Welcome to Issue 33 (2024-25) of our weekly bulletin. Find out about our upcoming events, who our guest speakers are, what we covered during the last meeting and more!
Can't make our meeting in person please join us via Zoom:
Our meeting this week featured a video presentation by Rotarian Mark Huddleston, of Seaford, Victoria, Rotary Club. His very informative and entertaining presentation on club enhancement led to us having a lively discussion on what we as a club could do to achieve that. Thank you Jim, for your more expansive notes further on in the bulletin.
Clean up Australia Day is this Sunday, 2nd of March, from 10.30 to 12.30 at the eastern (forest) end of Ironstone Rd in Epsom. Our participation in this event has been well advertised, both in the Advertiser and on Win TV. We hope that meaningful numbers of the public will turn up and give us, our family members and friends, good support on the day. It will be useful to bring gardening gloves, a hat, some water and a sense of humour.
On Tuesday night, we enjoyed a very pleasant evening of casual bowls at the Strathfieldsaye Bowling Club. It was a joint event with Bendigo South Rotary Club, and a very good opportunity to cement inter-club relations. This event also took place last year, and judging by the response from all present, it seems this is likely to become an annual fixture for both clubs. Our thanks go to our clubs’ Stan and Rhonda Hendy, and Phil and Jenny Lethbridge of Bendigo South, for all the work they did prior to, and on the night, to make this such a good evening.
Last but not least, put Saturday 8th March, in your diary to support the Rochester Rotary Club and its community by attending the free Songs at Silos event from 6pm to 8.30pm. There will be food and drinks available (see more information below) at this innovative community event.
Co-presidents Ray and Adrian
Social bowls with RC of Bendigo South.
Co-President Ray preparing to bowl.
Stew Annan surveying the numbers.
Bowlers enjoying drinks and pizza after the game.
Workshop- Getting ourselves out of the membership crisis-Mark Huddleston
This workshop was a follow up to the workshop of two weeks ago which outlined some reasons why Rotary Clubs are experiencing a membership crisis. Mark was fairly emphatic that Rotary Clubs have an unhealthy obsession with meetings. Mark outlined some of the key elements of the transformation of Rotary including moving from a culture of attendance to a culture of engagement, a formal culture to an informal culture and a rigid culture to a flexible one. Mark made the case that the next shift needs to involve moving from a meeting centric culture to a service centred culture.
All were in agreement with Mark when he said time is our most important resource. A quick analysis suggests on average 75% of Rotarian time is spent in meetings. Whilst the retirement years provide more of the valuable resource of time it is important that service is given proper priority. It is also important that prospective Rotarians are exposed to the benefits which come from community service. Members will in future be more discerning about ways they introduce prospective members. A community event might be a better introduction than an invitation to a meeting?
Whilst there is nothing wrong with the camaraderie and entertainment we gain from meetings they also need to be productive and effective. Stew made the point that by enlarge our committee meetings are productive. The buy-in of members and commitment to the clean up Australia initiative scheduled for Sunday which has been achieved in a short time with a lot of work behind the scenes is a good example of how meeting time can be productive and have a sharp focus on community service.
Members were encouraged by the number of "associate members" who regularly attend community service events but are not part of regular meetings. Maybe more support could be gained by members considering their networks and inviting people along to engage with community events. Again a good example of this is our partnership with the Ironstone Road community in the cleaning up of their neighbourhood on Sunday. Getting the message out with effective branding is very important in so many ways. Perhaps we can do this better?
We had a good result from our Clean-up Australia Day event on Sunday morning. In total, 5 full trailer loads of mixed rubbish were collected and disposed of at the Eaglehawk waste transfer station, where large recyclable materials were separated out before the rest went to landfill.
The turn-out of Rotary volunteers was excellent (thanks to all). The general public response was a bit disappointing though, but those that did come were really committed which was very pleasing.
Stew Annan
The Chinese brick kiln, what may its future be?
Chinese Brick Kiln; You may recall during last meeting that Doug Lougoon mentioned that Wise Employment, operators of PepperGreen Farm may be looking at creating a tourism feature of the Chinese Brick Kiln located on the site. Back in 2005 when I was CEO at (then) Bendigo Access Employment, a grant was secured for a job creation project to install perimeter fencing on the PepperGreen Farm site, which we were leasing. During site works a ‘void’ was discovered fairly close to the Thunder St side, near the railway crossing.
This exciting ‘void’ was actually a Chinese Brick Kiln that had been buried during construction/extension of the tram line to near the Ordnance Factory during WW2. The tram line was needed to facilitate transport of workers (read women) to work on armaments at the Ordnance Factory [due to shortage of male workers who had signed up to fight].
Much excitement ensued amongst the Chinese, local history and archaeological communities as a ‘dig’ and recovery of artefacts was carried out. A vast photographic and artefact trove was collected and documented before the kiln was backfilled with sand to protect it for the future. Perhaps the future is about to arrive!
