Stand-in President Peter Grinter welcomed all members, guest speaker Judy Charnaud and guests Adrienne St Clair & Beau Villaneuva.
Toast:
Ian Burnet gave a toast to the Rotary Club of Bali Seminyak. The club meets weekly at lunch time on Wednesdays and most of their members are in the tourism and hotel industry. More information on the club and its activities can be found at https://rotaryseminyak.org/ .
Announcements:
Fay Petrou mentioned the “Spring into Spring” Dinner Dance being held by the Rotary Club of Sydney Inner West to be held on 21 September. If anyone is interested in attending, see Fay.
Rob Coote advised that “Soar & Roar” (https://www.soarandroar.com.au/) in support of Special Olympics is again being held this year. Our club was involved with this event last year and Rob is looking for some volunteers to help out on the day – Sunday, 8 December. The event is also being supported by a lot of other clubs so please contact Rob if you can help out on the day.
Luke Keighery advised that RC of North Sydney Sunrise is holding a Halloween Party on Saturday, 2 November at Cammeray Golf Club. Legendary band “Crunching Numbers” will be performing and it should be a fun night.
Kim Wilkins reminded members of the book stall to be held on Sunday, 15 September. He is particularly looking for children’s books to give to Northbridge Plaza who are collecting books to donate to the Inner City for Indigenous Week.
President's Message
On Tuesday we had a mix up in bookings which resulted in a great night at Rotary.
The night will be reported elsewhere in the bulletin but I would like to comment from my perspective. We had a full room of 52 Rotarians and guests and were treated to an outstanding presentation by local cardiologist Dr Simon Eggleton and a wonderful performance by the Show Ponies.
Simon clearly showed how the heart operated and what could go wrong and the many available solutions. He reasonably claimed credit as a supporter of Rotary given that there were many former patients in the room still contributing to the good works of our Club.
Performing for us after Simon was Glynn and the Show Ponies. They gave a mimed musical dance performance with brilliant costumes and enthusiasm that was very uplifting. Glynn has a long and proud history in dance and was awarded a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club of Roseville Chase having raised over a $1M for various charities. We also saw our own Show Pony, Peter Russell, perform brilliantly. Rotary brings together such a wonderful array of people and their passions.
October is Mental Health Month on the Rotary Calendar and worldwide Rotary has the theme to ‘Lift the Lid on Mental Illness’. Next week, fellow Rotarian Peter Fehon will present ‘Mental Health in 2019’. It will feature his involvement with Beyond Blue and the Beyond the Bitumen Car Rally.
The Visioning exercise, which was programmed for next week and is being championed by Ranald, will be put on another night. Conveniently, that will allow Ranald to join the Rotary group visiting Wellington.
On Thursday night your Board had its October meeting, my last Board meeting as President. The main item on the agenda was the bucket appeal over this weekend. It was affirmed that we want to alleviate the effects of the drought on both farmers as well as their communities. We have a wonderful relationship with Wellington Rotary but depending on the amount of money raised we will seek to apply funds to other communities impacted by the relentless drought covering such a wide area of our state. The meeting also highlighted that the appeal and our undertaking to donors is to direct funds to support drought affected communities and not to other issues afflicting country towns, such as poverty and drug addiction.
Peter Antaw
Guest Speaker - Judy Charnaud
Eleanor Chevor introduced guest speaker Judy Charnaud, a geologist, teacher and Rotarian who works as an environmental NGO and who spent 19 years living in Oecusse, Timor Leste.
Judy gave a brief history of the area, firstly under the Portuguese who were there for nearly 500 years, and then under the Indonesians from 1974 when the Portuguese left. In 1999 the vote for independence resulted in the Indonesians leaving but not without completely destroying what was there and killing large numbers of people.
Basically, the people in Oecusse are subsistence farmers in an area that has 4 months of monsoonal weather and 8 months of dry. Their main crops are corn and rice. 40%-70% of the population is malnourished and 10% of the children die before the age of 10, 68% live in poverty of which 50% are under 20 years of age, making it the 3rd poorest nation in the world. To make matters worse, 84% of the wealth of the country is in the hands of 8% of the population. Judy said there is no real leadership in the country and there is massive corruption and spending waste.
Judy originally travelled to Oecusse with the intention of staying for 5 months to help the local people. She ended up living there for 19 years and becoming one of their strongest advocates raising funds to improve the quality of life of those living in the area. The core of the project in Oecusse is Village Environmental Action Planning which is a community based, transformative learning program with a specific vision to build a society which is socially and ecologically sustainable. She has undertaken projects to rehabilitate wells, tree planting, fish farms working with OzGreen, an environmental NGO. One of the major projects has been installing water filtration units in as many houses as possible.
Since 2007 OzGreen’s Youth in Action Green Games has evolved into the single, biggest and most important annual sporting competition in the enclave and possibly in the whole of Timor Leste. Over 1000 people are involved competing over 3 months in sports such as volleyball, basketball and tug ‘o war.
Fay Petrou thanked Judy for her informative talk and wished her success with her future endeavours in Oecusse.
DID YOU KNOW
The Pride of Workmanship Award Program was first introduced by the Club under the presidency of Ross Alexander in the year 1987-1988. Awards have been presented every year since then with only two exceptions. Since the awards were introduced a total of 116 individuals and joint awardees have been so honoured, including our own Sally O’Neill. In 1989-1990 the program was extended to include the presentation of Community Service Awards. Since that introduction a total of 30 awards have been presented to worthy recipients, including our own Doug Herridge, Malcolm Lye, Syd Grolman, Peter McNair and Rob Coote.
A fleeing Taliban terrorist, desperate for water, was plodding through the Afghan desert when he saw something far off in the distance. Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the mirage, only to find a very frail little old man, standing at a small makeshift display rack, selling ties.
The Taliban terrorist asked, "Do you have water?"
The man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie? They are only $5."
The Taliban shouted hysterically, "Idiot Infidel! I do not need such an overpriced western adornment. I spit on your ties. I need water!"
"Sorry, I have none, just ties - pure silk, and only $5."
"Pahh! A curse on your ties! I should wrap one around your scrawny little neck and choke the life out of you but . . . I must conserve my energy and find water!"
"Okay," said the little old man. "It does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie from me or that you hate me, threaten my life and call me infidel. I will show you that I am bigger than any of that. If you continue over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a restaurant. It has the finest food and all the ice-cold water you need. Go In Peace."
Cursing him again, the desperate Taliban staggered away, over the hill. Several hours later, he crawled back, almost dead, and said "They won't let me in without a tie".
If anyone has any jokes or funny stories, feel free to send them to me for the humour section of the Bulletin! Email them to helen.gulson@ozemail.com.au
