Happy New Rotary Year to all! I am honoured to be President of Surfers Sunrise going into the 100th Year of Rotary in Australia in 2021.
First and foremost, congratulations and thank you to Mario from all the club on a wonderful year as President in 2019/2020. I’m sure you’ll all agree it was a great year for Surfers Sunrise despite the difficulties that COVID-19 has thrown at us all. Thank you also to the 2019/2020 Board for all your hard work.
The Club Changeover has tentatively been booked for 7.15am on Wednesday 15th July at Edgewater Dining on Isle of Capri. Why a Breakfast Changeover this year you ask? A number of reasons but primary it is an easier and ‘better value’ way to get more of our members and associates together at short notice with the uncertainty around restaurant bookings and COVID-19 restrictions. Spouses and Guests will still be welcome! Rest assured we will be having plenty more social functions throughout the year as restrictions ease.
As I mentioned above, Rotary in Australia celebrates the First 100 years of Service in 2021. There is a great video on the following link, I encourage you all to have a look so we can discuss ideas on what our club will do in 2021 https://www.rotary100downunder.com/home
I look forward to updating you on ‘My vision for 2020/2021’ at our formal meeting at the Surf Club on Wednesday 8th July. Spoiler Alert – it will be a very busy year with all our current projects (Wheelchairs, PODs, Vanuatu Hospital, Youth, Community) and Fundraisers (Golf Day, Containers for Change, Small Business Expo, Bike Sales, Bunnings Sausage Sizzle) but with a few new events thrown in including a BIG celebration of the shipping of our 10,000 Wheelchair (pencilled in for November). You’ll have to come to the meeting on the 8th of July to find out all the details.....
See you this Wednesday at Surfers Paradise Surf Lifesaving Club for a Social Breakfast Meeting – and remember to follow the Government’s advice on Social Distancing.
Incoming President Charles Thomasson has confirmed that this coming Wednesday 1st July we'll have our first post COVID physical meeting again at the Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club! Usual time, about 07:15 onwards. It will be a social meeting, no formal business, thus the usual place downstairs at the northern end of the Bistro. Note: new breakfast menu (the buffet has gone - due to COVID) - well priced, see copy in the Download Files on the right. See you there!
Well, how can one become an Engineer without a plan? Well, if you are born of rich parents… or, you are very clever and you won a very valuable scholarship… John modestly claimed that neither of those were not within his scope. So how? Well, you can start at Mount Isa, where he was brought up. Early in his presentation, John screened some pictures of the town of his upbringing, from the 1940’s, 1962 and one from the 1970’s which featured its biggest smokestack, built in ‘continuously poured concrete’. And the stuff billowing from them, Sulphur Dioxide, is not necessarily ideal for the community’s health… But then, Mt Isa by Night almost looks like Las Vegas… (photo right)
John briefly elaborated on the days of his youth, particular his very strong affinity to competitive swimming. His team included a chap named Bill Sweetenham who became a famous international and national coach, with big names such as Tracy Wickham and Michelle Ford under his wing. John himself represented his town in championships in Townsville and Brisbane, and obviously excelled across the board: He also played baseball, won the Lion’s Youth of the Year award – “my first association with service clubs”, and he later joined Apex. He also became poisoned by Heavy Metals. But back to becoming an Engineer…
When childhood comes to an end, what is one to do in Mt Isa? One signs up to a 4-year Electrical Fitting Mechanic apprenticeship with Mount Isa Mines (MIM). He extended this to include advanced training in process control and industrial electronics. And “lady luck intervened again” and he won a scholarship to study Electrical Engineering at James Cook University, Townsville Campus. “I didn’t want to go to Mt Isa again, but Lady Luck was on my side again: I was offered a position in Brisbane to work on a coal project and set up a plant control system. My first big project!”
Ah, by the way: during that time he also met his wife, Carmel… [Engineers can be just so… romantic, can’t they]. John was in charge of setting up the
Control Systems for the new Abbott Point Coal Terminal near Bowen. That came to a conclusion in about 1984, and “then I was again without a plan” , or so John tried to convince us. Lady Luck led him to Port Headland (at the time described as ‘the ugliest town in Australia’), working for Mt Newman Mining. This time not the black stuff, but the red stuff: iron ore. “Work was OK – very hot and dirty – Carmel had settled in, the money was good and our first daughter was born. Lady Luck arrived again in the form of a new CEO with expansion plans and “Without a plan at all, I found myself in Perth.” There their second daughter was born. But Perth is so far away! A newspaper job ad not only offered better money again, but the job was in Brisbane! Brisbane? Actually, it was on the OK Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea! Average annual rainfall: “8 meters, approximately”. Very interesting, but after about 2 ½ years, it was time to go home. The family ended up in Wellington Point, where for the next 21 years John worked with Sinclair Knight Merz, providing engineering services to the mining industry, attended conventions, speaking on 3D design software. There he also joined the local Rotary club as a Foundation Member. The company then was sold out to an American company, Jacobs who offered redundancies when the mining boom collapsed. “Again, here I was, without a plan!”
John and Carmel then “retired” to the Gold Coast. Besides being an active Rotarian, he is also very active with an organisation called the ‘Blokes Lounge’ of which he became President.
Hard on the heels of Peter Morgan’s presentation a couple of weeks ago, once again we are amazed at the width and breadth of our members’ calibre! “Without a plan”?? Not entirely sure about that!
Last Saturday week (20th June), the Rotary International Convention opened in Honolulu. Except that hardly anyone was there… You see, just like our District Conference, dozens of AFL and Rugby matches and ordinary club meetings, also this event could not be held physically. Modern technology allows the life streaming of the conference and this was the first ever where anyone could attend – free of charge! However, not everyone has the time (or inclination) to spend the better part of a week sitting at their computer, particularly if one of the most attractive components of any conference is missing: the coffee breaks, the lunches and dinners which allow you to network with fellow Rotarians from all over.
Enter ‘Post Conference Streaming’. The whole lot is up on Youtube. You can watch the whole lot, or just selective segments. Even better: not meaning to be derogatory, but you can fast forward or skip what I (in streamed business seminars) used to call ‘Corporate Gumph’… Even better: if a speaker speaks (in your view) too slowly, you can run the video at 1.5 speed or even double speed. How good is that!
Click here to access the opening session on Saturday 20th June. Whatever you do, don’t fast forward past the contribution of the Australian Pop Opera Quartet ‘Aria’, dedicating a Rotary version of the popular song The Prayer (think of Andrea Bocelli with Céline Dion) starting at 0:59:00. Now, just in case it sounds somewhat weird: you probably need to set playing speed back to 'Normal'... ☺
This morning, President Mario was with Neil Breen on Radio 4BC, talking about our wheelchairs, our PODs, the buildings for tsunami affected regions, the X-Ray unit for Vanuatu... Download the audio file from the Download Section on the right, orclick on this link to access the Podcast online (move forward to position 1:41:00 on the slider).
Surfers Sunrise Rotary's Projects are going beyond the international community: Fix-ed College, a project of the Pimpama State Secondary College, is cooperating with our Wheelchairs Project to design improvements. Teachers Stephen Robinson and Dwayne Scicluna run it to inculcate their students in both design and physical work. Well worth your while to jump to their website to learn more about it. Here are a couple of photos (by Stephen Robinson): a draft design, a student is using a acetylene torch to cut it out.
Plenty more photos in the Photo Album on the right!
Duty Roster - note: subject to change - please check every week. Note: Fellowship duty also is expected to be at the Project Shed on the Saturday following the meeting
"... Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
From me, when my GPS didn't work:
"Now, where the hell am I ??"
… the most important of all the things you need to know and don’t know well enough is yourself. You perceive that something is missing in your life. It worries you that you cannot name it or define it precisely. Welcome to the club, mate. That’s not an excuse for not starting, that’s the point of starting.Eric Greitens, ‘Resilience’.
Andy's post of the week:
Telling a woman to calm down works about as well as baptizing a cat.(author unknown, for obvious reasons...)
Diesel Services Queensland and AB Crane Hire recently provided a truck and a huge mobile crane at no charge to lift a 40' container into our Project Shed area at Arundel. Thank you! Click on the links to go to their website.
Incoming President Charles Thomasson has confirmed that this coming Wednesday 1st July we'll have our first post COVID physical meeting again at the Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club! Usual time, about 07:15 onwards. It will be a social meeting, no formal business, thus the usual place downstairs at the northern end of the Bistro. Note: new breakfast menu (the buffet has gone - due to COVID) - well priced, see copy in the Download Files on the right. See you there!
Well, how can one become an Engineer without a plan? Well, if you are born of rich parents… or, you are very clever and you won a very valuable scholarship… John modestly claimed that neither of those were not within his scope. So how? Well, you can start at Mount Isa, where he was brought up. Early in his presentation, John screened some pictures of the town of his upbringing, from the 1940’s, 1962 and one from the 1970’s which featured its biggest smokestack, built in ‘continuously 
poured concrete’. And the stuff billowing from them, Sulphur Dioxide, is not necessarily ideal for the community’s health… But then, Mt Isa by Night almost looks like Las Vegas… (photo right)
found myself in Perth.” There their second daughter was born. But Perth is so far away! A newspaper job ad not only offered better money again, but the job was in Brisbane! Brisbane? Actually, it was on the OK Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea! Average annual rainfall: “8 meters, approximately”. Very interesting, but after about 2 ½ years, it was time to go home. The family ended up in Wellington Point, where for the next 21 years John worked with Sinclair Knight Merz, providing engineering services to the mining industry, attended conventions, speaking on 3D design software. There he also joined the local Rotary club as a Foundation Member. The company then was sold out to an American company, Jacobs who offered redundancies when the mining boom collapsed. “Again, here I was, without a plan!”
Last Saturday week (20th June), the Rotary International Convention opened in Honolulu. Except that hardly anyone was there… You see, just like our District Conference, dozens of AFL and Rugby matches and ordinary club meetings, also this event could not be held physically. Modern technology allows the life streaming of the conference and this was the first ever where anyone could attend – free of charge! However, not everyone has the time (or inclination) to spend the better part of a week sitting at their computer, particularly if one of the most attractive components of any conference is missing: the coffee breaks, the lunches and dinners which allow you to network with fellow Rotarians from all over.
Surfers Sunrise Rotary's Projects are going beyond the international community: 
jump to their website to learn more about it. Here are a couple of photos (by Stephen Robinson): a draft design, a student is using a acetylene torch to cut it out. 
