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President's Message 31 January 2026
Kelly Binyon
President’s Message
Hello,
I hope everyone had an opportunity to rest and recover from the Book Fair and enjoy, celebrate and reflect on Australia Day, no matter where you stand on the subject.
Due to the Public Holiday our meeting was held online on Wednesday night. This was a Half Year Club Assembly to check in and check up on how the club and members are travelling.
Please see the attached minutes for details of what was discussed.
Overall, our club is doing very well in terms of our fundraising, meeting structure and general vibe. As always, we would like to a) raise more funds and b) recruit more members!
The best way to do either is to talk to people about Rotary, tell them what we do, that we’re a likeable lot and encourage them to bring a passion/project to our attention.
Amanda Hough shared an interesting article on ‘mattering’ which you might find interesting. Rotary can be a lot of things to different people, and there is so much more to this organisation than you might realise. So don’t be afraid to invite friends, neighbours, someone you meet in the supermarket line etc along to a meeting or event.
I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday night at Kithbrooke Park Lakehouse for the Motor Show Briefing. Please park in the gravel carpark or main clubhouse carpark and walk over (request from Manager).
Did anyone leave a white Sistema water bottle behind at the Book Fair (see Neil Henderson) - pic below.
Book Fair Report – 2026 To all the Rotary members and our many volunteers: Well it’s been run and done again for 2026. What a fantastic Fair it was. Prior to opening day, the Rotary Board made an early decision to aim to raise $10,000 to be earmarked for Bush Fire Relief. Well we made this easily and these funds will be directed to that area of need. Overall we have raised just over $15000 this year. Exact figure will not be known until the Treasurer has taken up running expenses – but these are quite minimal. Other than cable ties, Bluetac and a few Officeworks signs, our largest budget item is an allowance of $200 for staff catering. It is a very lean operation. A couple of years ago some volunteers mentioned that they thought we should be making more money than $6500 based on the amount of work involved. This was taken on board. We increased our pricing from $1 to $2 and have endeavoured to upgrade the quality of our stock. The donations we received this year were all excellent including many new children’s books. So $6500 moved along to $10500 last year and we have improved by nearly another 50% this year. The project is now VERY worthwhile. A number of Community organisations around Torquay will again benefit from Book Fair proceeds – and that’s after we have donated the $10000 for Bush Fire Relief. A special thank you to Margaret Dunn from St Margaret’s Primary School who contacted us and volunteered to put together the Children’s Room display. This was excellent. There was activity and reading going on nearly all the time. Story Dogs were there on Friday morning too. We are positive that our children’s books sales were well up on previous years. Thank you Margaret. Publicity was excellent this year which I’m sure has also helped raise awareness. The Surf Coast Times give us a great lead in story each year and this year did a review article as well. Great support from this newspaper. And Haydn’s Real Estate once again published a full page advertisement for us. We also had a specific “countdown” post on Social Media which was picked up by the savvy people in town. The Surfcoast Secondary College must also be thanked for their permission to use their premises over January. It is a great venue for our Fair, especially with the expanded area for the childrens’ section. Leftover stock has been returned to storage in our container for next year. Yes we plan to continue on and present Torquay with another Annual Book Fair in 2027. Thank you all for your tremendous help. Regards Neil Henderson, Linda Neale and Mike Reed – the Book Fair Committee
Apologies: Leo Spinori, Bruce Smith, Chris Moxey, and John Oswald
L Shedden report:
L.Shedden reported on the Regionalisation Project. RI has extended the pilot program for 2 more years until 30/06/2028. This coincides with the finish of Judy Beasley’s year as DG.
Due to falling Rotary membership Australia is to be re-Districted. New boundaries will be realigned with jurisdictional boundaries (State borders). These will take effect from 1/7/2028.
Also for the same reason there will be a world rezoning effecting Oceania Zone. More countries will be added to our Global Zone. Not sure of long term effect yet. At a Club level there will be no changes in the short term.
Lesley has taken on 2 new international roles: District Representative on the Council of Legislation. (This is the council that changes the rules of Rotary as deemed necessary, every 3 years). And Assistant Company Secretary for the Regional Council.
During the month of February, would you like to check out your cupboards and rag bags, and see if you have rags or old clothes that are not good enough to send to the Op Shop?
We will do a collection this month of the clean rags/clothes that you no longer require/use.
These rags can be used for multiple purposes eg. Insulation; rags in garages and other purposes. Let us keep these rags out of landfill and put them to goo use.
We will take them into Geelong at the end of February and have them sent to the appropriate factory
For some time now Bruce Turner, Mike Reed and I have been the informal “House Committee” that has prepared the meeting room prior to each Rotary meeting. I intend to recruit a few others to help with the set up and management of the Lakehouse Room at Kithbrooke for future meetings. There meeds to be more members trained in the setting up of the elctronics - the computer, speaker/microphone and the camera for on line broadcasting.
In case you missed the news in December, our arrangements at Kithbrooke Country Club have changed going forward. They have introduced a room charge and increased bar pricing for use of their main Clubhouse. However they have offered the Lakehouse for 2026 as our meeting space. The Lakehouse wasthe original Kithbrooke Clubrooms prior to construction of the main building.
There will be no charge for the use of this room. It has a small commercial kitchen, large TV monitor, toilets and a storage area for our Rotary gear (most important). Emma our caterer has confirmed she can handle around 30 people for meetings without a problem. It will be BYO drinks going forward.
