This week I'm back in Australia! While NZ is a great spot, I'm happy to be home.
When we went to NZ we took the train and we were 3 hours late getting to Melbourne. Fortunately, we were staying overnight before flying out! On our return we caught the 10:15 train (that didn't leave till 10:45) and managed to walk in our front door at 4:00pm! Needless to say, we will give public transport a miss for a while!
Not much to report on the Rotary front. Pres Elect Paul has announced the change over dinner is June 26. (I think he actually wants to take over earlier than that!)
Please fill in the Stack App for the Annual Dinner and the May Races Roster. We only have 5 names currently for each day.
We will be doing the push up challenge again this year. Please register or support someone doing it to support mental health when it starts.
Hutto has also been looking for prizes etc for the myeloma lunch. Please bring something to the meeting.
During my travels in NZ I was not able to see many fire hydrants! I know the members would have been looking for pictures of hydrants! I was able to find one in Cuba St in Wellington. Attached is a picture of this hydrant.
See you all Wednesday at 1pm!! Not 1:20pm!!
Pres Bono
Upcoming Events
April 18th - Beach patrol course.
May 5th ,6th and 7th - Recycling at May Racing Carnival.
June 17th - Raffle Draw.
Rotten Returns.
Not much to report from the cheap seats last week. Pretty much business as usual.
The president was on another leg of his around the world in a Rotary year, the sergeant practiced his routine for the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the microphone worked occasionally.
Someone introduced John as a guest. Nobody knew who "John" was until it was revealed that it was Hutto's first name. Hutto reported he was staying with Dillo and that he got into the wrong bed. He's only been living in Sin City for a few months, and his morals are already questionable.
Lexi LeForbes gave an excellent presentation wearing her blazer that the club didn't supply. We have previous form in this area. I think it's in our constitution somewhere that we don't provide blazers. Is it my imagination or did Lexi grow 3 inches while she was away? Must have been the fromage and escargot she devoured. That's cheese and snails to the uninformed.
Nooka was about to deliver the footy tipping report when he was drowned out by the Bombers theme song. Nooka responded in the only way he knows how by showing the meeting his best profile. Lucky for us he left his pants on! After all that we still don't know who is leading the tipping or who the one guest was - Lexi or Hutto - but if I was a Bomber supporter, I would be checking the maths on my tipping card next week.
Books Collected.
Boré, Stu, Dillo, Glenn and Rowan recently collected a stack of books from Jammo Primary. I am not sure what they have done with them, but they were hanging around out the front if my place when Ashaan and I were leaving to walk the dog the other day. Anyhow, the books are due to end up in PNG via DIK in Geelong.
This week we were lucky enough to hear from Lexi Forbes about her exchange year in France. It was wonderful to hear about Lexi’s experience. Congratulations to Greg for all his efforts to make it happen.
Of course, Lexi’s exchange year experience is not quite over. She still has ahead of her the excitement of receiving her Rotary exchange year jacket. We could make it a university graduation gift.
Well done Lexi, well done Greg, and well done again Boré.
We thank Boré for another great cartoon.
Minutes.
Attendance: Nooka noted that, with Bono away, we had a record 29 members in attendance. To be fair to Bono, most of those extra numbers were Essendon supporters just looking to greet Nooka at the door. Nooka advised that ‘all the Essendon supporters can get stuffed.’ This whole unedifying spectacle was witnessed by our guest, Lexi Forbes.
Nooka demonstrates the view Melbourne players got of their Essendon opponents.
Meal: Fish and chips.
David got the game underway with an excellent real estate joke before passing the ball to President-elect Paul. Paul reminded members to bring a bottle of wine to donate to Hutto’s Myeloma luncheon before calling for reports.
Boré is going to collect a lot of books from a local school and plans to send them via DIK in Geelong to Papua New Guinea. The school was going to take the books to the tip, but now Boré is going to take them to your correspondent’s shed. Excellent.
Tony D reported on the recent Rotary STEM night. We heard from our recent NYDF attendee and from the staff of the new South West STEM centre.
Hutto brought us up to date with the sold-out Thoroughbred Club Myeloma luncheon. The event is sponsored by Sportsbet and will feature Brian Taylor. Hutto is asking for donations of wine, with all proceeds from the wine coming back to the club.
Pip presented the club with an Elk Rapids banner courtesy of his niece.
Lew recommended to members the movie ‘Under a bamboo sky’. The film depicts life as a POW in WW2 and is showing at 11.30am on Sunday. It might be a fundraiser for something, but then again, maybe not.
Malcolm will be selling ANZAC badges this week and next. He has EFTPOS available.
Robbo advised that he has our old crayfish wheel and crayfish hats. He is suggesting we revive the crayfish raffle. When it was pointed out to Robbo that the raffle had been illegal, Robbo asked out loud if there might be a way of making it legal. Um, I think that is really your area of expertise Robbo.
Greg then introduced our recently returned outbound exchange student Lexi Forbes. Lexi gave us a wonderful account of her year in North-Eastern France, near Lille. She described the initial culture shock before settling into life in France. She lived in a series of small villages with no more than about 200 people each. She lived with four host families over the year and had a great experience with each of them.
Highlights of the year included going on a Euro tour with fifty other exchange students and going to the district conference. Lexi was the only person in the room to have attended a Rotary district conference in the past year. Lexi met Bim in Fromelles and one of our past exchange students, Lea, in Lille. Her host club has only fourteen members and only meets once per month for meetings.
Lexi listed the benefits of her exchange year as French language skills, an improved global understanding, and an increase in her confidence and independence.
She thanked Greg for all his assistance and our club for sending her on exchange. Lexi is in year 12 this year and hopes to go to Uni in Melbourne next year. We thank Lexi for her presentation and wish her every success for the future.
The barrel was drawn and fittingly Greg snagged the free lunch voucher as if fate was thanking him for his efforts in sending Lexi on exchange.
Paul then stood up and blew time on a very successful meeting. Like a winless Essendon putting a forlorn Melbourne to the sword, the club had kicked goals all day.
Elk Rapids has world class firefighting infrastructure.
When Hutto attends the races it is jacket, tie, and matching pocket square. For Rotary...
Football Update.
Lew sends us this report.
Mercedes Benz - The Best or Nothing.
Your correspondent, like Gracey, has owned Mercedes Benz's for twenty years. I love them. However, you do hope that they never break down or you never crash them. The parts cost ten times more than you expect they should and, if the part is not sitting in the Benz distribution centre in Singapore, it can take months to arrive from Germany. I once had a Mercedes have an alternator fail in NSW and it took Wagga Mercedes seven months to source and fit a new alternator. Unfortunately, Gracey recently crashed his lovely Mercedes-Benz.
What should you do while you are waiting for your Mercedes to be repaired? Every Mercedes dealer in the country will give you the same advice. Gracey has listened and taken their advice.
Ten Years Ago.
Almost inevitably, if you work somewhere for long enough in a country town, that location will become associated with you. Ten years ago, if you wanted to seek advice about a horse-related legal issue, or indeed any other legal issue, you could go to 95 Kepler Street, go in the front door, turn left, and you would be in Robbo's office getting helpful legal advice.
Of course, once we move on, we don't necessarily have any control over what happens to the building that people associate with us. Just ask Bill Wilde about that! However, Robbo has nothing to worry about. Last Friday your correspondent was attending a dental continuing education lecture in the very room that used to be Robbo's office. With the benefit of hindsight, I think Robbo might have missed a trick not going for the luxe nightclub look, a full bar, and platters of canapes for his clients. It was all very nice.
