Rotary Club of Toowoomba South Inc.
- Chartered in 1959 -
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Welcome to the Rotary Club of Toowoomba South
Cover image: Members and friends of our club all fired up and ready to lend a helping hand at the Christmas Centre Run in 2017.
Presenting a book voucher to the Lighthouse project - 1/06/22
Each month our Toowoomba South ladies and partners meet for coffee. This year, as an acknowledgement of the ongoing support they provide to our members, the club has made $1000 available to them to donate to particular charities of choice.
After plenty of research and discussion they have decided to support the Lighthouse project which helps children read and write. They also have ordered an outdoor seat that will be donated soon to the Toowoomba Hospice.
Picture: Wendy Orth and Jane Tait presented a $500 voucher to Emma McTaggart from the Lighthouse Foundation to purchase books to better enable young people to read.
BBQs and Fellowship - 19th Nov 2021
Toowomba South has had quite a few fundraising BBQs this year. Three were held out west supporting RAWCS in July and August and several others during the year at the Toowoomba North Bunnings. Rosters are usually set up with 2 shifts, one from 8am to 12 and the other from 12 to 4pm. Each shift has 5 or 6 men under the relaxed management of either Evan Fairley or Brett Sendall.
These events are good fund raising opportunities with the club managing to raise in excess of a thousand dollars after expenses; a very respectable amount considering that most of the work is confined to the day of the BBQ. Both Evan and Brett are busy prior to the events purchasing sausages, bread and extras.
From the point of view of fellowship among the members working in the tent, it's a great chance to build some comradery, work together in a team, develop new skills and simply to have a great day out with your mates cooking a few sausages.
The club this year is raising funds to support men’s health and well-being. Before the year is finished, we hope to donate to improving mental health, providing prostate cancer support and helping organise an activity for “Are you bogged mate?”
Picture above: Rotarians Phil Chapman, Derm Guerin, Evan Fairley, Stan Carter Paul Ying and President Gary Orth at the last Bunnings BBQ in November.
Rep Theatre Night - Tuesday 2nd November
More info on the play can be found here
Our club looks forward to welcoming you to the theatre.
As a fund raising venture, The Rotary Club of Toowoomba South is sponsoring an evening at the Rep Theatre Toowoomba on Tuesday 2nd November. The play we are hosting is One Slight Hitch, written by Lewis Black.
Because of Covid restrictions we are unable to offer supper as we normally do but we will still be offering a glass of wine on arrival at the theatre and we will also be handing out some nibblies and bottles of water at interval. Patrons will be able to take their glass of wine into the theatre.
As well as that we will have the raffle as usual but because of a request from the theatre management to limit any cash transactions on the night the cost of the raffle will be included in the ticket price of just $25.00
As has been the case with evenings sponsored by our club in recent years, One Slight Hitch promises to be a good night's entertainment and bookings are now available by contacting Stan Carter via email at stanmcar@bigpond.com or by phone on 0487 328 890
Charity begins at home - 15th Aug 2021
Rotarians are well known for the charitable work they do and a lot of that work is done for people we don’t even know but last week our club was called on to do some service work a little closer to home, in this case for one of our own members.
Club member Paul Merry takes up the story.......Click here for more
Because of my current medical condition, I had to buy a tonne of firewood recently and never having bought any before – I have always collected our own from friends’ farms in the country, etc – I googled dealers and ordered a tonne which was duly delivered. When ordering I said that it was for a family room wood burner. They told me the average piece was about the size of a 3 litre milk carton. I thought that would be OK – silly me!!!
Well, when it arrived, each log was generally much larger than that! How on earth were we going to deal with them?! Lyn threw up her hands in horror and wanted the guy to take it back on his truck but no go! Then she thought of putting a sign out the front: FREE FIREWOOD!
I happened to be talking to our wonderful Peter Wenham a day or two later and he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a log splitter, I can fix that for you!’ Wow! An answer to a maiden’s prayer!!!
A few days later Peter rang to say that he had got the log splitter on his trailer and he had conned President Gary Orth and Rotarian Bryan Hunt to assist him! Wow! It’s getting better by the day!
So sure enough, a day two later, these three fantastic Rotarians arrived, off-loaded the splitter, got all set up, and away they went! Peter operated his amazing machine – it was as easy as slicing cheese! - Bryan got the logs organised on the splitting table and Gary and Bryan stacked it all neatly away in the wood shed! 1 ½ hours later our huge heap of logs was all split up into perfect pieces for the fire, stacked away AND all the chips and bits left over were swept up and blown leaving a beautifully clean driveway! And what did I do? – sat on my trusty chariot and supervised!!!
What an incredibly, fantastic morning’s work by 3 dedicated Rotarians! Thank you most sincerely Peter, Gary and Bryan. There was absolutely no way that Lyn and I could have dealt with those huge logs.
Morning tea and a good chat followed, including our Rotary-Annes!
The Power of Rotary, eh?!
Paul Merry
2021 Annual Changeover - 22nd June 2021
At The Downs Club on Tuesday June 22nd, in the presence of club members and invited guests, our club celebrated it's 62nd annual changeover, farewelling outgoing President Barry Fagg and welcoming in new president Gary Orth and his board of directors for the 2021-2022 Rotary Year.
Picture above: (from left) President Gary Orth, VP Derm Guerin, Secretary Peter Wenham, Treasurer Tomas Guerin, Board Members Cameron McMaster, Brett Sendall, Bryan Hunt, Paul Ying and Evan Fairley. Missing from the picture: Board Member Chris Tait. Photo by David Johnson.
Run The Range - 23rd May 2021
Another successful event.
After being cancelled in 2020 due to the Coronavirus the former Milne Bay Military Challenge has finally been run again this year, bigger and better and with a new name...Run the Range
See the facebook page for results, photos and more details.
Congratulations to Margaret Wedge, Grant Reinbott, Brendon Purcell & Joanna McRaethe Queen’s and King’s of the Mountain for Rotary Run The Range 7K and 15K
The #RTR2021 KOM and QOM were out for FIRST Female or Males across the line for either THE 15K and THE 7K.
Not only do they have bragging rights but also pick-up a nice Rotary Run The Range KOM and QOM Trophy from Sovereign Property Partners - Toowoomba
Rotary's Night of Opportunity - April 27th 2021
Guest Speaker : Angus Chapel
He's the man behind a proposed $180 million Toowoomba medicinal cannabis facility that's expected to need more than 350 workers once it's up and running. Angus Chapel is the managing director of Medibis - a Toowoomba company with plans to export 80 to 100 tonnes of medicinal cannabis annually.
Speaking at Rotary's Night of Opportunity, Mr Chapel talked about the path that led him to start his own medicinal cannabis business, how the farm will operate, and the various roles and jobs that will be required once the Medibis facility is operational. For thousands of years, cannabis has been known to have remarkable healing properties - and now those properties are being applied using modern, scientific methods.
Uses for refined cannabis products include treatments for cancer related symptoms and side effects such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, Crohne's disease, autism, asperger's, PTSD, chronic pain, Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, dementia, anxiety, parkinson's disease, epilepsy, dravet syndrome, and more.
While the industry is still in its infancy in Australia, the country's cannabis market is expected to surge past US$1.5 billion in value by 2025.
District award for Brendon Ryan
The district has awarded Club Member Brendan Ryan a special award for his generous support of the DIK container program.
At our meeting 08/12/2020 PP Barry presented Brendan with his certificate and invited him to tell us more about what he has done for this program.
Brendan goes to Brisbane each Thursday and helps organise resources and load containers that are sent overseas to several third world countries. Rotary does not pay the freight of the container which can be as high as $10000. Clubs and beneficiaries of the containers have to provide the freight costs.
Brendan indicated there was so much more that could be achieved if members knew more about the program and opportunities where we could help. Used hospital beds and old computers could have found their way to the DIK centre if we had more frequent discussions rather than consign them to the tip.
Photo: Bryan Hunt - Script: Gary Orth
Helping out with Tony's Kitchen
Members of the Rotary Club of Toowoomba South are always looking for new community service projects.
To that end, we recently got on board helping out at Tony's Kitchen. The kitchen is out the back of the Settlers Inn Hotel and provides meals to homeless people and those who are doing it tough. Our club cooked roughly 80 meals - ranging from spageti bol to fried rice and everything in between - which were distributed last week.
The organisers have witnessed an almost doubling in demand for meals since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In April the kitchen was feeding on average 25-30 people a night. Now they feed on average 55 people per night, seven nights a week.
Feedback on the meals was great (they loved them!) and we're looking forward to helping out Tony's Kitchen again soon.
Photos above: Edge Member Jamie Smith delivering a batch of home cooked meals to the kitchen. Photos and script: Matt Newton.
District 9630 award for best project
Past District Governor Ros Kelly was in town today (13th Oct 2020) to present us with some awards! In the left pic above we have (left to right) RCOTS president Barry Fagg, Project School Formal founder Gay Hold, Mayor Paul Antonio, and PDG Ros Kelly. RCOTS and The Edge were awarded the District 9630 award for best project for our involvement in Project School Formal. Then in the right pic we have Barry, Ros, and Arthur Carpenter! Those two awards are for our involvement in the combined Toowoomba Rotary donation to Yellowbridge. - Photos and script: Matt Newton
Rotary and the Carnival of Flowers - check out our float!
If you can't take the people to the parade, take the parade to the people! Due to the pandemic the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers parade looks a little different this year but we're still excited to be taking part. Check out our float and all the others inside Grand Central Shopping Centre.
The Carnival Float is in place and looking resplendent in all its vibrant colour. A big thanks to all those Rotarians involved and our supporters at Ellipsis Media and JP Smith Recruitment and HR.
UPDATE: CONGRATULATIONS Rotary Club of Toowoomba South on winning 3rd Place in the Grand Central Floral Parade Static Display 2020 Community Floral Float category.