Last week's meeting ended up a bit unexpected. We had North Melbourne icon, Lorna Hannan speak to us. She came representing the North Melbourne Historic Society and we were probably expecting to see a whole lot of pictures of what the area looked like 100 years ago but not the case. She just spoke to us about the names in North Melbourne and really brought them to life with her very interesting descriptions. Quite a few of us that have a history ourselves with the area really related to her talk.  

Also unexpected at last night's meeting was the presence of a friend of our club Radhika Bogati. Radhika has in the past been a great helper at our BBQ's and we had lost contact. She continues to be a nurse at the Alfred Hospital and came on to tell us of her concern about the treatment of her fellow nurses in Nepal and how upset she is about the disrespect for them in their own country. I have spoken to her since the meeting and she will be speaking to Ida Whitman who has served as a volunteer doctor in Nepal herself in the past. Hopefully, we will see more of Radhika. She has definitely said she wants to keep helping out at BBQs.

I mentioned again the "Walkwithus", Annual End Polio Walk.  There has been a bit more interest to join this event. Well there is still time as the basis of the event is you have the whole of October to achieve your walking target and today's meeting marks the 1st October so if you haven't joined up you might as well as everyone is going to walk anyway during the month. There's not much else you can do.

Here is the login page where you register https://www.rotarywalkwithus.org/

Susan Robb has officially taken on job of our club Vocational Service Chairperson and in that role represented our club at a training session for Mentors

Susan is also working with me to try and get the MUNA project going and I can report that we now do actually have all the paperwork for a team from New Zealand registered by the Rotary Club of Wellington.

On Saturday morning I did attend the District morning coffee which was very interesting. They had a very good array of speakers who all spoke for about 10 min each.

For weeks now I have meant to give recognition of some great recent athletics performances from Australian Athletes as it is a sport I have a keen interest in. However, I only remember just after I email off my report. But not this week. There is no too much to report so I can't hold back anymore. I'm sure you all on the edges of your seat reading this.

Firstly, I can say we have a commitment from one of our countries first athletes to be selected for the 2021 Australian Olympic Athletics team. (So far only 5 have been selected). She is Jemima Montag who has been selected in the Women's 20Km Walk. She is shortly off to Europe to compete on their tour and will speak on her return. Some members may remember that last year we had Peter Bol speak at our club. Peter came to Australia as a refugee from Sudan and has now become our top 800m runner. Since speaking at our club he had a lot of injury problems but is now back to his best and putting in some very good times in the Diamond League peaking in Monaco.

But the highlight has been on September 25th in Doha. The 25th September is an important date in Australian Athletics as it was the day Cathy Freeman carried the expectations of the whole country on her back winning the 400m Olympic Gold Medal in Sydney in 2000. Well, this year our new champion is a young man from King Island, Stewart McSweyn where he completely distanced a world class field in the 3000m breaking the Australian Record. 

He is now the 1st Australian ever to hold 1500, 3000, and 10,000m Australian records at the same time. If you are all well behaved at the meeting I might be able to show you a clip of his amazing race. 

I should add that at the same Doha meeting, Australian runner, Jessica Hull also broke the Australian 3000m record as well.

Our upcoming speakers coming up are as follows:

Speaker of the Week