Our Club supported the charity Streetside Medics in the past year, chiefly via the funds raised by the Golf Day ($8000). Kate and Annette were our guests to explain what the charity does and where the money goes. Kate is the Operations Manager and Annette is a volunteer nurse. Kate is one of the two paid positions in the organization, everyone else is a volunteer.

In 2020 the charity was started in Sydney by a doctor, Daniel Nour, who discovered that the bulk of homeless people don’t get any health care as they often do not have a Medicare card, a permanent residence or can’t afford it. He bought a van and kitted it out as a mobile health clinic. He then started cruising the streets and offering health care to all the homeless he found. He also recruited volunteers to staff the van. It has now grown to have 306 vans and a number of permanent clinics mainly in NSW. They have hundreds of volunteers every night, mainly nurses, doctors, psychologists, physios, admin and caring public, manning the clinics. Over time, have found that they need 5 to 6 interactions with a homeless person before they will trust the medical people and have a consultation. There are 6 volunteers per shift and 30 people make up one team. They work with many other organisations who deal with the homeless in order to locate their clients, such as Anglicare, The Salvos and Community support centres. In 2024 it started in Melbourne and they now have 4 clinics and 2 vans in Victoria. There’s one in Geelong, St Kilda, Bourke Street and Dandenong. They see roughly 10 patients per shift and much of the assistance is not necessarily medical but Life Skills, such as getting clothes, food, job interview preparation etc. What they are finding is that once the people start to get medical treatment they are then able to use other services/NGOs and support to help them reestablish themselves into society.

They are now hoping to move into Rosebud, which is the largest homeless population in Victoria. The money our Rotary club raises is put towards medical supplies and medications. Their biggest issues are getting enough medically trained volunteers and the supply of the medications because you need a Medicare card to access the funded drugs. Bureaucracy is the major hurdle to the Medicare card issue. Street Side Medics is an incredibly valuable organisation of vounteers that are working in a space that has been ignored for far to long. Special thanks go to David and the other Club members who recognised the need in this area.

                                                                                                                                 Photos of Kate presenting, Annette recieving her glass from Chair Suzie and David and President James presenting the "cheque" to the Street Side Medics

 

David is a long-standing member of the club and he last gave his autobiographyprobably  20 years ago. There have been many new members since so an update is in order.

 

He was born in 1941 in Bournemouth and moved to Scotland and then to Essex by the age of 14. He then went into a naval training college and trained in the Merchant Navy. When he was 19 he joined P&O with a cadetship as a 4^th mate, so got the short straw and ran the ship over the night shift. After 4 years, he finished with P&O on the Oriana where he met Grace and following a quick romance they married in 1963 and moved to Tasmania. They had 2 children. Unfortunately, his son was tragically killed in a car accident. David first worked as a salesman in the book industry. He then worked for his father-in-law in the earth moving business and moved to Victoria. This led to him joining the concreting industry where he started his own business. He then bought a timber yard in Dandenong and then had a change in vocation into the travel agency business. But that didn’t suit and in 1992 he went into Real Estate business that most of us know him well from (during all this, Grace worked in golfing admin, which explains the golf passion). David was strongly involved in the local community and the key mover in getting Mount Eliza out of the city of Frankston and into the shire of Mornington Peninsula, of which he is particularly proud and the community of Mt Eliza most grateful! In 2011 David sold his Real Estate business to the McEwings. A fascinating life that has many more stories, I am sure.

    Daviud with one of his fans Annette.

We were lucky to get the second chapter of Stuart’s time in Antarctica, living at the New Zealand's permanent base, Scott’s base.  When we last heard from Stuart he was a week away from the long winter night where the sun doesn’t shine between April 26^th and September 4^th. In that time the temperature stays around  -46 C. The only light comes from the aurora and there are no supplies delivered or visitors arriving. There are 12 others in the base to maintain the scientific experiments and facilities. They were all looking forward to the first flight arriving with fresh food since the start of April.

 

The main scientific work is all automatic such as the lightning monitoring around the world (there is no lightning in the Antarctic), the atmospheric monitoring station, the ice monitoring stations , the biosphere monitoring (animals and plants) and ocean monitoring devices. The main focus is on the climate change issues, for instance, if all the ice melts, the sea rise would be 50metres, He says this is highly unlikely because the Antarctic is so far south. He said that the models predict a sea level rise of 50 cm to 1m in the "short term" is highly likely, which is a disaster for many parts of the world for all life. The modelling is affected quite strongly by the changes in Antarctica and it appears this is happening quicker than expected.

Stuart said the main difficulty in living in the base is not the temperature or food or things to do. It is living with 12 others in total isolation for that period of time as the people all have different backgrounds, lives and expectations, however, they are all looking forward to the mid-winter feast. It was fascinating listening to Chapter 2 of Stuarts talk.

 

Tonight John was inducted into the club. John was born in Scotland but spent most of his childhood in Pakistan attending an international school. He only spent 2 years in Scotland. He moved to Australia where he was involved in the banking industry and then moved into business recruiting/HR. He has now retired and joined us in Rotary where he is warmly welcome.

                                          

John being inducted by President James with sponsor Linda and then John with Linda, James and cordinator of  Membership Maurie.

 

 

 

Yvonne is one of our newer members and quickly recognised that the Club was failing in our Social Media presence. She was quickly nabbed by president Jim Young to lift our  footprint in social media, and WOW what a presence Yvonne has made in this area. She then gave us a brief summary of what she does and how she does it. There are 4 platforms we can have a footprint in. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Facebook is the obvious one for us. Yvonne has structured our page on a day to day process. The important part of the  process is that each day something new is put on the page. For instance, Tuesday she posts the speaker report. Wednesday she will put up the 3 minute speaker or an announcement, Thursday a report on an event. Friday a member profile.  Weekends, what’s on or coming up. She feels a good post needs a photo, a storyline and an impact feature. It is important that we all become followers of the page and give good reviews in order to expand our exposure "Views". Most of us probably don’t realise that if you "follow" a page, the people who follow you also get to see the page. Yvonne is a great studier of statistics/data and can tell you that so far this year up to May we have had 1.1 million "views". The most viewed post was the set-up of the market in the rain. She said it is difficult to predict what will be the most popular posts but it is interesting that the induction of Sam and Chloe and the guest speaker, Emily Costello, ( young people) had high view spikes due to the number of followers they have. Yvonne finished by saying that Facebook works like word of mouth. We members really need to use the Facebook "Word of Mouth".  The members gave her a resounding round of applause and learnt a great deal on how efficient Yvonne works and the amount of work she puts into our Facebook presence. Well done Yvonne and thank you.

                                   

 Yvonne in full swing and getting her first glass(?) from Linda

 

 

 

Jenny recieving her glass from Chair Linda                                             The sister's in deep discussion during fellowship.