Next week's meeting will be the last for this year and only a few days before Christmas. Lorri is organising a special breakfast with the DOME manager and will have the details at tomorrow's meeting. Bring a wrapped gift with the value of around $10 to play SPITEFUL SANTA.
Our first meeting for 2021 will be Tuesday 19th January.
The following weeks meeting on the 26th January (Australia Day) will be cancelled and members and partners are encouraged to support the Waylen Bay Sea Scout's Australia Day Breakfast.
This time last year we had the opportunity to hear our outbound exchange student Connor Ovens present the talk that he would be giving while on exchange with the Rotary Club of Willich in Germany.
Connor has recently returned from Germany and will be our is our guest speaker for tomorrow's meeting.
Our guest speaker for last week's meeting was PP Chris Dawson. Chris joined the club in 1996 and was President for the 2005-2006 Rotary year. We get to hear from our newer members when they join the club, however most of us have not heard about the interesting lives of our longer term members. Our programs coordinator Gordon Dunbar is addressing this and Chris was the first of our longer term members to share their story.
Chris's ambition was to be a pilot and during his National Service from 1966 to 1968 he learned to fly. He obtained his private pilot's license. He was a good football player, however he did tell the story that while playing for an army team he played on Geelong's Doug Wade and was convincingly beaten.
After National Service, while playing for a South Suburban football team he received a serious eye injury at training that ended his football and flying ambitions. He successfully applied for a job as a navigator for an aerial survey company guiding pilots for geophysical surveying. This was long before GPS and he had to relate the geophysical data to what was on the ground. The nickel and iron ore boom drove demand from mining companies and government for aerial surveys.
Chris later went into marine seismic work using US Navy satellite navigation positioning technology. This took him to many parts of globe with a special reference to a very challenging job doing a huge land seismic survey in Northern Thailand with not much infrastructure and all the equipment coming from a previous job in Pakistan.
Schooling considerations for Chris and Helen's two children brought them back to Perth in the mid 80's. Chris joined a previous company he worked for that had gone into developing specialised survey equipment located in Technology Park. He then went into his own business importing road barriers before joining Santa Maria College in 2000 as their facilities manager and is still there today.
A very short and hopefully accurate snapshot of Chris's talk, Like our other members who have shared their story, hugely interesting and amazing life experiences. Looking forward to hearing from our other longer term members.
The last Perth Makers Market for 2020 on the weekend was extremely well attended that kept everyone very busy, especially the people rostered on the lower carpark. Applecross Rotary members and friends, with the support of the Rotary E-club and Waylen Bay Sea Scouts, do a very professional job in managing the parking that complements these very popular markets. This is an important activity to raise funds that support our club 'to do good' in our community. Well done everyone!