The roster is back.

The main purpose of the roster is to indicate who should have been doing the various jobs if they were not away on holidays.  Remember, if you have a job and you won't be at the meeting, it is your job to organise a replacement.

We have deleted the 'Cashier' role, because our new Treasurer indicated letting untrained members handle the money at the door was causing more harm than good.

·       Invocation – ‘For good food, good fellowship and the opportunity to serve we give thanks’ or something similar.

·       Toast – Typically toast Australia and anything else appropriate.

·       Chairman – Introduces our guest speaker.  Say hello to the guest speaker before the start of the meeting, find out what they are talking about, and make them feel welcome.

·      Fellowship – Greet each member at the door, welcome them and give them their name badge.

·       Fines – You are responsible for the fines session that week.

The Roster progresses in alphabetical order, and you will generally get three weeks notice that you have a given job. 

Minutes.

Attendance: We kicked off the new Rotary year with 21 members in attendance.  No doubt Nooka would have pronounced your truly the least popular president ever based on these numbers, but he wasn’t there.  There were no guests and no visiting Rotarians.

Meal: Jason delivered and excellent chop suey with cheesy bread this week.  He is really on a roll lately.

This week marked the first week of our return to the roster.  Greg was on fines, but he wasn’t there.  James was the chairman, but he was away.  Adam was the cashier, but he wasn’t there.  Clive was on fines, but he was not present.  No doubt Penno would have been critical of the effectiveness of the new roster, but he wasn’t there either.

Paul Reilly was present, and he made an excellent start to his year as Sarg.  Your correspondent had the pleasure of presenting Rowan with his double sapphire Paul Harris Fellowship badge.  Well done Rowan.  Garry gave the only report, reminding members to get involved in the L2P mentoring program.  Talk to Garry if you are able to help.

After some fines from the floor members broke into their committees to discuss the year ahead.  Yours truly is on the Membership Committee.  How do you know when your Rotary Club needs to recruit some more members?  When you convene a meeting of the membership committee and you realise it is just you sitting by yourself.  Aside from the membership committee, the committee discussions appeared to be fruitful.

We wrapped up the meeting with the return of the barrel draw.  Slippery Pole had his number drawn out of the barrel, but he wasn’t there so a redraw was triggered.  Given that Garry had gone to the effort of organising the barrel draw prize for us, it was poetic justice that Garry’s number was drawn out of the barrel and he took home the excellent bottle of vin rouge.

Rowan received his double sapphire Paul Harris Fellowship.

Members met in their respective committees.

The membership committee reached a consensus that we definitely need more members.

The argument for trades.

When I was at university it was pointed out to us that, after at least five years of full time study, we would only earn more money than a dental assistant (who has one year of part time study) when we were in our mid-thirties.  That was in the days of HECS, with full fee paying courses now I expect that the average dentist only earns more than a dental assistant well into her forties. 

This not a fact lost on Peter Hayes, who is busy organising our Trade Expo to give high school students some exposure to these career options.  It is also not a fact lost on Trev Bonney, who goes into the running for a wonderful bottle of wine with this contribution.