David s Dispatch. TheWahroongler

Transcription

1 TheWahroongler CHELLE Bulletin of The Rotary Club of Wahroonga Meets 7.15 a.m. Wednesdays at the Warrawee Bowling Club Chartered First breakfast club in Australia. Wednesday July 1, 2015 Volume 40 No 51 David s Dispatch THE LAST HURRAH As invariably I have something on of a Sunday morning at normal hours, and as a morning person, I decided that as President I d draft my weekly Editorial early on a Sunday so as not to disrupt normal commitments during the day. Knowing my penchant for fads though, I suspected this habit wouldn t last - but lo!. Here I am writing my last editorial still early on a Sunday morning. Will I miss this? Maybe not - But the small quiet hours do give a time for reflection that is useful, as the daylight hours are full of distractions. Iit s one of the few things for this year that hasn t changed! Talking about change, at Saturday night s District Changeover Dinner, DG Ian Scott and his team thanked us all for successfully Lighting Up Rotary during as he handed over the District 9685 baton to DGE Gina Growden and her team. Our club s table were there to both thank and welcome both District Team s respectively. In his presentation DG Ian especially highlighted two issues he felt marked the past year: The District s urgent and immediate response in the Community Service area to disasters such as the Vanuatu cyclone and the Nepal earthquake with members implementing fund-raising activities The District Conference in the Hunter Valley, which all who attended felt was a great success and of great value. Ian urged especially new members, and those longer-term members who hadn t been to a District Conference for a while, to make a point of getting to the next one in Canberra on March In the awards section, mentioned fleetingly on the large screens, it was especially pleasing to see our club receive a Youth Service Certificate of Achievement for supporting MUNA and RYPEN over many years acknowledgement that we have now handed over the running of these events to other clubs in the future. PHF TO DOUG: It was a pleasure to recognise Doug Reid with a PHF for his contribution over recent years and a huge effort especially in organising and implementing our club s contribution to the Bobbo. Great Effort Doug Thanks! To all our members and friends MANY THANKS for your support and help through Best wishes to Marlene and her team for the new Year. See You at Our Changeover!.Over and Out!! DR. TONIGHT: The club s changeover as David hands over to Marlene This is the last meeting of David s year, or the first of Marlene s, depending on how you are counting. Marlene s team aka Marlene s Mob is named further down CONTACT THE ROTARY CLUB OF WAHROONGA The Rotary Club of Wahroonga, PO Box 13, Wahroonga, Phone President Marlene Carty Secretary Terry Hodge or To lodge apologies call Rob Giacometti

2 MULTI-TASKER SIGNS FOR MORE WORK NEXT YEAR Doug Reid becomes our latest P.H.F. holder Last week, in one of his last meetings of his year, President David Russell presented a Paul Harris Fellowship to the hard-working, but hitherto unrecognised Doug Reid, member of both Community and Youth committees. Why? The citation prepared and read by Community chair John Collins tells the story: Doug Reid s early life was in a variety of countries as his family moved with his father who had a senior position with Royal Dutch Shell. Doug has a Bachelor Degree in Chemistry from the University of Southampton and an MBA from Charles Sturt University. In his professional life he has worked for a variety of the leading telecommunication & IT organisations including Telstra,as General Manager for Business Solutions, and IBM & Anderson Consulting. He is presently running two start-up companies both in Australia & the UK. Doug joined the Rotary Club of Wahroonga in where he has used his marketing and organisational skills in a variety of projects. One of the early fund-raising events was a film afternoon that he organised with local charities thus demonstrating his ability to be innovative and inclusive with local organisations. In the Club Doug has shown great flexibility and has moved around the various avenues of service. Initially he was in International but over the years he has been a member of Fund Raising, Vocational Community and Youth. In he was Chair of Community and the following year he was Chair of Vocational. This year Doug has excelled himself in both commitment and energy. He was responsible this year for the Christmas Raffle that raised over $5,000 and also managing the club s contribution for the Bobbin Head Cycle Classic. This event alone required the organisation of over 80 volunteers, handing out flyers to cycle shops and attending the co-ordination meetings with the three other member Clubs. Doug not only did this for this year and helped raise over $20,000 for the Women s Refuge in Hornsby but he volunteered to organise all the volunteers for next year. Doug is a popular and professional member of the Rotary Club of Wahroonga and despite his overseas business commitments he has been able to continue to be an enthusiastic Rotarian. Doug is a worthy recipient of a Paul Harris Fellowship award. Now for the year s first activity The first activity of the year comes only two days after the changeover the fundraiser at the home of Jo Karaolis at 7 p.m. this Friday night. It s to raise money for the Kopanang women s co-operative in Johannesburg. Sister Sheila will show a DVD about the co-operative, and there will be some of those wonderful hangings, cushions and rugs items made by the women for purchase Jo s home is at 3 Stratford Place, St Ives There is no charge, but as Joe the Gadget Man used to say, Bring Your Money With You. The club has donated a dozen wine for the night, and food and other drink will be supplied. Jo says: There is no charge but a request to donate to particular training objectives and also some great embroidery items to buy. The women of Kopanang make unusual and beautiful gifts - works of art with practical use. So come prepared to help women step out of the AIDS and poverty cycle and take charge of their future. Please wear flat shoes, casual clothes and bring a torch! You will have to park in Stratford Place or Lowry Street. and walk down the steps of No. 5 Stratford where there is a steel handrail. It can be quite dark, hence the torch! Nothing like conditions in Tsakane where the women live in shanties without electricity or running water, but an adventure just the same. I hope to see you!

3 PARLIAMENT HEARS ABOUT HIS ROTARY LINKS Rotary gets a big tick from our local M.P. The Rotary Club of Wahroonga came before the notice of the N.S.W. Parliament recently when our local member, Alister Henskens made what is called a Member s Statement about Rotary and its value to him. This is what he said: This evening I pay tribute to Rotary International. I speak on that subject as my first private member s statement because I was fortunate to be the beneficiary of a Rotary Foundation Scholarship that enabled me to study overseas for a year and to complete a Master of Laws degree. As many members may know, Rotary International was commenced by Paul Harris, a lawyer. Paul Harris moved to the great city of Chicago where he knew nobody. He devised a plan to meet people by having one person from each occupation within Chicago meet each week in one another s workplace. They rotated their weekly meetings and an s a result of that process, the name Rotary was coined. Rotary is still an organisation that is based on community and bringing people together, and it is that aspect of Rotary International that I wish to concentrate on today. The Rotary district that covers the electorate of Ku-ring-gai is District Four Rotary clubs cover the Ku-ring-gai electorate: the Ku-ring-gai Club meets at 6.30 p.m. each Monday at the Killara Golf Club; the Waitara Club meets at 6 p.m. on Mondays at the Hornsby RSL Club; the Turramurra Rotary Club meets at 6.15 p.m. at the Canisius College on Mona Vale Road; and the Wahroonga Club meets at 7.15 a.m. on Wednesdays at the Warrawee Bowling Club. The members of Rotary are truly great citizens. We appreciate their work for the less fortunate within our community. I have had personal involvement in two aspects of Rotary International. When I was a student at high school, a number of exchange students from Scandinavia attended the school. It was the first time that we had a window on people from another part of the world. One of the great things about international travel and meting people from other parts of the world is that one gets a sense of the richness of humanity and realises that the world is not populated only by Australians. That is an important thing to learn when one is young because it gives one an appreciation of tolerance and of difference, which is important for building social cohesion both within our communities and in terms of international peace and goodwill, which are two of the important values that Rotary promotes. The other matter I bring to the attention of the House is The Rotary Foundation Scholarship scheme, of which I was a beneficiary. Each Rotary district sends one person per year to study internationally. When I was the beneficiary of a Rotary Foundation scholarship in 1987 it was valued at $50,000. The scholarship pays for tuition at an international university which can often be many tens of thousands of dollars. Accommodation, food and board are provided. One is given a weekly stipend pocket money - and air fares are paid for. Rotary scholarships are a valuable investment in the intellectual capital of our community. Through these fantastic scholarships, the Rotary movement provides a special kind of education for Australians and offers them an opportunity they would otherwise not have. Rotary releases $US40.3m for polio Rotary is releasing $US40.3 million in grants to support polio immunisation activities in 10 countries, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan, the three countries where the disease has never been stopped. The funds come at a critical time and will build on gains Rotary and its partners have been making in the fight to eradicate polio. Nigeria, the last polio-endemic country in Africa, is approaching one year without a case of polio. To help raise much-needed funds and public awareness for the global effort to eradicate polio, Rotary collected more than 100,000 messages of support from celebrities, world leaders, and supporters, all of whom have added their names and photos to The World s Biggest Commercial."

4 9685 says farewell Ian, hello Gina The District Changeover last Saturday night at the Hornsby RSL from left, George Richards, Sue Owen, Jo Karaolis, Barry Edmundson, Marlene Carty, Rob Giacometti, and President David and Lindy Russell, as we said goddbye to retiring DG Ian Scott, and hello to Gina Growden. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HUGH BURNE High finance, cups of tea, and mixing with the famous Last week s speaker was one of our newest members, Hugh Burne, who has had a multi-interest, multii-name life, touching on the Bogle and Chandler mystery, meeting Princess Di, lan Bond, and the basketballer Luc Longley - and meeting again his mother when he had been told when he was 6 that she had died. His talk was interspersed with photos, many of them showing his progression from a smart black moustache and cropped hair to today s long white hair and moustache. And because he hates the cold, that is why he always wears an overcoat. Hugh was born in London in 1942, during the Blitz, raised there in Ealing for 14 years then came to Australia as part of a 10 Pom deal. Hugh said his parents had a bitter split when he was 6, with his custody going to his father. He was told then she had died, but even at that age didn t believe it, and vowed to find her when he was grown up He was put into the Royal Merchant Navy School, Bearwood, in Berkshire, which later became a posh boarding school. I hated that place initiation ceremonies, bullies, no more kids toys, or birthday parties, and childhood was abruptly over, said Hugh. I buried myself into studies and art. At 9 I had a watercolour exhibited at the National Gallery in London. Hugh said they came to Australia because his father had married again, to an Aussie, and he went to North Sydney Boys High, from which he matriculated. He joined the youth group Hugh at St advertises his John s Wahroonga, then still a Presbyterian church, meeting own Jim tea brand Mein and Gill in it. But in his words stepmother booted us out when she was pregnant with her first, so once again I was on my own and broke. He got a fulltime job with the CSIRO National Standards Laboratory at Sydney University, and studied part-time for a BSc at NSW University in physics, maths, chemistry and psychology.

5 I travelled on the train each day with Dr Gilbert Bogle, who also worked in the same lab. I knew him well. At a Victor Chang less so Geoff Chandler. fund-raiser in [The Gilbert Bogle-Margaret Chandler deaths on New Sydney in 1996, Year s Day 1963 filled the papers for weeks, and is still Hugh had some a big mystery. Google it to read a good story. Geoff words with Chandler afterwards wrote a book So You Think I Did It.] Princess Di I was 18 years old and had been warned by others to avoid their wild parties, involving wife swapping and drugs. I was interviewed by Chatswood detectives. Rumour had it at the time their coffee was spiked with LSD. Hugh said he met his future wife, Annette in 1964, who had graduated from Sydney University Law School, who had many contributions to books and papers by the age of 23. They were married in 1965 He began an M Sc at UNSW in Medical Physics, and then was offered and he took - a Gibbs Fellow place at Yale in nuclear physics, and he and Annette moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There he worked on nuclear particle research on the world s most powerful Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator My Yale professor Glen Rebka was famous for verifying experimentally for the first time Einstein s Theory of General Relativity. My in-laws missed the two kids and us, so they got me a job back in Australia in 1971, initially in mining but I switched to investment banking immediately. On the way back from New York we stopped in London in I took Annette and the kids to where I grew up in Ealinjg. We walked past where my mum s parents lived, and I knocked on their door. Two tottering old ladies opened the door, one of them my grandmother. Mum was indeed alive and living in West Vancouver. Hugh said that, back in Australia, he rang his mother; She is 94, goes cross-country ski-ing twice a week. I have visited her many times since then. In his banking work he was with John Kinghorn setting up a banking group and being part of deals involving multi hundreds of millions. His many jobs involved joining Citibank Bondy hit Citi for a couple of billion. He also got into tea manufacturing and export, with his own brand Teas of Ceylon, and doing cross-border finance deals involving leasing Qantas 747s, Vic Rail, South Australian electricity generators, and names such as ABN Amro and, Bank Austria rolled off his tongue. I was Cathay Pacific s No1 frequent flier out of Sydney for 15 straight years. My family often travelled with me in the worst hotel fire in Hong Kong history, I was in the hotel with the whole family. Annett and our kids were in the street after the rescue at 4 a.m. in night clothes. We were trapped for an hour inside on level 13. Hugh wrote, between 2002 and 2015, five Nutrition and Health manuals on tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, polyphenol-rich foods. At a fund-raiser in Sydney in 1996, Hugh met Princess Diana, some months before her death in Paris in What we said was, I would like to come back to Australia if someone invites me I said I will and she said, You will. Hugh used the Australian basketballer Luc Longley to advertise his Tea of Ceylon brand

6 CLUB AND DISTRICT DIARY July 1: Club Changeover dinner at the WBC, 7 for 7.30p.m. July 3: Fund-raiser for Kopanang at Jo Karaolis s home, 7 p.m. July 8: Club meeting Terry Hodge on Child Protection. July 15: Club meeting Sister Sheila gives us a Joburg update. August 8: The club celebrates Yuletide at Kerri s. Book the date. March D9685 Conference, Canberra RECEPTION AND HOSPITALITY ROSTER If you are unable to attend any day please arrange a substitute and inform Len Stanley at lstanley@med.usyd.edu.au or , Set-up and Put Away Hospitality Reception (2 Rotarians) July 1 Mike Brownlow Ken Broadhead Alfreda White John Welch July 8 Hugh Burne Mike Brownlow John Welch Richard Webb WHAT WE DID LAST WEEK (June ): Attendance: 62%. Apologies: John Cameron, Jim Verco, Barbara Salisch, Margaret Sachs, Len Stanley, Neil McWhannell, John Cameron, Peter Smith. Visiting Rotarians: Tony james (Pittwater), Sivaraj Sagathavan (Hornsby), ADG for next year..anniversaries (for week starting July 1): July 4 John Julius (birthday). MARLENE S MOB The Rotary Club of Wahroonga Board President: Marlene Carty Immediate Past President: David Russell President-Elect (to be advised) Secretary: Terry Hodge. Treasurer: John Cameron. Committees ; Administration: Chairman President-elect (to be named), Team: Marlene Carty Terry Hodge Len Stanley, Sandy van Dijk, Gordon Fuller. Archivist/Historian: Ken Broadhead Gordon Fuller. Attendance and Rosters: Len Stanley, Rob Giacometti.. Community: Chair Jim Verco, Team: John Collins, Max Lake, Richard Pitt, John Julius. Ron Wainberg, David Cooper, Ian Faulks, Leon Clark, Daksh Baweja, Doug Reid, Barry Edmundson, Helen Clarke. International: Chair Anne Prescott, Team: Richard Jackson, Greg Starr, Jo Karaolis, Peter Edwards, Camryn Turner. 40 th Anniversary Ken Broadhead, Gordon Fuller Margaret Sachs Membership: Chairman; Helen Clarke. Team: Rob Ferguson, Phillip Comfort, Carol Johnson, Margaret Sachs, John Collins. Jenetta Russell Alfreda White. Youth: Chair Bob Howe. Team: Sue Owen, Kerri Hodge, Ross Grant, Barbara Salisch, Rochelle Wiley, Doug Reid, Phil Comfort. Partnerships and Fund-Raising: Director Peter Smith, Team Barbara Ward, Garry Webb, Dick Webb, Jenetta Russell. Public Officer: Judith Kaine. PR, Marketing and Webmaster; Chairman; Ian Cameron. Team: Mike Brownlow, Peter Smith. Risk Management and Insurance: John Collins, Philip Easton Rotary Foundation: Chair; Chris de Zylva, assistant John Cameron. Sergeant: Steve McGregor: Social: Kerri Hodge, Sandy Van Dijk. Speaker Program: Philip Easton, Jim Verco. Vocational: Chair Angus M. Robinson. Team: Ken Broadhead, Helen Clarke, Gordon Fuller, Janet Grundy, Jo Karaolis John Welch, Hugh Burne., Neil McWhannell. Wahroongler Editor: George Richards.Welfare Officer: Rob Ferguson. Liaison St Lucy s and St Edmund s: Richard Pitt. PAUL HARRIS FELLOWS: The late John Doherty, Jack Rashleigh, the late Bill Leventhal, Gordon Fuller, Rob Ferguson, the late Ern Hoy, Hilton Krone, the late Stan Penberthy, the late David Gardiner, Rob Giacometti (two Sapphire Pins), the late Martin Forrow, David Cooper, the late Phil Dean, Tom Love, the late Gordon Johnston (Sapphire Pin), Ross Blackmore, Jim Mein, the late Henry Salisch (Sapphire Pin), Ian Davidson, Peter Weekes, Richard Lombard (Sapphire Pin), George Richards (2 Sapphire Pins), Ian Cameron (4 Sapphire Pins), Dr Charles Sharpe, Jill Everett, Richard Davies, Bob Quodling, Joan Giacometti (Sapphire Pin), Graeme McLean (Sapphire Pin), the late Lionel Lever, John Cameron (2 Sapphire Pins), Paul Cave, David Maclean, John Welch, Dick Webb, John Baikie, Bob Howe (2 Sapphire Pins), Bruce Grime, Ken Broadhead (1 Sapphire Pin), Phil McCarroll (1 Sapphire Pin), Vic Deeble, Peter Edwards, Pat Edwards, Garry Webb, Richard Pitt, Jon Phegan, Peter Smith (1 Sapphire Pin), Micheal Schwarcz (2 Sapphire Pins), Sue Owen, Anne Prescott (Sapphire Pin), Janet Grundy, Phil Comfort, Arthur Pearce, Allan Waldon, Margaret Sachs (Sapphire Pin), Margaret Cameron, Jim Verco (Sapphire Pin), Leon Clark (1 Sapphire Pin), Jan Cameron (2 Sapphire Pins), Matthew Webb, Barry O Farrell, Bob Potter, Richard Jackson, Paul Murphy, Chris de Zylva, Greg Starr, Leisa O Connor, Philip Easton. Jan Rowling, Angus M. Robinson (Three Sapphires), Michael Sobbi, Jo Karaolis, Ian Perrett, Rob Hamilton, Brian Freeman, Max Lake, John Julius, Lyn Wood., Tina Donnelly, Coralie Batchelor, Helen Clarke, Terry Hodge, Mike Brownlow, Marlene Carty, Jenetta Russell, John Collins, Rochelle Wiley, Jim Georgas., Glen Moroney, Barry Edmundson., Doug Reid..

7 AS THIS IS THE LAST ISSUE OF THE CURRENT YEAR, AND WE USED ALL THE SPACE WITHOUT NEEDING SOME FILLER, WE CAN HARDLY LET THIS GO TO PRESS LACKING IMPORTANT ITEMS SUCH AS... The E.R. in an Alabama hospital. No bets please on the survival chances of the bloke in the funny hat.