collecting containers at these big race meetings is a small industrial process.  We can continue to tweak our process to maximise the return of containers while minimising the labour input required from us.  For example, between now and the May races we will get some professional stickers applied to all sides of our bins to make it clearer what the bins are for.  Hopefully our returns will continue to improve as the project evolves.

Thanks again to all those wonderful members (and Narelle) who pitched in over the New Year.

It was funny when we were eight, and it is still funny now.

Rotary Horse Racing Report.

Just prior to Christmas Overflow Miss had a run at Terang.  With Dirty Angel almost certain to be sold after another disappointing performance, we were in desperate need of an early Christmas present.  Jordan Childs donned the pom pom and climbed aboard Overflow Miss for the Bonners Transport Maiden Plate. 

Jordan got OM out of the gates nicely and positioned her one wide just behind the leader for the trip.  Into the straight Overflow put down the hammer and pulled away from the pack.  One horse, Burlington Gate, outsprinted her to claim first.  However, our valiant quadruped finished comfortably in second.  If it were not for the aerodynamic drag produced by the pomp pom, who knows?

Beautifully prepared by the stables, Overflow Miss’ run was the perfect gift for the fat man to stuff into our stockings just before Christmas. 

With Overflow Miss lining up in the Russ Studio Jewellers Maiden Plate in Stawell today, we will have another exciting update next week.  How good would it be to win the race named after the late Queensland Racing Minister Russ Hinze?  I believe they just hand you the cash in a brown paper bag.

Ten years ago,it was summer and the perfect time to be out on the water in the Bandicoot.  Freshly decked out with another brand-new mast, the Bandicoot was looking a picture.  The Bandicoot's old masts are still marked on nautical maps as shipping hazards in the waters around Port Fairy.