Rotary Club of Toowoomba South Inc.

- Chartered in 1959 -

Home Page

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.

Annual Changeover - 27th June 2023

President David Johnson and Board Members 2023/2024

President David Johnson (Centre) with from left: Gary Orth, Brett Sendall, Paul Ying, Jason Hudson, Tomas Guerin, Cameron McMaster, Evan Fairley and Shane MacDonald. Missing from the photo Peter Wenham

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