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 - 30th June 2024

President Tomas Guerin and Board Members 2024/2025

President Tomas Guerin (2nd from left) with from left: MC Greg Johnson, Outgoing President David Johnson, Brett Sendal, Cameron McMaster, Jason Hudson and Ben Watkins. Missing from the photo: Shane MacDonald, Owen Scholes, Cameron Sorley and Greg Geldard
Click here to see more photos

APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2025 NYSF YEAR 12 PROGRAM ARE NOW OPEN!

Applications for the 2025 National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) Year 12 Program are open until 15 July 2024. 

Last year’s program was a two centre, residential event held in Canberra and Brisbane.  Although there are different programs held at each venue they are similar events but run over two different nine day periods in January.

Participants get to try Uni accommodation (King’s College, UQ last year), meet other like-minded students (a bit like being at Uni), become involved in a continuing NYSF community (alumni stay involved and keep in touch for years), are encouraged to use LinkedIn and connect with presenters, as well as the more obvious content and field trips to see real life scientific research and industry projects.  They will also be invited to Governor House and meet her Excellency.

Year 11 students who are studying sciences or a mixture of science and arts ATAR subjects should apply.  They will be courted by major Universities and Companies as they provide the content and sponsorship. 

Rotary is a founding partner and provides support in time and money to make the events happen. For many years now the Rotary Club of Toowoomba South has sponsored one or two students a year and will likely do so again this year.

The application process is online and there is a non-refundable application fee of $65 and the cost of the program for 2025 is $2,990.

Click here for the NYSF Application page and full information.

Rep Theatre Night - Tuesday 9th July 2024

Bookings are now available by contacting Stan Carter via email at stanmcar@bigpond.com or by phone on 0487 328 890 

Tickets Price: $25.

Maggie's Getting Married promises to be a good night's entertainment.

Our club looks forward to welcoming you to the theatre.

"Maggie's Getting Married"

by Norm Foster

Directed by Mark Phythian

It's the night before Maggie Duncan’s wedding, and family and friends are gathered at the Duncan family home. Parents Tom and Cass are busy finalising preparations and hosting the gathering, and Maggie is catching up with her older sister Wanda.

Wanda’s actor boyfriend Axel is not endearing himself to the Duncans, and Tom may be having a minor mid-life crisis. Then when Russell arrives, Wanda discovers that she knows the groom (Russell) a little better than Maggie would like her to.

This is a delightful, witty and touching romantic comedy by one of the best-known Canadian authors, Norm Foster.

Note- this play contains sexual references 

More info on the play can be found here

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

Click here to see more photos

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.

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