The Rotary Club of Northbridge gratefully acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Northbridge Plaza
Birthdays & Anniversaries
Member Birthdays
Michael Bartok
January 4
Brian Robson
January 8
Denise Woodward
January 13
Sally O'Neill
January 13
Chris Switzer
January 16
Spouse Birthdays
Angela Keighery
January 24
Anniversaries
John Turner
Penny
January 2
Peter Hodgson
Audrey Hodgson
January 11
Don Landers
Shush Landers
January 12
Join Date
Bob Edwards
January 22, 1985
36 years
John Turner
January 22, 2002
19 years
Club Meeting News - 12 January, 2021
Welcome
President Peter welcomed back all members for the first club meeting of 2021, as well as speaker Steve Matthews, his wife Diane, and Jane Lovett-Cameron.
Toast
Garth Carter proposed a toast to the Rotary Club of Brookfield, Queensland. Chartered in Jun 2003, the club is active in the western suburbs of Brisbane, particularly Brookfield, Bellbowrie, Pullenvale & Moggill.
Announcements
Sally O'Neill advised the next Bunnings BBQ will be held on Sunday, 24 January.
Sally thanked all members for their help with the Christmas Raffle, which raised $7,620. She particularly thanked Alan Hession for organising the sponsorship and distributing the prizes, and Peter Russell for arranging the publicity. Consideration is being given to making the raffle an annual event.
Eleanor Chevor spoke about the Tree of Joy which was very successful with 14 trolleyloads of presents being collected. These were distributed to children through the Starlight Foundation and to the Indigenous community.
The Dementia Cafe training day is Feb 3. If anyone is interested in taking part in this project, please contact Eleanor.
Peter Grinter mentioned that a former Rotary Exchange student, Tanya Brown, came and purchased some raffle tickets and talked about her experiences as an exchange student.
Guest Speaker - Steve Matthews - Author of "Hitler's Brothel"
John Turner introduced author Steve Matthews. Steve was born in the UK and migrated to Australia in 1985. He has written seven children’s books which have been published in Australia, UK, Canada and the USA. “The Skinny Girl” was Steve’s first adult book and his most recent novel is called “Hitler’s Brothel”.
This fictional story follows the lives of two Polish sisters during WW2 and beyond. 75 years ago, Nazi Heinrich Himmler ordered brothels to be set up in concentration camps aimed at encouraging inmates to work harder in return for a “reward”. Women prisoners would be tricked into volunteering for sex work with extra rations and better conditions. The sign above the gate at Auschwitz concentration camp states “Work Makes you Free”.
The first “Dolls House” was set up in 1942 at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. This was followed by more in Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, Dachau. Two of the largest were in Auschwitz.
These brothels were not normally for the Germans but mainly for middle management who worked for the Germans, so they reached their targets and therefore got “vouchers” to visit the brothels. The camps were run as a business with budgets and where targets had to be met. 8000 employees ran restaurants, cinemas etc.
It is estimated that 1.1 million people were murdered through execution, beatings, slave labour and gas chambers. This is probably an underestimate as when the Hungarian prisoners came into the camps the Germans could not keep up the records. 1.6 million is the more likely number of deaths.
Steve’s book “Hitler’s Brothel” is a fictional book based on two Polish sisters set during WW2. One sister was sent to a concentration camp, the other went into the dangers of the Polish underground. They spent years trying to find each other. The story starts in 2000 in USA when the opportunity for revenge presents itself some 60 years after the event. Faced with the ultimate decision what will be the outcome… seek justice or revenge?
The book is about the courage, strength and endurance of two women. It is a thriller and suspenseful, not biographical.
Steve posed the question – What you would do if in later years you were confronted by something that had happened to you 60 years before?
Steve concluded by saying that humanity has not learnt much!
John Turner thanked Steve for his informative and interesting talk.
- Ros Virtue
And now for little bit of humour .....
You know you're not living in the 1950s because back then ...
Pasta was not eaten in Australia or N.Z.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
All potato crisps were plain - the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
Rice was only eaten as a milk pudding.
Calamari was called squid and we used it as fish bait.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking.
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sashimi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word, never mind a food.
Prunes were medicinal. Also Castor Oil and Senna Tea.
Surprisingly, muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it, they would have become a laughing stock!!
But the one thing that we never, ever had on our table - Elbows or Phones.
If anyone has any jokes or funny stories, feel free to send them to me for the humour section of the Bulletin!
He’s not renowned for his cricketing prowess, nor is he an Oxford or Cambridge academic, but Northbridge’s Donald Landers is, indisputably, ‘our Don’.
A retired solicitor, Don and his wife Shirley are long time Northbridge residents who have served our community selflessly for many years.
On 15 December this year, Don was honoured at the Northbridge Rotary Club’s Christmas dinner with a special award, presented – as the photograph below shows – by Willoughby Mayor, Gail Giles-Gidney, with Northbridge Rotary President, Kevin Tattrie, hosting the event.
Don was also presented, at this dinner, with a letter from the NSW Premier and Member for Willoughby, Gladys Berejiklian, honouring Don’s “dedicated Service” to our community, through Rotary. At the bottom of her typed letter, the Premier stated, in her own handwriting:
“Don, your contribution to our community is beyond outstanding – thank you.”
Don Landers was a founding member of Northbridge Rotary Club in 1983. In 1990 he became a Trustee of the Club’s Benevolent Fund, overseeing charitable donations in excess of $230,000, involving a range of humanitarian projects and disaster appeals for the Club. This year he has relinquished his Benevolent fund Trustee role after 30 years of dedicated service.
Don is the perfect example of a hard and committed worker who has given and continues to give his time, energy and experience in the service of others. All who know him, value his wisdom, civic-mindedness, corporate contribution and wonderful sense of humour.
The Covid-19 pandemic made fundraising and giving extremely difficult this year, but in the end Christmas won through.
After much hard work, Northbridge Rotary Club’s Sally O’Neill, her fundraising team and her army of Club ticket-sellers, pulled off a fundraising coup with their Christmas Raffle conducted during the course of December at Northbridge Plaza.
Thanks to the generosity of the Northbridge Plaza management – including its security team, local Northbridge and other businesses and shoppers attending the Plaza, the Rotary Club raised over $8,000. That money will be used for local and regional projects, particularly focussing on those recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 22 raffle prizes were drawn at the Plaza by Northbridge Rotary Club President, Kevin Tattrie, on Sunday 20 December, as the photograph below shows.
Congratulations to the following list of lucky prize-winners:
The Rotary club is now motivated to make its Christmas Raffle an annual event, together with its Tree of Joy which, as can be seen from the photograph below, produced a windfall of toys and other gifts for children who would otherwise go without this Christmas. Now, thanks to the Club’s Eleanor Chevor and her team, they too will experience the true joy of what this Season of Giving is all about.
Saturday 26 September shone a bright light over Northbridge. From first light they came bearing gifts of love – by car and on foot, trailing children, dogs and each other. The blue uniformed brigade of Northbridge Rotary was there to meet them – about 40 in all, bright eyed and Covid safe. From early morning the first shift was beginning to receive and unload a continuous flow of non-perishable food supplies, making sure the donors went away with a smile. Northbridge Rotary’s Community Food Drive was in full swing.
By mid-morning, the alcoves and stairs of St. Marks Anglican Church Memorial Hall in Malacoota Road were bulging with rows of food boxes and packed shopping bags. The pace ebbed and flowed as people trailed in and out. When the two charity collection vans from Taldumande Youth Services and StreetWork had departed fully laden late that afternoon, there was still a supply of food remaining and Oz Harvest obliged with a collection of the remaining donations the following morning.
In all, it is estimated the Northbridge and North Shore community contributed to over a tonne of non-perishable food supplies that filled over 100 boxes and 50 shopping bags – enough for 2,400 meals or sufficient to feed a needy family of four for 18 months.
Liz de Rome, Taldumande’s Grants, Community and Volunteers Officer summed the impact of this event up perfectly:
“I wanted to share that as we dropped off bags and boxes of food to our young people, they were so grateful for their generous parcel. This morning, one young girl nearly cried (and me) as she couldn’t believe her luck. She wasn’t sure how she was going to make ends meet this week. The generosity of the community and Northbridge Rotarians has helped fill the pantries of our young people and they’re so grateful.”
The final comment belongs to the Northbridge Rotary event organiser, Eleanor Chevor: “What a day!”
The World Health Organization (WHO) on 25 August announced that transmission of the wild poliovirus has officially been stopped in all 47 countries of its African region. This is a historic and vital step toward global eradication of polio, which is Rotary’s top priority.
After decades of hard won gains in the region, Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) — WHO, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the vaccine alliance — are proclaiming the milestone an achievement in public health. They offer it as proof that strong commitment, coordination, and perseverance can rid the world of polio.
The certification that the African region is free of wild poliovirus comes after the independent Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) conducted thorough field verifications that confirmed no new cases and analyzed documentation of polio surveillance, immunization, and laboratory capacity by Cameroon, Central African Republic, Nigeria, and South Sudan. The commission had already accepted the documentation of the other 43 countries in the region.
The last cases of polio caused by the wild virus in the African region were recorded in Nigeria’s northern state of Borno in August 2016, after two years with no cases. Conflict, along with challenges in reaching mobile populations, had hampered efforts to immunize children there.
Now that the African region is free of wild poliovirus, five of WHO’s six regions, representing more than 90 percent of the world’s population, are now free of the disease. Polio caused by the wild virus is still endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region.
The African region’s wild polio-free certification was celebrated during a livestream event. Speakers included Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Bill Gates, Rotary International President Holger Knaack, Nigeria PolioPlus chair Dr. Tunji Funsho, and representatives of other GPEI partners. The celebration was followed by a press conference.
In the program, Knaack spoke about people needing good news during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. “The challenges ahead are formidable,” Knaack said. “That’s why we must recognize this great achievement and commend all the people who played important roles in reaching this milestone. It took tremendous effort over many years.”
An achievement decades in the making
Not detecting any wild poliovirus in Africa is in stark contrast to the situation in 1996, when 75,000 children there were paralyzed by the disease. That year, at a meeting of the Organization of African Unity in Cameroon, African heads of state committed to eradicating the disease from the continent.
To bolster the effort, also in 1996, Rotary, its GPEI partners, and South African President Nelson Mandela launched the Kick Polio Out of Africa campaign. Using soccer matches and celebrity endorsements, the campaign raised awareness of polio and helped more than 30 African countries to hold their first National Immunization Days. Mandela’s call to action helped mobilize leaders across the continent to increase their efforts to reach every child with polio vaccine.
Children in Cote d’Ivoire receive oral polio vaccines during an immunization campaign.
Since 1996, countless Rotary members from across Africa and around the world have raised funds, immunized children, and promoted vaccinations, enabling the GPEI to respond to and stop polio outbreaks. More than 9 billion doses of oral polio vaccine have been provided throughout the region, preventing an estimated 1.8 million cases of paralysis. Each year, about 2 million volunteers help vaccinate 220 million children against polio multiple times in the African region.
Rotary members have contributed nearly $890 million toward polio eradication efforts in the African region. The funds have allowed Rotary to issue PolioPlus grants to fund polio surveillance, transportation, awareness campaigns, and National Immunization Days.
Dr. Tunji Funsho, chair of Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus committee, noted Rotarians’ tremendous contributions to polio eradication efforts in Africa: “From raising funds and immunizing children, to providing ‘polio plusses,’ such as soap and health kits, Rotary members have shown resilience and steadfast dedication to our top priority of ending polio.”
Rotary members have helped build extensive polio infrastructure that has been used to respond to COVID-19 and, in 2014, the Ebola crisis, as well as to protect communities from yellow fever and bird flu.
Challenges still ahead
The GPEI’s challenge now is to eradicate wild poliovirus in the two countries where the disease has never been stopped: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Additionally, routine immunization in Africa must also be strengthened to keep the wild poliovirus from returning and to protect children against circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, which is rare but continues to infect people in parts of the African region.
To eradicate polio, multiple high-quality immunization campaigns must continue to be given priority. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s necessary to keep children vaccinated against polio while also protecting health workers from COVID-19 and making sure they don’t contribute to its transmission.
Global health officials and experts say that sustained fundraising and advocacy are still crucial, not only to protect gains in Africa, but to reach the ultimate goal of a world without polio. Rotary members still have a critical role to play in keeping the African region free of wild poliovirus and eliminating the virus in the two countries where polio remains endemic.
As Knaack said, “This is a big step in our journey to a polio-free world, but the fight is not over yet. We still need the support of our Rotary members, donors, and heroic effort of health care workers to finish the job.”
Local and international humanitarian disasters have become the new norm and the Rotary Club of Northbridge has been involved in assisting wherever possible. Recently COVID-19 has received the bulk of media attention. Before that it was the eastern seaboard drought and bushfires. Then, in April, Cyclone Harold devastated parts of Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga.
COVID-19 has considerably reduced Northbridge Rotary’s 2020 fundraising capability, including cancellation of its major fundraiser, the annual fireworks. Prior to this, the Club had raised $29,580 to aid those areas in NSW affected by the bushfires and drought.
With some of its remaining funds, the Club has committed $22,500 towards building a Community Pavilion at Kiah on the NSW south coast and repairing gardens around the Boomerang Centre in severely fire-damaged Mogo near Batemans Bay.
The Kiah Pavilion was completed 25th July and an official opening is planned for 8 August and we hope some members of Northbridge will be able to attend.
There is a story on the Rotary Club of Merimbula website if you would like to take a look please click on the link below.
Internationally, the Club has been asked to assist in the fight against COVID-19 by the Rotary Club of Kathmandu in Nepal.
Covid-19 cases have increased significantly in Nepal since late May with tens of thousands of migrant workers returning home from India and Nepal commencing a phased reopening in mid-June.
With the assistance of other local Rotary Clubs, Northbridge Rotary has been able to donate $10,000 to help with the purchase of PPE equipment for medical staff, installing hand washing stations in strategic locations and supplying food for orphanages and others in need, as the photo(s)on this page illustrate.
