If members are unable to attend a Club Meeting or should you wish to attend as a guest, for catering purposes please advise Don Landersbefore 10:30am each Monday by email at don@cascadence.com
The Rotary Club of Northbridge gratefully acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Northbridge Plaza
Birthdays & Anniversaries
Member Birthdays
David Robertson
August 7
John Garrett
August 8
Peter Russell
August 14
Anniversaries
Joe Campisi
Katy Campisi
August 8
Jon Gidney
Gail Giles-Gidney
August 17
Join Date
John Bolton
August 9, 2011
11 years
David Hyde
August 25, 1998
24 years
Fay Petrou
August 26, 2008
14 years
Club Meeting News - 30 August 2022
Welcome
President Elect, Luke Keighery welcomed everyone, with a special welcome to the night’s Speaker, PDG Harold Sharp, and his wife, PDG Gina Growden.
Toast
Garth Carter proposed the toast to the Rotary Club of Pennant Hills, chartered in 1960. They meet on a Wednesday at 7.00pm, alternating between a meal at a restaurant and a Speaker. They hope this arrangement will attract younger members, and so increase their current membership of 30. Funds raised go to support a school for disabled children, medical research and homeless people. The Club also took the initiative to supply all Australian and New Zealand Rotary Clubs with Pride of Workmanship plaques.
Announcements
Luke announced that the Club’s next Bunnings BBQ is on Saturday 15 October at Chatswood. Sally will send out the Roster request shortly.
Luke also announced that the Board had approved $3,000 for the construction of desks in PNG and pleasingly, a District Matching Grant had now been approved.
Bob Edwards told us all about the background to the opening of Sydney’s Harbour Tunnel 30 years ago. Rotary clubs on both sides of the Harbour combined their efforts to raise funds for building a site for hearing-impaired children. $750,000 was raised with 2000 Rotarians involved on the day, which saw 300,000 people walk through the tunnel to the Domain to celebrate the tunnel’s opening. He noted that the tunnel now reverts to Government ownership, noting that the tunnel was worth $550m 30 years ago, but is today worth many more times that, the point being the Government doesn’t sell assets, it leases them.
Eleanor Chevor announced that our Club had been awarded a $4400 grant from Willoughby Council. This will fund 6 First Aid/CPR courses to be held at Northbridge Golf Club from 14/10/22, 10.00 - 12.00pm, then over the next 5 days. Refreshments will be provided. She will send out details for Rotarians to express interest.
Luke announced that John Turner had won the Football competition last week, but Chris Switzer remained in first place.
Guest Speaker - PDG Harold Sharp - ROMAC
Liz Grey introduced our Speaker, PDGHarold Sharp who was with us to speak on ROMAC. As background, she said that Harold had joined Rotary at Bondi in 1977. He then went to Rotary Cows Nest (the Club that chartered our Club), and now is a member of Terrigal Rotary. Harold was DG in 2002/03.
Harold told us about Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children (ROMAC) and the absolutely wonderful work it does in the Oceania Region - Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG, Timor Leste, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Nauru.
ROMAC was established in March 1988. It has now enabled life-saving surgery for 537 children, with 658 treatments as those with severe burns return for ongoing operations. Medical conditions include heart conditions, scoliosis, tumour removal, talipes (club foot) or untreated fractures.
ROMAC provides life-saving or dignity restoring surgery, carried out in hospitals in Australia or NZ, for children 15 years or younger. All ROMAC personnel are volunteers. The medical staff volunteer their services however all other hospital costs, treatment costs, and transport and accommodation costs are met by ROMAC.
Challenges include a lack of a passport for the child and carer and details to get them. It can also be difficult to follow up a child post operation. RAWCS teams assist here. Post Covid, it has been difficult to get in the queue for surgery, as a part of the arrangements with hospitals involved is that no Australian child will be by-passed for a ROMAC child.
With thanks to Sally O'Neill
A little bit of useless information....
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England and English expatriates designed the U.S. railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So, who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in England, and indeed Europe, for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
In other words, bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important! Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything. Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?
If anyone has any jokes or funny stories for the humour section of the Bulletin, please emailhelen.gulson@ozemail.com.au
