The President’s column May
As I write, the month of June and winter are imminent and both indicate that my time is nearly up. Nevertheless, there’s still a lot to do. June is usually a busy month in Rotary with meetings and events galore while incoming executives are primed and full of ideas.
The same could be said about the Australian political scene with an incoming executive of a different persuasion who want to put their ideas into practice but they are conscious of an articulate and vociferous collection of cross benchers who can claim almost as large a mandate. Happily, incoming Rotary presidents don’t have that non-silent Greek chorus to deal with.
It’s a curious thing that much of my presidential year and nearly all of Jama Farah’s year were wiped out by COVID19 lockdowns while we all became armchair statisticians looking a new cases and death rates. Yet, here we are, no lockdowns and much higher caseloads and death counts, all trying to return to normal or whatever passes for that now. Some of the things I’ve been doing were in the nature of house-keeping; updating our constitution and by-laws and creating a strategic plan. Other things have not been so easy. My plan to create a new membership book didn’t quite come off – getting new mug-shots with smart phones should have been easy, yet it wasn’t.
Finding new environment projects and pursuing them has been instructive. While we won’t have anything to show during my year, we have two projects germinating. The first is a renovation of the landscaping at the Doug Mills reserve by the Maribyrnong River and the second is a rejuvenation of gardens at Gaskin Towers in Gordon Street. Both require Council involvement and progress has been s-l-o-w-w-w but it would have been worse without the guidance pf Fred Maddern and enthusiasm of Nada Stojkovic – I dips me lid to them.
I don’t want to turn this into an annual report, but there’s much to celebrate such as the recent induction of Rana and Kushal, the return to noisy and animated meetings, pub-grub, and an audio-visual system that seem to work. A less than happy event has been the death of Allan Warrener whose funeral will take place on June 1. Allan was a Rotary member for over 40 years, was a club president, was an ever-courteous gentle man and was a quiet and reassuring presence.
Now I have to get this to the hands of our stand-out, stand-in editor Graeme Thompson. I must say, this process is infinity faster than one I’m dealing with in trying the get a book published. Perhaps more of that anon.
