Inside This Issue

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President's Report

Night Report

Humour

Club Calendar

Upcoming Events

Next Meetings

Roach Buster

Monday 1st April

​Cockroaches, rodents, possums, birds, bedbugs, - pests come in all shapes and sizes.  Let’s talk about what keeps you up at night or irritate during the day.

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Club Assembly

Monday 8th April

Combined Meeting of Hills, Norwest & Upper North Shore Zones

Monday 15th April

Riccaro Bosi to speak about life while serving in the Middle East

• The guy has passion, experience & knowledge.
  
• Fantastic, inspirational speaker.
  
• Educational & inspiring.
  
• It would have been great to have a longer session.
  
• Excellent content, great communicator and easy to relate to.
  

Australian Institute of Management
​Young Professionals Group

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Upcoming Events

NAB RunWest Festival BBQ

Sunday 31 March 2019

We will be running a BBQ at the Festival on Sunday 31st March 2019.   They are expecting some 8,000 participants in total in the 4km and 12km runs and then the Festival will be at Rooty Hill RSL which is at the end of the two runs.  We need to be in at 5:30am and selling by 7am and will need to stay until 3pm.   Please see emails for more information.

Combined Meeting - Hills and Norwest Zones

Monday 15th April 2019

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There is a Rotary combined meeting scheduled for Monday April 15th at Springfield and Partners are welcome.   The speaker will be; Riccardo Bosi – Riccardo is a former member of the National Speakers Association of Australia, having achieved in his first year of professional public speaking, the award of Best New Speaker for 2007 by The Executive Connection.  Riccardo will speak about life while serving in the Middle East.  See below.
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Riccardo Bosi's Afghan Adventures

ANZAC Commemoration Dinner 2019

Tuesday 23rd April 2019

Our Guest Speakers this year will be Vin and Nancy Cosgrove. Vin was conscripted for his military service in Vietnam during 1966 and served as a M60 machine gunner. They will talk to us about Australia's Involvement In The Vietnam War, which will include an excellent audio visual presentation. 
 
Both Vin & Nancy are professional speakers on the Vietnam conflict. They have delivered over 800 presentations throughout Australia to schools, service organisations, community groups and war veterans over the past 24 years.
 
We have been very fortunate to get Vin & Nancy for our dinner and this will be an excellent opportunity to see, hear and experience these engaging speakers. 
 
The history of Australia's involvement in the decade long Vietnam War has created much interest over recent years. 
 
Australia's initial defence commitment involved sending 30 military advisors in 1962 and this subsequently grew to a maximum of 7,672 men and women who served in our Army, Navy and Air Force during the course of the campaign.
 
All told around 61,000 Australian military personnel served in the Vietnam conflict in terms of the regular rotational arrangements required to relieve the various service units.
 
The war was a costly one too. 521 of our military personnel were killed and over 3000 were wounded.  The war was estimated to have cost our government about $218 million - over $33 billon in today's $$'s.  

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We will have an attendance sheet available at our meetings on 1st and 8th April, alternatively if absent please advise Max via email if you wish to attend. Payment $50.00pp may be made at these meetings or alternatively online to our club’s General Account. Please identify your payment with your surname and ANZAC. 

St Gabriel’s School Castle Hill – Another Project for Us.

Following on from our successful funding and installation of a Sporting Equipment Shed and Shade Sails installed by Tom Westcott for St Gabriel’s in 2018, we asked if our club could support a new project this year.

The Board believes that St Gabriel’s is our best local community Service Opportunity and fits well with the criteria we developed for the “Next Big Thing” project.

At the board meeting on 13th March, the Board decided to go ahead.  With this commitment in place, work will take place during the second school term and we will be looking for volunteers to assist.

Details from St Gabriel’s are below.

Sustainability is a focus for the school this year and one of the projects we want to get off the ground and particularly involve the new year 7 seven students is a school community vegetable garden. Part of the new year 7 curriculum in Food Technology is a focus on Life Skills (home cooking).  We think having a vegetable garden in this area will be a very good way to teach the life skills cooking program from a wholistic approach.

We’ve had some meetings with our Deputy Head and the year 7 teacher and drawn up a concept of what we would like to do and how we would like to organise it. The area we are looking at is next to the new modular classrooms (see Vege Bed Area pic attached). Attached is a scale plan and a breakdown of elements and costings for the project.

We’d like to make the area self-contained, so that everything we need is right there and can also be packed away. So we’d start with a small storage shed for tools, we can harvest water from the classroom roofs into a tank, we could compost. Teachers could also use an outdoor blackboard to plan lessons in the area. We’d have a range of bed heights for our students to access as well as colourful beds and a welcoming sign for the area that maybe our art department can help out with.

​In terms of a project cost, we estimate that it would be in the range of 4-5K to purchase everything but there would also a few man-power days in erecting the timber shed, setting up and filling the beds, setting up the water tank and reworking the gutter, so it is definitely a project that you can get your hands dirty on.  
 
Neville Hansen and I will lead the project for our club.
 
Tony Coote

Completed Events

2019 Giant Books Sale

The West Pennant Hills & Cherrybrook Rotary Club had a very successful 2019 Giant Book Sale on Friday 22nd, Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March raising over $16,000 for our charities – Angel Flight, SOKS (Save Our Kids Suicide Prevention), Operation Hope and Rotary Projects Helping People plus our work supporting the drought relief in the Coonabarabran area.

We would like to thank everyone that either came along to help during our book sort days, the lead up preparation to the Book Sale, or during the sale itself, including members, sons & daughters, Probus club members, students and other friends of Rotary as well as community members.

​Many customers commented on the high quality of the books, including how well organised the overall layout was with fiction books sorted by author surname and non-fiction sorted into 34 main categories, which allowed them to easily find what they were looking for. Children’s books were very popular, with many parents buying up big on Friday.

The Sunday clearance sale, where customers could buy good quality books by the bag, records, DVDs and CDs all at half price, proved to be extremely popular.

Thanks also to the Cherrybrook Uniting Church for use of their premises and support for the Book Sale.

The West Pennant Hills & Cherrybrook Rotary Club would like to thank all those who generously donated books, records, DVDs and CDs.  Without your kind generosity, the Book Sale would not have been the success that it was.

Thank you all so much.

​Duty Roster

If you are unable to be at the meeting please contact the person doing your role the following week/s, arrange a swap and advise Keith, so he can amend his records.
​Also, to avoid being rostered on, please notify Keith of any upcoming known absences (eg holidays) from meetings in the next twelve months.

Rotary makes amazing things happen, like:

Mobile Prenatal Clinics

Haiti has the highest maternal and infant mortality rate of any country in the western hemisphere. Rotary provided a fully equipped medical Jeep to volunteers and midwives to reach mothers and children in remote areas.

Cancer Screening

Rotarians provided a mobile cancer screening unit and awareness trainings around Chennai, India, where there is a high mortality rate of women with breast and cervical cancer due to late diagnosis.

Preventing Injuries and Deaths

Rotary members launched a $3 million, five-year pilot to save lives of mothers and children during home deliveries in Nigeria. Since 2005, they’ve also repaired 1,500 obstetric fistulas — 500 more than their initial goal — restoring dignity and hope to vulnerable mothers.

Wanted - New Members

If you know of someone who would benefit from Rotary, or, from whom Rotary would benefit if they were a member, then contact Tony C.

​Click here for a PDF copy of the form to the right, and send or give it to Tony C.​

Significant Club Fundraising Events during the year 

The Book Sale March 2019

As the result of a lot of hard work the MarchBook Sale was a great success, especially from  the organisers Andrew Little, Max Henderson, Neville Hansen and Rosemary Clarke. Funds raised exceeded $19,000.  Well done.

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2018 Trivia Night

​The Club held a very successful trivia night on Saturday 25 August 2018 at the Cherrybrook Community Centre, raising near $6,250 towards the charities we support. 


                       

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 The Garage Sale 2018

We have just had our best and most successful Garage Sale on the weekend of 13 & 14 October raising a record gross - north of $35k.

​Excellent Project Management and a large number of dedicated volunteers, some putting in hours of effort, in the weeks before the weekend contributed to this result.​​

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Barbecues
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The club runs fund raising barbecues throughout the year, mainly at Bunnings  (both Dural and Thornleigh)  Here are Barry, Tony, Nick and David hard at work. at Thornleigh.. 

Meetings

​Monday  6:30pm for 7:00pm - Springfield House - 245 New Line Road, Dural 2158

Apologies

If you are unable to attend or are bringing a guest (even if they are your partner) you must notify Julie. 
Email  admin@altitudecapital.com.au before 1pm on the Friday before the meeting.
​Please no communication via phone (either verbal or SMS)

If you are expected and do not show you will be required to pay for the meal.

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President's Report  18th March

Eleven members, two partners, one offspring and Peter Kirkwood enjoyed a Vocational Visit to Hornsby PCYC.  Peter Kirkwood was a major force behind Rotary’s contribution to this new facility.

The noise from all the activity attested to the value the community receives from the PCYC.

Later this week is the Book Sale and there is no meeting next Monday following some six days of activity.
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Spent last Saturday at PETS and have come away both enthused and confused.  There is a lot for me to learn.

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Night Report 18th March

Rotary Club Meeting PCYC Hornsby Monday 18th March 2019

It was very disappointing that this Partner’s Night was so poorly attended. 21 members and partners were supposed to go along. Only 14 people attended of which 3 were partners.

On the positive side, Peter Kirkwood met us all at 7PM and we sat down in the dining area. He welcomed us with a tune or two from his didjeridoo. The 2 course meal was excellent, and thanks to the reduced turnout there was plenty of food to spare.

Peter gave us a short history of the project (Given that we had visited the facility about a year ago.)
PCYC started in the 1930’s in NSW with the leadership of Rotary, as a way of getting young people off the streets and developing their character and leadership potential. There was strong police involvement from the start. There are currently 64 PCYC locations throughout NSW with 800 police officers and staff and over 1500 volunteers. Around 100 different activities are offered.

Peter is on the board of PCYC NSW and was the driver of the establishment of the Hornsby Facility.
Hornsby is now a model for the development of new PCYC clubs throughout NSW.  The Hornsby PCYC was officially opened in 2017 and cost around $16 million to construct. Over 600 children are involved in Junior Gymnastics and 13 local high schools use the facilities for various sporting events and activities. The club is also a meeting place for locals who live in the local high rises. It provides a hub and the coffee shop is top class.

The PCYC Hornsby Rotary Youth Hub is funded by 6 local Rotary clubs including ours.
A tour of the building followed and we were able to see young people participating in many different activities.
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Tony Coote
Night Reporter
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Night Photos

Editor Note:  Click on a photo to see a larger version.

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This Week's Humour

The Maori and the Aussie

An Aussie and a Maori walk into a bakery.
The Aussie steals three pasties and puts them in his pockets.
He turns to the Maori and says, "Pretty slick eh mate ? The owner didn't even see me.”
Unimpressed, the Maori replies, "Typical dishonest Aussie, bro I'm gonna show you the honest way and still get the same result.”
The Maori calls the owner of the shop and says, "Bro, I want to show you a magic trick.”
Intrigued, the owner obliges. The Maori asks him for a pastry, which he promptly eats, then asks him for another, and he eats that too. He asks for a third pastry, which he eats also. 
By now, the owner says, "C'mon mate, where's the magic trick?”
The Maori replies, pointing to the Aussie, "Now check his pockets . . . "


The professor was telling his early morning class, "I've found that the best way to start the day is to exercise for five minutes, take a deep breath of fresh air, and then have a bowl of delicious cereal with raisins and almonds and a cup of green tea and finish with a cold shower. Then I feel rosy all over."
A sleepy voice from the back of the room said, "Tell us more about Rosy”.

Jim

Tony M

Joke Bank content is 10.

Club Calendar

Editor's Note:  ​If you wish to download and print the Calendar please click here.

Bulletin Editor - Mighty Duo of Neville & Keith