Meeting of September 25th, 2009

First of All…
It’s very important that everybody note that we are meeting at the Tutorial Centre this week (August 25th). Anthony has arranged for us to use the computers at the school for his technology lesson on navigating the different Rotary websites.

There are only a few of us who have paid their subs for this financial half. Please see Bob P ASAP about making your payment.

We should all have a positive though for Jack Aubin who was in hospital for the August 18th meeting. Hope to see you back soon, Jack!

Finally, our nominee for the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) was accepted. Her name is Amanda Calaher from West Wyalong. More on this in the coming weeks.

Meeting last week (August 18th)…
Our club guest this week was Peter Flude from the Rotary Club of Beaumaris. Peter is a Past President of our club and visits our club on his periodic returns to Bathurst from Victoria.

While all of us are familiar with the bush fires that hit Victoria in the early stages of 2009, Peter gave us a photo presentation of the devastation that the fires caused. While for a long time only residents were allowed into the area, Peter got the photos we saw from one of their members who had a summer home that was lost in the fires. Peter had photos of what the home and other tourist landmarks in the area looked like before the fire hit… and after.

There were two facts in particular that Peter had about the magnitude of the fire that really caught my interest. The first was that the water being dropped from the water bombers (like the sky-crane they call “Elvis”) didn’t actually reach the fire it was being dropped on… the water dropped had vaporised from the heat long before it got anywhere close! The second was that the heat from the fire was so intense that fires were starting 500 metres ahead of the fire itself. How can people expect to defend their property when it’s bursting into flames with the fire still 500 metres away?

Peter had one story about the population of a town being evacuated to the middle of a sports ground. The logic of using the sports ground was that the ground would be big enough that the fire couldn’t reach them. Fortunately, a police sergeant figured out that the distance from the fire to the middle of the field would not be enough to escape the heat so, without any authorization from his superiors, evacuated the field and got everybody out of town in time. Without that decision almost a thousand people would have died from the heat and smoke, even though the fire wouldn’t have actually reached them in the middle of the field. What an amazing story that I, for one, never heard on the news.

Ash Bland then chimed in to give us some more perspective on the magnitude of the fire. We all remember the Canberra fires of 2004… well Ash told us that those plumes of smoke reached 4 kilometres into the sky. The Victorian bush fires reached in excess of 30 kilometres up!

Peter then told us that their club alone had raised $20,000 for relief work. Their decision was to make $10,000 available to the District Governor’s Appeal that would be held on to for 6 to 12 months. This time would allow the DGs to establish where the shortfalls were from other sources of funding. The other $10,000 went into the community for immediate relief work. The RC Beaumaris held working bees (that all Rotarians are familiar with!) to rebuild a playground, some of the over 10,000 km of fencing destroyed by the fire, and a sports pavilion.

While Andrew C moved the “vote of thanks” from our club, I’d like to thank Peter again for his wonderful presentation. I am very proud of the almost $3500 that we raised and donated to the RC Beaumaris and that they put to such good use. Some may question why such a priority was placed on a sports pavilion and a playground, but the sentiment of our own DG (Irene) is that Rotary is all about community… by rebuilding the areas where people gather, we’ve helped then start rebuilding their sense of community.

This week’s meeting (August 25th)…
A reminder that we’re meeting at the Tutorial Centre for a lesson on how to use many of the resources that Rotary makes available to us over the internet. We’ll meet there instead of at the RSL though we’ll still meet at the same time (6:15 for 6:30).

In the coming weeks…
On September 1st, Ash Bland will be filling in for Frank S as guest speaker. Many of you may recall that we’ve had Ash as a club guest before when he spoke to us on his book about the environment. I presume Ash will be presenting in his capacity as an environmental consultant, but I’ll try to have more details next week.

The September 7th meeting will be the second of three challenges in the Bathurst Inter-Club Cup. This will be an evening of 10-pin bowling and, in the spirit of The Cup, is a night that families are welcome. We’ll meet at the bowling alley at 6:15 and have a BBQ dinner there. We won the first challenge (snooker hosted by Bathurst East), so this is our chance to seal our victory on The Cup! But I’m sure that neither the East nor Daybreak clubs have any intention of letting us do that…

On Sunday, September 13th will be the Edgell Jog. We’ve committed to the organizers that we’ll supply people to record finish times. The runners will get a time as they cross the finish line from event organizers, but nobody actually writes the times down… so that’ll be our job. With a lot of Rotarians there, it’s a pretty simple job and is done in about an hour-and-a-half.

On September 15th, Tim S will be organising the guest speaker. I’ll be sure to get the details on what ideas he has him next time I see him.

Then, on September 22nd, Bob P will be presenting on nuclear power. So many people think it’s dangerous, but I’m sure Bob will show us that the issue is not quite so cut-and-dry.

And on September 29th, we have in the schedule that Peter F will be following up on the food services training. Hmmmm, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with that, but I’ll fill you all in with next week’s blog.