|
This is a face-to-face meeting at the RACV Club. If you would like to visit our meeting, please book directly through Humanitix by close of business on Thursday, 11 August 2022. If you would like a more general discussion about attending a Rotary meeting, phone 0455-858-996. The meeting will commence at 7:40am and conclude no later than 8:45.  Sonia Dhillon: Member presentation
Presentations from our own members are always popular, especially from newer members. Sonia Dhillon joined Rotary Central Melbourne in November 2021 with the classification of Accountant – Business Analyst. Sonia’s business, Smart business Advisors, is based in Docklands. Her hobbies include running, music and community work and apart from English, she is fluent in Hindi and Punjabi languages. During her presentation, Sonia will tell us about her career, family and what brought her to Rotary. |
|
|
|
Reporter: | Tom Callander | Chair: | Kevin Love | President: | Rohan Williams |
President Rohan Williams opened the meeting with “welcome to country” and welcome to all. The Chairperson of the day, Kevin Love, proposed the toast to Rotary International. The President welcomed our guest speaker Professor Lisa Given, and also Moya an international student from Japan, and Nicholas Oei, here for the second week, an international student studying materials engineering, being mentored by Warwick Cappell.
Birthdays Kevin Love announced members birthdays: - Colin Harvey 9 August
- Mary Voice 13 August
- Tom Callander 15 August
- Lynn McBain (spouse of Bruce) 11 August
Guest speaker – Topic: Innovations in Memorialisation; The Melbourne Korean War Memorial Information Creation Kevin Love introduced our guest speaker Professor Lisa Given, Director of Social Change Enabling Capability Platform, a Canadian who came to Australia in 2011 and has been Melbourne based since 2017. Her background notes are in the last Bulletin. Her research includes social technology in design and how to apply that approach to memorials including war memorials. In this context, her focus at the meeting was the new Korean War Memorial located in Quarry Park Footscray in the City of Maribyrnong. She is involved with community engaged research for social change and is an information behaviour scholar and research methodologist. She investigates the way we come together to seek knowledge and education.
Key enablers for social change involve: - community engagement into design;
- interdisciplinary human perspectives;
- adoption and innovations.
She pointed to the sustainable development goals wheel (a United Nations concept). She observed that private memorials and monuments are designed for families and recently have started to include bar codes to tell the story of people. Public memorials are designed for communities and provide memory, history and commentary (for example The Shrine). The Melbourne Korean War Memorial was a two year end to end process driven by Professor Blair Kuys, Centre for Innovative Design (Swinburne) with his expertise in history, design, architecture, engineering etc.
The Korean War Memorial was assisted with grants from Korea, the Victorian Government, the Veterans Association, and with the land donated by Maribyrnong City Council. The process started with community in two countries, assisted with a great location in a park, and fieldwork across Australia and Korea. It involved trends in memorial design, materials, texture, visual design, scale etc.
Bringing in the community to be engaged in design embraces community needs. The design also involves site planning and creativity and community input. That process was a 12 month process with many community held events often with 300 plus attendees. Smaller group design workshops took place with key stakeholders. Then large scale imaginings, prototype development, informing the aesthetic. The intent is to account for a combined experience. It addresses questions such as what does this mean for how people interact and what will be the visitors’ experience and how will they be engaged.
The design forces visitors down a path with a flow moving through the Memorial in a particular way to tell the story of the war and its effect on parties. The design includes stone in the middle, bluestone from Melbourne and whitestone (Gapyeong) from Korea.
There is an explicit informing aesthetic: - personal accounts, quotes, statistics, images, facts etc;
- storytelling as information in design, resonating with veterans, educating visitors and honouring those who served.
There is an implied informing aesthetic: - navigation features; materials selection, design features etc;
- images formed by 17164 perforations in panels representing the numbers of soldiers from Australia who served in Korea;
- national flowers (hibiscus and golden wattle);
- 6mm anodised aluminium panels chosen as it is not easily vandalised.
There is an embodied informing aesthetic: - emotive responses, imaginative responses, smell, site, sound, look and feel, height, depth, flow etc;
- smell of flowers;
- view of the Melbourne skyline;
- flow of pathway;
- stones to hold memorial wreath, and ability to place poppies in the panel perforations;
- the city skyline includes Eureka Tower, important because it is the same height as the hill on which one of the battles was fought.
In questions asked by members, our guest speaker confirmed that the Korean War Memorial was not affiliated with the Shrine or other memorials. It is a separate project located at Quarry Park Footscray, sitting on a hill with the responsibility for upkeep undertaken by City of Maribyrnong. A key sponsor is the Veterans Association. It is seen as a national memorial. Kevin Love thanked our guest speaker for a most interesting presentation on a war memorial for a war relatively forgotten or unknown in the present Australian community.
Announcements - Neville John thanked the volunteers at the Bunnings barbecue last Sunday which raised $1,110.00.
- Neville also noted that Terry Cocks, our Charter President, had contacted him pointing out the contribution that Judith Durham had made to our Club having attended at a number of meetings and having supported many young people. Neville noted that David Jones was putting together an article for the Club Bulletin about Judith’s involvement with Rotary and our Club.
- Millie Swan reminded members about the Club dinners proposed next Saturday week at restaurants around Melbourne including Ivanhoe, Mordialloc, East Melbourne etc. She requested members to contact other members by phone to urge them to come along with their partners.
- Doug Robertson noted that member dues were now due.
- Tom Callander added to Neville’s comments about Judith Durham and noted that she had particularly been involved in one of our youth projects “Storm the stage” in which we supported young promising performers, and she assisted adjudicating those performers with our Club at the Victorian College of the Arts.
- Tom Callander also reminded members about the Working with Children card requirements and asked them to check their cards to make sure they were yup to date. About two thirds of members have current cards according to Tom’s records. We need to achieve 100%. Cards can be obtained either on line or by a form available at Post Offices. Tom can assist with how these should be completed.
|
|
|
|
|
President’s announcements included: - Reminder for Clubs to respond to Rohan’s email to vote for Ros McMaster in the Woolworths “top community volunteer” campaign. Ros is very involved with RIMERN (“Rotary Inner Melbourne Emergency Relief Network” which our Club supports) and already has achieved a $5,000.00 donation by becoming a finalist and may gain another $20,000.00 for RIMERN if she wins the volunteer selection. Refer to Rohan’s recent email.
- Rohan noted that there had been anonymous donations to the Club by some members and wished to acknowledge them.
- Rohan also thanked the guest speaker.
- Rohan noted that next week’s speaker would be Sonia Dillon, one of our members, who would speak about her life and experience.
|
|
|
|
 Judith Durham and her sister at our club Christmas breakfast 2006, plus Michael's wife Nina and their children
The Rotary world mourns the passing of Judith Durham AO and PHF. Judith was a great Australian , generous with her time, caring for others and a friend of Rotary Central Melbourne (RCM).
Through the auspice’s of her friend, Charter President Terry Cocks and member Michael Bromby, Judith was introduced to Rotary Central Melbourne. Notwithstanding her busy life Judith became involved in Rotary activities. RCM’s then Youth team leader Michael Lapina, President John Ilott and Judith adjudicated promising young performers at the Victoria School of Arts. Judith also sang at the annual Paul Harris breakfasts attended by many Rotarians and friends from District 9800; attended fund-raising events such as the ‘Hypothetical’ at Federation Square and also participated in the club Christmas breakfast event.
RCM’s association with Judith Durham and her involvement in Rotary youth programs was awarded a Paul Harris Fellowship recognition in 2006 for her work with young people.
When asked about his memories of Judith, RCM Charter President Terry Cocks said:
"I had the good fortune of introducing Judith Durham to Rotary and our Club. She visited us on many occasions despite her busy commitments and was a genuine supporter of the ideals and objectives of Rotary. She possessed not only unique music talent but also a compassionate interest in people and their welfare. We were very pleased to have recognised her as a Paul Harris Fellow”.
Michael Lapina, District Governor Nominee for D9800 said:
”I'm saddened that the musical world has lost our wonderful icon in Judith Durham. I recall the time she attended our Rotary Christmas Party in 2006, and we (along with her sister, Beverley) were able to sing one of her songs "Morningtown Ride" for members and guests. That morning, my whole family were in attendance, and I remember the love and care Judith showed towards Nina and the kids. She left such an indelible mark in all our hearts. Judith also offered me some guidance, counsel and support when I returned to the stage with Victorian Opera and Opera Australia. She was a true inspiration, always willing to share her experience. I'll miss her very much...” |
|
|
|
 After two years of Covid delays, the Garden DesignFest Organising Committee, from the three Rotary clubs of Kew, Brighton North and Central Melbourne, was finally able to put on display a range of gorgeous gardens over the past two weekends. And apart from the weather, everything went off without a hitch. We bravely embraced 21st Century technology, taking payments via Squares in all the gardens (thank you Rob for training a large number of technically challenged Rotarians from all three Rotary clubs). We watched the skies with trepidation leading up to the first weekend, with 13 gardens on display in Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. But Saturday turned out to be a fine sunny day and on Sunday the storms stayed away until evening. The weather was less kind the next weekend for the 20 country gardens, with two gardens closed on the Sunday due to torrential rain the previous day. On Sunday morning in some gardens the rain lashed down, the winds howled and volunteers hung on to the shelters to prevent them from blowing away. Not surprisingly, attendance figures were less than expected in those gardens badly affected.
All the gardens on show were interesting, some were really impressive. A standout garden at 9 Barnsbury Road, Deepdene impressed by its sheer size, with huge old trees set around a magnificent old home. In Brighton, another historical garden at 23 Asling Street featured 100 year old trees and vegetables in gardens beds throughout. On the second weekend, the four gardens at Euroa were magnificent, exemplified by The Falls with its waterfall, enclosed espalier orchard and scenic lake. Garden DesignFest cannot happen without volunteers to organise the event, buy and sell raffle tickets and staff the gardens over the two weekends. I wish to acknowledge and thank all of you who helped, in particular those who accepted the added responsibility of being a Garden Captain.
Garden DesignFest has two key objectives – to give people the opportunity to look at wonderful gardens and, in the process, raise money for charity. Just seeing the smiling faces on visitors confirms success of the first objective. We are still in the process of finalising numbers prior to distributing funds, firstly two our headline charity Youth Suicide Awareness and then to the Rotary clubs. However, I am delighted to advise that over the two weekends Garden DesignFest raised, in total, over $100,000 for distribution to charities.
Roger Thornton
Chair, GDFOC
|
|
|
|
|
The Rotary Club of Kew, the Rotary Club of Brighton North and Rotary Central Melbourne sincerely thank our generous sponsors who have made the 2022 Garden DesignFest possible. All proceeds from the Garden DesignFest go to community projects run by the participating Rotary Clubs. Click here for further information on metropolitan and regional gardens open during the festival. |
|
|
|
Belonging Matters is holding it conference virtually this year from the 5th-9th September. The conference is called Purpose Matters! We thought that the Rotary Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and other Rotarians might be interested in the conference, especially the morning on community and belonging, employment and relationships. We would like to offer Rotary 5 complimentary tickets! If you would like to attend or invite a key Rotarian, please let us know and we will pass on details about how to access the complimentary tickets. Registered delegates can attend all sessions or just the sessions they choose. They will also be able to access recordings of the presentation for a short time after the conference. The conference will be exploring the question of meaning, purpose and social inclusion. It will focus on people with a disability but many of our speakers will be taking a broader focus on inclusion. With approximately 30 speakers from all over the world, each morning we will focus on an area of life, for example: - Community and belonging
- Employment
- Home
- Education and learning
- Relationships
|
|
|
|
|
James Young NGSE 2019 and Michael Dimovski NGSE 2022 both sponsored by Central Melbourne performing in a German Rotarian's garden in July this year. Michael’s now back in Melbourne and would be very happy to perform at Rotary functions to help with fund raising or simply social events. Louise Keast NGSE 2022 sponsored b y Central Melbourne BEFORE her maiden performance in Bayrueth Louise AFTER her maiden performance in Bayreuth! David Rosenberg NDSE 2022 shortly to join us in Melbourne sponsored by RC Herzogenaurach, D1950. |
|
|
|
|
