It's the end of June as I write this message. It's pretty much the end of our Rotary year.
Traditionally it's when we change over our Presidents and recognise that a Changeover function. For us we are doing it a little bit differently and we are having Joint Presidents. Sandra de Gruchy will join me for the next twelve months. We will sort out the role between us and hopefully it will all work smoothly. It gives me the opportunity to mentor Sandra in the first few months and she will gradually take on more. of the day to day running of the Club. I will have more time for other projects particularly our Homelessness project and other District duties. Sandra retains the Youth Director role. See story and pics below.
Also June turned out to be a big month for me as I did The Pushup Challenge for mental health. We did all the 3,139 pushups and raised over $4,000 for Lifeline. See story.
In May we had our District Assembly where Rotary Clubs get together to update their plans for the year. We followed this with our Club's Strategy Workshop where we set the resource and operational plan for our key projects.
We are confident that our Club activities, and working together with other Rotary Clubs, will lead to significant benefit to our local community. We have ambitious and challenging goals for 2022-23, including the Cookbook, Homelessness, mental health and other projects.
Please call/text me if you would like to know more about Rotary, our Club and our 2022 projects. Do you know you can be involved in some of our community projects in the Blue Mountains, working alongside some pretty interesting people. It's always rewarding to participate and have fun while you're doing it.
President Bill, new District Governor Mina Howard and new President Sandra
Friday, June 24 was The Sunrise Club’s annual Changeover lunch.
It was a day for firsts: first weekday luncheon in years; first soiree at
Blaq, one of the few “hatted” restaurants in The Mountains which is housed
in a beautifully renovated hotel in Blackheath; and the first time the Presidency will
be shared by two Club members, Bill and Sandra. The event was five stars in all aspects: from the venue itself; to the food; to the service; to the flawless performance of the speakers. We thank The Changeover Team for a job very well done. We were pleased to see that a number of DG’s (past, present and future) were able to find time to attend. In addition, several past Club members drove or flew hundreds of kms to join us. It again shows that once you become a Rotarian it never leaves your blood.
We announced the Rotarian of the Year...Jenny Hartnett. Jenny was recognised for her unfaltering work in driving the Cookbook project forward, particularly during Covid times and providing a platform for Club members working together. Additionally Jenny was pivotal to the success of the Pride of Workmanship dinner in May. By any measure Jenny was a worthy winner and she gets to go free to the District Conference in Cowra next year.
The other major announcement was Margaret Greening. Margaret has been an Honourary Member of our Club for over a decade. She accompanied Jim Greening to all the Rotary meetings and events. She has contributed so much over the years, recognised with a PHF. However she felt it was time to come along as a Member in her own right and we welcomed her with open arms.
The Changeover date was also the last day of The Pushup challenge. So there on the dance floor President Bill and PDG Jennifer Scott doing the last few pushups to the sounds of Geronimo. What a great effort and grass roots campaign to shed some light on suicides and raise funds for Lifeline.
Today we were privileged to have Andrea Comastri as Guest Speaker. Andrea, the Executive Director told us the wonderful story of Hotel Etico, and the vocational opportunities they provide to people with disabilities. Located in the old Manor House in Mount Victoria in NSW's Blue Mountains, Hotel Etico is Australia's first "social enterprise" hotel, providing vocational training and independent living skills for young adults with learning disabilities, helping them to transition to open employment and fulfill their dreams of independence.
At the heart of the program are the trainees, who are front and centre of the hotel operation. From check-in to breakfast service, they are the friendly public face of the hotel, keen for a chat with guests and happy to explain their involvement in the program.
"The traditional way of employing people with disabilities has been in sheltered workshops, back of the warehouse packing things," Project Etico Australia director Andrea Comastri says. "The way of knocking down barriers is to expose people to that reality. We all have challenges, some more than others – it's just a matter of supporting people. And we strongly believe that work is a way to dignity and a way to independence." Employees from Hotel Etico were recently awarded a Rotary Pride of Workmanship Award.
The Blue Mountains Rotary Clubs (Blackheath, Central Blue, Katoomba, and Upper Blue Sunrise) held its Pride of Workmanship Awards presentation dinner at the RSL Club in Katoomba. As you know, The Pride of Workmanship Awards are made to outstanding local employees, whom their business owners or managers believe have contributed substantially to their workplace.
The award venue room was gayly decorated and each chair was draped with a large bow and the tables were festooned with candles. One would have thought it was for a wedding reception and we thank the club staff for spending the time and money to make the evening so special for The Clubs. The room was essentially sold out with a record attendance of 110 guests, members and friend.
President Bill remarked after the award ceremony “I’m pleased that our Pride of Workmanship Awards program was so successful and I really enjoy seeing outstanding employees recognised for their efforts.”
The Awards this year were made to (in alphabetical order): Janelle Boersma, The Salvation Army; Michael Hargraves, Council Approval Group; Upeksha Kariyawasam, Theo Poulos Real Estate; Jacob McAndrew, Hotel Etico; Lauren Palmer, Cancer Wellness; Jason Pearson, Bygone Beauties; Ned Pearson-Bourke, John Chapman Real Estate; and Nicole Tziavaras, Leura GP.
A special thanks goes to Sunrise’s Vocational Director, Jenny, who for months has been able to juggle this project at the same time as The Cookbook. We are sure that husband, Mark, hasn’t seen her in weeks.
Jenny was very pleased with the flawless execution of the event and said post the ceremony, “We are delighted to publicly recognise great people and great workplaces. Happy, healthy people are more motivated and engaged, and tend to stay with an employer for longer.”
It should be noted that Jenny’s Team also included: Brian Turner, Central Blue Mountains; Liang Feng, Katoomba and Sherlie McMillan, Blackheath. In addition, Liz from Upper Blue, was also a significant contributor to the event’s success. Thank you to all those involved.
Our President Bill has just completed The Pushup Challenge, completing 3,139 pushups between 1-24 June. The 3,139 goal equates to the actual number of suicides in Australia in 2020.
Bill, in partnership with PDG Jennifer Scott from Central Blue Mountains Rotary, were out and about in our community, doing pushups and encouraging others to participate. In the process the team have raised over $4,200 which goes to Lifeline Australia, to support online support for those in critical need.
The first face to face District Assembly for 9685 in two years plus took place on Sunday May 1 at the Castle Hill RSL Club. More than 400 Rotarians filled the auditorium to over flowing. The District is huge stretching in the west from Blackheath to Manly in the east to North Lakes Toukley in the north. In all, the District encompasses nearly 12,000 square km.
Ms. Jennifer Jones, the first woman to be President of Rotary International opened The Assembly with the "Imagine" theme in a pre-recorded speech. She focused her remarks on Rotarians’ commitment to serving the community as well as the necessity to broaden our membership base and be inclusive as possible.
Mina Howard (who represents the Blackheath Club and is our District DG for 2022-2023) served as the moderator/MC. Mina shared with all of us the thematic logo of President Jennifer which is “Imagine.” The logo is a purple doughnut surrounded by seven smaller circles. Underneath is a lipstick smear of uneven green ink. The background is all white.
As Maya explained it: the doughnut and seven circles represent the meeting of people; purple represents the conquering of polio; the green, the greening of the world; the white background; peace.
The highlight of the speakers was the keynote address by Shane Fitzsimmons. Mr. Fitzsimmons became a household name and a very well known personality from his previous position of NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner. After his brilliant leadership shown during the bushfires of 2020, he was chosen to be Australian of the Year.
Recently, he left the Rural Fire Service and was appointed The Head of Resilience NSW. This is a new department in State Cabinet. Resilience NSW helps communities rebuild and recover after natural disasters like floods, droughts and bushfires. Resilience NSW leads disaster and emergency efforts from prevention to recovery.
The second part of the “upskilling” was scheduled on the following weekends in separate two hour blocks, with one block reserved for each discipline.
Roughly half of the sessions were via Zoom with the rest, face to face at St. Josephs, Norwest. The session that this editor attended on Sunday, May 22, was focused on Public Image. The session was hosted by Mina Howard who introduced Jade Catherall who, in turn brought in additional speakers who had expertise in individual areas of Rotary Image building. The key point Jade made was that Rotary members should be prepared to explain what Rotary is; what it does; and why it is an important asset to the local community at every opportunity.
Michele Ellery then spoke about the importance of social media, in particular, Facebook and Instagram. She was followed by Ian Stuart who then spoke about the “forgotten media”, Community Radio. Finally, Bob Aitken emphasized the importance of having a relationship with traditional media, which in our case, would be “The Blue Mountain Gazette.” Bob gave numerous examples of how our Club could nurture the traditional press so that, they, in turn, would support us.
It takes a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention money, especially money) to turn “a pig’s ear into a silk purse.”
One of Australia's primary natural tourist sites for countless decades has been The Three Sisters. Yet such an important tourist destination was often lost in the blandness of the gateway, Lurline Street. A group calling itself “Treeline Lurline” has organized itself with an objective is to transform Lurline Street into a tree filled boulevard. Treeline Lurline is apparently one of the many initiatives undertaken by the UMAA or the Upper Mountain Arborist Alliance (http://umaa.org.au/treeline-lurline-katoomba/).
At its simplest, Treeline Lurline is a community based initiative involving committed and passionate local residents, community groups, local businesses and professionals working together with Blue Mountains City Council for the re-beautification of Lurline street in Katoomba.
Their shared vision is for an avenue of trees with public seating, water stations and trees lining the 1.2km walk from the Katoomba CBD to Echo Point. Working with the Mayor and supported by Blue Mountain Council, UMAA is proposing a working budget of $25,000,000.
This clearly is a worthwhile project and worthy of the support of all the Mountains’ Rotary Clubs.
Our face to face breakfast meetings are at The Robyn Yates Centre for Cancer Wellness Support. We will still have some ZOOM meetings. Check Calendar for details.
June 2022 
