President's Desk 12-08-13

From the President's Desk

Good Morning all,

Last Friday night I had the pleasure of attending the 'Best of the Bush Ball' as a guest of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) in the Plaza Ballroom at the Brisbane Convention Centre. This was sponsored by the Queensland Country Life and is part of the Ekka week celebrations.  There were over 600 people present with Lee Kernaghan as the MC.  The great once Australian Company (just recently sold) R. M. Williams obviously is a great supporter of the event with the main raffle in honour of the RFDS consisting of 60 vouchers valued at $425 as 60 prizes, one for each table and raising some $12000 from my calculations.

The Spirit of the Bush is well and truly alive and whilst the outback towns and communities are seeing a decline in Government Services and delivery. The population in the bush is also declining, we need to be ready to help the people of the outback, they mean so much to our way of life, the products we consume, the wealth of the nation and they define the Spirit on which this country was built.

When you sit and listen to the experiences of the RFDS personnel, the life saving opportunities that happen because the RFDS was in town; the regular three monthly medical visits that supports residents with life threatening illness; the saving of the ill prepared 'grey nomad' tourists who have that unavoidable accident; the broken bones of the school kids just like any child in any city; you very soon learn the value of the RFDS and where this great organisation fits into our Society.

So as this Club goes about supporting the RFDS I urge all our Members, friends, and Rotarians to please help us support this great Australian icon with our fund raising efforts.  Yes, we do have other programmes and other deserving communities, individuals and projects but in reality if we can make our RFDS Fund Raising spectacularly successful the Club too will have money to spend on the other Community Projects.

 This has been a big week, I look forward to seeing many faces on line tonight, we have three new members, that is great news and a Board Meeting Thursday night at 7pm.  We also have lunch today with the RFDS Board and from the Board Meeting we need to approve the total Birdsville Burger Plan. Please read all about our Guest Speaker tonight, Sandra D'Souza and wasn't it great to have Wendy online along with the Rotary Club of Scottsdale Tasmania.

Thanks everyone for that great effort last week, it went so well, enjoy Rotary.

Regards

Geoff

President@rotaryeclubnextgen.org

A couple of documents sent through from district if anyone is interested:

Membership & PR Workshop - draft program

Membership & PR Registration