Attendance: Nooka explained that he had taken to carrying Gracey’s work key around his neck after Tony had left his own key at Callaghan's. He then asked ‘Where am I?’ before launching into a story about T.Bone going to Queenstown in New Zealand. Nooka finally revealed that ‘I think we have twenty-one here today.’ We didn’t, but is that even the point? We had no guests and no visiting Rotarians to trouble the statistician.
Meal: Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for. We used to have the culinary genius Jason cooking for us with a ridiculously low budget to work with. Each week he would throw something that had once been alive through the industrial meet grinder and then use his extraordinary imagination to create something that had never been cooked before. People complained Sometimes it was brilliant, sometimes it was terrible, but it was always interesting.
Now we have four perfectly acceptable meals on rotation. This week we had corned beef. Again. It was exactly like every other time we have had it. Which is to say that it was very nice but also not in the least bit interesting. Now, if only we could find someone to throw a dead possum through a meat grinder…
Dillo introduced President Rob to start the meeting. In reports;
· Rob reminded members of the Beach Patrol clean up at Fitzroy River on the 14th April. If we get there and the river looks too hard to fix we will just send it to Brisbane instead.
· Rob also reminded us of the Myeloma Luncheon on the 29th of April.
· Tony D. reported that, with the efforts of Lew and Hutto, the stickers have now been placed on the container recycling bins.
· Hutto advised that a share in a two year old filly will be up for auction at the Myeloma Luncheon courtesy of our friends at Wilde Racing. This might need to be a silent auction as far as our better halves are concerned, but I am sure we can get a little syndicate together to have a bid on the horse. Hutto has a great list of speakers and special guests for the event. There will be a silent auction on the day, with our club providing the auction items and all proceeds coming back to the club. Bob suggested we can all donate a good bottle of wine towards some ‘wine packs’ that can be auctioned.
· Hutto also announced that the Warrnambool Racing Club has ordered 70,000 cans of beer for the May Carnival. We can only hope that the good citizens of Warrnambool drink these 70,000 cans with responsible moderation and then deposit their empties into our bins.
· Bob thanked those members who supported the Myeloma Walk again this year.
· Lew reported that he went to Melbourne courtesy of V/Line, which cost him $3.60 or ’88 cents an hour’. He did the maths and worked out that a schooner at the MCG was the same cost as spending twenty-four hours on the train.
· Jon reported that the Doggy Daycare grand opening barbecue raised $120 for Rotary. Thank you Jon!
· Jon also advised that copies of his excellent race call are available for purchase for the low price of $10, with all proceeds going to the club.
· Nooka reported that The Tickler was leading the tipping after adopting the shrewd tactic of refusing to tip and so receiving all the home teams.
Gracey then gave us a report on his trip to Sydney courtesy of the MS Queen Elizabeth. Gracey advised that he had been dying to spend time on the Queen Elizabeth, ‘like Phillip’ as Hutto observed. Gracey attended an Opera at the Sydney Opera House, visited the filming location of ‘Home and Away’ before visiting the Hunter Valley. He recommends the old Paterson’s Winery. A gentleman in Dublin started defrauding money from Gracey’s credit card while he was away, forcing him to pull out and use the secret punting credit card, which was awkward. We thank Tony for his excellent presentation.
Bim Afleck gave us a special reading of a poem he attributed to ‘Gerald Irvine, 1888’ and which apparently was recently read at a wedding that both he and the good doctor attended.
Paul gave us an excellent fines session based on Warrnambool’s history from the 1970’s.
