THE KENTHURST KLARION

CHARTERED 6TH NOVEMBER 1973

PRESIDENT 2011/12 Rob O’Neill

R.I. PRESIDENT 2011/12 Kalyan Banerjee

9680 DISTRICT GOVERNOR 2011/12 David Rands

THE ROTARY CLUB OF KENTHURST INC.

OFFICE BEARERS AND COMMITTEES 2011-2012 President – ROB O’NEILL

Board Members President-Elect – DAVID GADIEL Vice-President – TONY GOODE Directors: PETER BRAY, PAUL RAPP, VICTORIA POWERS, PHIL BISHOP & SUE O’NEILL

Secretary – GRAHAM TAYLOR Treasurer – GRAHAM WEBB Immediate Past President – SUE O’NEILL

Club Service Committee - Director –DAVID GADIEL; Sergeant at Arms –Victoria Powers; Program –Barry Stuart; Bulletin -Sue O’Neill; Almoner – Geoff Hamilton; Club Social Meetings –Col Chaloner; Bar Attendants –Bill van der Heyden, John Fom-iatti, Byron Trethowan; Attendance– Geoff Hamilton; Rotary Park– John Benyon/John Fomiatti;Twin Club Ambassador – Neville Smerdon; Fellowship and New Members – Victoria Powers, Sue O’Neill; Apologies – Victoria Powers; Historian – Gil Kommer; District Emergencies –Geoff Hamilton; Property Officers–Graham Webb, John Benyon; KFC Inc– Rob O’Neill, RI Foundation –Peter Bray; Risk Management & Legal –Rob O’Neill

Community Service Committee Director – PAUL RAPP

Responsible for: General Community Service, Fundraising and Community Awards

Members – Keith Baker, John Benyon, Barry Stuart, Col Chaloner, John Fomiatti,

Kay Leonard, Albert Pols, Byron Trethowan, Bill van der Heydon

Youth Service Committee Director – PHIL BISHOP

Responsible for: RYLA, Youth Exchange, Youth Awards, RYDA.

Members—Terry Birss, Tony Goode, Elise Lau, Keith McGill, Neville Smerdon

Vocational Service Committee Director - VICTORIA POWERS

Responsible for: Employer- Employee relations, Pride of Workmanship awards,

Occupational information; Members – John Curry, Harry Dutton, Geoff Hamilton,

Gil Kommer, David Marlow, Bob Thorne

International Service Committee Director – PETER BRAY

Responsible for: Rotary Foundation, 3H Program, Polio Plus, RAWCS, Twin Club

Members – Karo Haltmeier, John Loughlin, Louise Mary, Sue O’Neill

Public Relations and Club Leadership Director – SUE O’NEILL

Responsible for: The promotion of the Rotary Club and its activities to the local

community.

Food, Good Fellowship and the Opportunity

to give Service through Rotary, we give Thanks!

TONIGHT Monday 23rd April

Chairman: Graham Taylor Fellowship: Peter Bray

Questionarie Results

Thank you to all the members who have completed and re-turned their Questionaries. We’ve had a wonderful response with positive results. Tonight we will look at the results and welcome any discussion.

Last Meeting April 16th

Rob Eales

Pardon sought for Breaker Morant

A federal parliamentary committee is discuss-ing a petition that seeks a pardon from the Queen for Harry "Breaker" Morant. Breaker Morant and another man were executed by British Courts Martial in 1902 for murdering 12 Boer prisoners of war.

The former Navy lawyer who prepared the pe-tition, Commander James Unkles, says his execution is an unjust stain on Australia's history. Commander Unkles told the parliamentary committee the legal process was unfair, even by the standards of the time. He says an official pardon will make an enormous difference to the men's surviving relatives and to all Australians.

"There are a lot of relatives here today and it makes a lot of difference to them personally," he said. "They have carried this burden throughout their family histories for many decades and it's been handed from one generation to the next. "What is it to the nation? It's got everything to do with demonstrating to the public that due process and fairness are hallmarks of our democratic sys-tem." The House of Representatives Petitions Committee will decide on what action to take on the matter. The Attorney-General has already forwarded the petition to the British secretary of state for defence.

continued …………..

Continued from page 1….

Breaker Morant joined the army in 1899. He had a reputation as a horseman, drinker and womaniser and wrote poetry for the Bulletin under the name The Breaker. Breaker Morant was immortalised in the 1980s film bearing his name. In one of the film's best known lines, Morant describes the justice met-ed out during the Boer War. "We applied rule .303. We caught them and we shot them under rule .303," the character says, referring to the calibre of the standard issue army rifle of the time.

Historian Craig Wilcox, who has written extensively about Morant, says an at-tempt to have him pardoned is a futile exercise. He says it would represent an injustice for the people they killed. "We're talking about people who were not battlefield prisoners, they're generally civilians, in effect," he said. "For some reason that we still haven't unearthed, Morant and colleagues started ran-domly killing these people. "We really don't know why, but it's incontroverti-ble that that's what they did. And then they started killing others to stop the story getting out." There is no evi-dence to support any of the above as being factual and there is much con-troversy to the film to how much of it is true.

Our guest speaker Rob Eales gave us a brief insight into how he felt in relation to the Morant case.

Chairperson: Vicki Burakowski

Something to think about…….

We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.

The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

When in doubt, mumble.

A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Thank You to President Rob O’Neill, Graham Taylor, Vicki Bu-

rakowski, & David Gadiel for contributions to the Klarion!

Exciting News!!!!

Club web site Our web site now has its own domain address, which is: www.rotaryclubofkenthurst.org.au This address will direct prospective visitors to our site.

Also, the Rotary Down Under /Rotary News address, which has a capacity to divert potential visitors to a site that is not operational, now has a link automat-ically redirecting them to www.rotaryclubofkenthurst.org.au

The Club’s site is can be easily found by googling!

The more links pointing to our site, the more rapidly our site will become more readily searchable. If members with business web sites are willing to provide a link to our web page, this would accelerate the process.

New issues of the Klarion will now be accessible by clicking on the Menu Bar of the Club web site. A limited number of hard copies may continue to be dis-tributed at meetings. The web version of the Klarion may differ slightly from the hard copy edition (e.g. member birthdays and anniversaries will not be shown on line). Past editions of the Klarion will remain accessible in an on line archive. The archive will serve both as a record of what we’re doing and keep members who are away or who have been absent readily up to date.

In preparation for sponsorship to defray costs, the next stage of our web strat-egy will be to implement visitor tracking. This will facilitate an analysis of visitor frequency. Sponsorship will become more valuable to us, once we can demonstrate that we are attracting a reasonable amount of traffic.

Check out our website, it truly looks wonderful - and don’t forget to like it! 0

Remember we have a Facebook page. Our name is Kenthurst Rotary - you can be our friend. We would like some more friends!

3

ANZAC DAY SERVICE Wednesday 25

th April

Kenthurst Rotary Park commencing 9.30am We look forward to once again welcoming all local residents to the our Anzac Day Service in Kenthurst Rotary Park.

This event has received a resurgence of interest and participation in re-cent years and we are expecting another good crowd this year.

At the conclusion of the service a delicious morn-ing tea will once again be provided by the ladies of the Inner Wheel Club of Kenthurst.

Assistant Governor North-Western Zone

Congratulations to our President Rob O’Neill. Rob has taken on the role of Assistant Governor for the North-Western Zone. There are 12 zones in our District, each incorporating 5-6 clubs.

One change for the new year will be a combined club meeting for the incoming District Governor. This will be held on July 18th at the Dural Coun-try Club. Members from the 6 clubs in our zone are invited to attend.

We wish Rob all the best in this new role and hope he has an enjoyable and rewarding year.

Attendance

April 16th - 70%

Remember

Monday May 7th

for a special night

Wear a Hat be eligible for great prizes in our Hat Parade

District Assembly

Our District Assembly was held at Pymble Ladies College. It was a treat to visit this magnificent school and use the fabulous facilities.

We had the pleasure to hear from our incoming District Governor John Dodd. John was introduced to Rotary as a teenager through joining Ryde Rotaract Club. He went on to be Ro-taract District President in 1979. John joined Rotary in 1985 and has held most Board positions. John and wife Janelle have been very involved in Rotary Youth Exchange and have hosted 17 exchange students.

John has a degree in Economics and Law and has practised as a Barrister since 1984.

John will visit clubs on a zone basis which is different from the individual club DG visits in the past.

John hopes the Assistant Governors will take on several specific tasks includ-ing organising official visits, encouraging new Rotaract Clubs, ensuring statuto-ry requirements and zone meetings.

The District Confer-ence will be held in Shoalhaven 15th-17th March 2013.

Our Club had rea-sonable attendance at the assembly, Gil Kommer incoming Secretary, David Gadiel, President elect, Graham Tay-lor incoming Interna-tional Director and Sue O’Neill incom-ing Public Relations.

DG Elect John & Janelle Dodd

Pymble Ladies College

Container is back on the High Seas bound for Vanimo

We received fabulous news during the week from Elias Kapavore CEO of Vanimo General Hospital. Our container that has been perched in Lae for an extended period of time is now on a “consort” vessel bound for Vanimo.

Karo has booked her ticket and she will be in Vanimo to greet the container. Karo will have a few days prior to its May 2nd arrival to visit the schools and hospital and prepare people for the delivery of various goods.

It has always proven to be a nail biting experience sending containers to PNG, but our Vanimo one now seems to be heading to its desti-nation and we can look forward to some fabulous photos from Karo.

We wish Karo all the best for a successful mission. Right: farewelling the container on a wet January day

Next week…..

Wednesday April 25th - ANZAC Day

Monday April 30th -

Chairman: Tony Goode Fellowship: Phil Bishop Vote of Thanks Byron Trethowan

Future Events…..

Monday May 7th - International Hat Day - Special night

Chairman: Paul Rapp Fellowship: John Curry Vote of Thanks: Harry Dutton Sunday May 21st - Janapher - Headmistress from Katuuso School, Uganda Sunday May 27th - Red Shield Appeal Monday May 28th - Peter Pearce on Madagascar Sunday June 3rd - Hills Chamber Ensemble 2:30 Monday June 11th - No Meeting

Friday June 29th 6:30 for 7:00pm $50 per person includes canapés on arrival, a three-course

meal, tea/coffee and wine, beer, soft drinks. Mark this date on your calendar and invite partners, family and friends. We are planning a very special evening for our club changeover. We will have a “Mingle Magician” entertaining us during pre-dinner drinks and in the early part of the evening.

Be prepared to be amazed!!

Remember Friends and Partners are always welcome!! If you are an apology or bringing a guest contact Julia on 9676 2885 or email julia@staffsolutions.com.au (A non-apology will result in a charge equal to the cost of a meal)

Please Note - All members, if not attending need to lodge an apology.