Chair for the day was Pres. Elect Michael Stephens who opened the meeting with a toast to Rotary International and an exhortation for victory by the Qld Reds before inviting Pres. Chris Muir to the podium for the President's message.
Pres. Chris welcomed Guest speaker Prof. Bernie Degnan, Soon-to-be members Katrina and Matt Roettler and Matt Christopher, visiting Rotarians Heather Devine and David Slater and Tony Marsland, Michael Duffy, Kerry and Celia Lanza, David Christy, John Cox, Ray Lancashire, Alistair Blanshard, Rob Hodge and Sonya McDonald. Total meeting attendance was 33, which is a high in recent months. The content of Pres. Chris' message is reproduced above.
Next item on the agenda was spots:
- PP Daniel Vankov made his report on the Rotary International Women's Day Breakfast held on 6th March, which is reproduced in full below:"On the 6th of March, we held the 2019 Rotary International Women's Day Breakfast. We had two excellent speakers:
- Professor Margaret Sheil AO, Vice-Chancellor and President of QUT; and
- Councillor Adrian Schrinner, Deputy Mayor of Brisbane and Chairman of the Public and Active Transport Committee of Brisbane City Council.
- Davidson kindly sponsored the event.This year we have faced very tough competition in Brisbane. The UN Women National Committee hosted their breakfast at the same time at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. Reportedly they had 1600 attendees. They also approached one of our guest speakers and our sponsor. Both told me that they refused because they have committed to Rotary in the first place. So getting in early paid dividends, especially in the face of that enormous competition.I am not sure how much they charged their guests. However, I have received some critical feedback on the price of our tickets. I do not agree the price was too high. On the 8th of March BHP in partnership with the Queensland Resources Council and Women in Mining and Resources Queensland carried out their breakfast. The price of a ticket was $161.15.My impression from the events I looked at is that neither their format nor their speakers were a match to ours. A total of 65 paying guests attended our breakfast and we raised just enough money to send 2 people to the RYLA camp in May.
Overall, I hope that we will continue the upward trend and next year we will have an even more successful event! Thank you for your attention!"
- PP Graeme Whitmore kicked off our annual golf day and announced that the date and time is Friday 14th June with an 8AM shotgun start. Look for more publicity on this soon! Graeme also told members that we are lookng to do a DIK pickup soon and that Paul Choy as DIK convener will be coordinating this.
- PN Dan Adler and Matt Christopher gave members an update on interactions with DGE Darryl Iseppi and other activities in connection with Rotaryship.
- PP Keith Watts reminded members that the district conference will be held in less than 2 weeks on the 22,23 and 24 of March at the Hotel Grand Chancellor. The club will reimburse members that attend for up to $100 of their cost of attendance. Since the conference is being held in Brisbane this year, there is no excuse for us not to have a good rollup. Click on the date claimer at the to of this newsletter to get to the registration page.
After a short time for fellowship, it was time for our guest speaker, Professor Bernie Degnan who gave us a presentation on the crown of thorns starfish, and what it does to the Great Barrier Reef. It was interesting to hear that the top three threats to the reef in decreasing order of severity are: weather events such as cyclones, the crown of thorns starfish, and coral bleaching. The natural resilience of the reef is such that it can recover from destructive events, but it takes time for coral to recover and at some points the events become too frequent for the reef to recover. Prof. Degnan talked about efforts being undertaken by his and his wife Sandy's research team to discover ways to reduce the severity and frequency of crown of thorns outbreaks.
Prof. Bernie Degnan and Pres. Chris bask in the glow of Prof. Degnan's presentation.
Afterwards, Sgt at Arms Tony Pilkington extracted a bitter harvest from the members before the drawing of the raffle. The holder of the winning ticket once again failed to draw the joker and the minutes secretary failed to record their name, so they will not go down in history. Such is the tragedy of our existence.
President Chris closed the meeting with the singing of the national anthem.
