Team Surfers Sunrise, take a bow... a positive attitude may not solve all our problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort! To everyone who stepped up to the challenge of filling board positions next year thank you! We have a full house with all spots filled which is a testament to the positive commitment of our club.... not to mention the many district positions we have also filled!
Speaking of commitment, have you registered for the GC Ramble? Time is ticking and the 26th March is coming around quickly! Entries are open so grab a team, grab a costume (if you dare) and get involved. A huge thanks to Neil Thurlow for printing what can only be described as a mountain of pamphlets and posters for the GC Ramble... love ya work Neil!
This weeks guest speaker is Assistant Commissioner Brian Codd from the SE QLD Police Service... and it's gonna be a cracker, see you all there!
This week, our newest member Rosie will reveal all about herself in her "Behind the Badge" presentation. Well, as a trained psychologist and clinical hypnotist, watch out: instead it might be YOU who will reveal all..! ☺
Advance notice: Next week, read Rosie's answers to 33 Questions!
In the absence of the Editor, Secretary Mark Twyford kindly took notes, including Geoff's tips for the Melbourne Cup:
Geoff began by giving an overview of his career in the Horse Racing Industry, but essentially saying it has been a “Great Ride” through life. Elaborating on this he described in more detail on how he got started. "I had nothing to do with horses at all until I walked into the stables of famous trainer Tommy Woodcock in 1952/53" he said. "I had always had an aspiration as a young person to become a jockey and thought this would be the best way to start."
In those days, apprenticeships for jockeys lasted 7 years, so starting at 14, he did not finish until 21 years of age. A typical day back then was along the lines of this:
4:30am Start with Track work until 9:00am
9:30am Back to trackwork until 11:30am
Lunch until 2:30 pm then back to work with preparing stables and food until 5:00pm
Dinner Break until 7:00pm then over to the stables to brush and bed the horse finishing around 9:00 pm
This work ethic paid off as seen by the career wins and highlights that are listed on the VRC, Australian Racing Museum & Hall of Fame: He was five times champion apprentice and in 1959/60, the year he completed his indentures, he won the senior Melbourne jockeys’ premiership.
In a brief career, the length of which was seriously curtailed by weight problems, Lane was associated with many fine horses, riding more than 400 winners as an apprentice and capturing some 76 feature races. His big race wins included three Victoria Derbies, three VRC Oaks and three VRC St Legers, the AJC Oaks, the Caulfield Guineas, three Caulfield Stakes, two Toorak Handicaps, the Futurity Stakes, four Memsie Stakes and four St George Stakes, two Sandown Cups and a Williamstown Cup, four Alister Clark Stakes, two William Reid Stakes and the W.S. Cox Plate. Outstanding horses with which he was associated included Lord, which he rode to 17 wins, and Dhaulagiri, which he rode to 13 wins, headline by the 1961 W.S.Cox Plate, and to placings in the Melbourne, Caulfield, Sydney and Brisbane Cups.
Rising weight and constant dieting caused Lane to announce his retirement in 1964 at the age of 25. Three years later he made a successful comeback, but weight problems again forced his retirement in 1971. He then moved to Hong Kong where a higher weight scale allowed him to continue riding with much success during the next decade. On retirement, he took up an administrative position with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and later became a trainer.
After completing his apprenticeship, Geoff was asked to ride in Europe and was retained by a German trainer, where he rode in many races across Europe and the UK. He left Europe and headed across to America, where he was introduced to many of the Hollywood stars of the time, including Bing Crosby.
Geoff returned to Australia in 1961 to ride again, but also did a short stint with Channel 9 and owned a restaurant. He married in 1966 and made another comeback to racing, with success in the Oaks and Derbies, then officially retired at the age of 65 and moved to Barbados, where he found it too quiet, so moved to Macau before it was full of casinos.
Geoff then asked members if they had any questions about his experiences throughout his career. Members responded enthusiastically to this request, with many questions thrown at him, but perhaps the most important one was asked by Larry Murray, “What are your tips for the Melbourne Cup?” Geoff left this response until just prior to the closing of the meeting but based on his research and experience he would look closely at the following horses, highlighted in red, respectivelyin green if the track is Heavy:
No.
Horse
Trainer
Jockey
Barrier
Weight
1
BIG ORANGE
Michael Bell
Jamie Spencer
7
57kg
2
OUR IVANHOWE
Lee & Anthony Freedman
Dwayne Dunn
6
57kg
3
CURREN MIROTIC
Osamu Hirata
Tommy Berry
18
56.5kg
4
BONDI BEACH
Aidan O'Brien
Ryan Moore
5
56kg
5
EXOSPHERIC
Lee & Anthony Freedman
Damien Oliver
13
56kg
6
HARTNELL
John O'Shea
James McDonald
12
56kg
7
WHO SHOT THEBARMAN
Chris Waller
Hugh Bowman
20
56kg
8
WICKLOW BRAVE
William Mullins
Frankie Dettori
24
56kg
9
ALMOONQITH
David & B Hayes & T Dabernig
Michael Walker
19
54.5kg
10
GALLANTE
Robert Hickmott
Blake Shinn
2
54.5kg
11
GRAND MARSHAL
Chris Waller
Ben Melham
9
54.5kg
12
JAMEKA
Ciaron Maher
Nicholas Hall
3
54.5kg
13
HEARTBREAK CITY
Tony Martin
Joao Moreira
23
54kg
14
SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD
John P Thompson
Blake Spriggs
14
54kg
15
EXCESS KNOWLEDGE
Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott
Vlad Duric
21
53.5kg
16
BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE
Saeed Bin Suroor
Damian Lane
1
52.5kg
17
ALMANDIN
Robert Hickmott
Kerrin McEvoy
17
52kg
18
ASSIGN
Robert Hickmott
Katelyn Mallyon
22
52kg
19
GREY LION
Matt Cumani
Glen Boss
16
52kg
20
OCEANOGRAPHER
Charlie Appleby
Chad Schofield
11
52kg
21
SECRET NUMBER
Saeed Bin Suroor
Stephen Baster
10
52kg
22
PENTATHLON
John Wheeler
Mark Du Plessis
4
51.5kg
23
QEWY
Charlie Appleby
Craig Williams
15
51.5kg
24
ROSE OF VIRGINIA
Lee & Shannon Hope
Ben E Thompson (a)
8
51kg
Geoff Croad gave vote of thanks and wished everyone good luck with next Tuesdays punting.
Membership in Rotary simply is the gift that keeps on giving… Where else would you have the opportunity to meet so many extraordinary people? Past RI President Clem Renouf’s famous statement keeps coming to mind: “Rotary takes ordinary men and gives them extraordinary opportunities to do more with their lives than they ever dreamed possible.”
A couple of weeks ago, whilst in Sydney, I attended a meeting of the Brookvale Rotary Club. If you met their guest speaker, Liz McDougall on the street, you may simply consider her to be an “ordinary” person. Ordinary? Yeah Right. You’d change your view very quickly after hearing her speak for just a few minutes! Liz is extensively involved with Fiji “outside of the tourist areas” and has visited the Ra Maternity Hospital at Navunibutu, at the head of Viti Levu Bay for almost 20 years. It serves the remote north coast and interior of Fiji’s main island. You may recall that the first 10 wheelchairs our club produced went to Fiji, documented in a video broadcast by Ray Martin’s A Current Affair, in August 1997 (see report in the Download section on the right). The huge devastation caused by Cyclone Winston in February 2016 is off the scale: 46 people were killed, tens of thousands of homes destroyed, 500,000 people left homeless. Winston was the worst cyclone to ever hit the southern hemisphere, hitting the northern islands, as well as the northern parts of Viti Levu, the main island. But that is NOT where the tourists go, so the view from an outsider is that “everything looks quite normal”.
Well, in Clem Renouf’s words, Liz is one of those, "ordinary" people who achieve extraordinary results. Her full report, which also outlines some of her work with other Rotary Clubs, is in the download section on the right. Go on, well worth your time to read it!
Guest: Geoff Lane (guest speaker); Tony Winwood (Partner of Jo Gorman)
Directors Reports:
President Simon Brook reminded all of the upcoming Polio Fundraiser at the Runaway Bay Shopping Centre and asked members to fill empty time slots. He requested that if members and/or directors have agenda items for the upcoming Board meeting on the 8th November, to please email Secretary Mark Twyford prior to the meeting. The trial “Ramble” was completed on Sunday, with Team Darrell Brown taking out the top prize. The Bunnings BBQ was a great success and Simon thanked Tania Laird for organizing and coordinating the day. A reminder about the upcoming Melbourne Cup Luncheon: it's not too late to grab a table! Talk to Doug Lipp.
Fundraising Director Tania Laird thanked all who helped on the day, with special mention to a few names that were missed in the report last week. Will actively seek more dates from Bunnings to help further our fundraising efforts.
Wheelchair Chairman Daryl Sanderson reported that the Rotary Club of Ashmore have requested a wheelchair to support Syrian refugee, who has difficulty in walking after spinal surgery. Daryl and the team handed the chair to Ian Wilson to pass along.
Assistant Governor David Baguley sent the following report of the (now renamed) Rotary Ramble Trial on Sunday 23rd October:
Thank you to the over 40 Rotarians, family and friends who helped make our trial a success. Thank you also to Brian, Bill and Carol for preparing a great sausage sizzle when everyone returned from their 1-hour discovery tour of Broadbeach. The objective of the trial was twofold - to test the App technology on a number of phones at same time and to give members of the 3 clubs an idea of what was involved in the event. The technology worked well and we now have 40 people who know a little more about what a Ramble entails.
We learnt that:
Cryptic clues might be too difficult for visitors so the map has to be clearer.
We need to brief our checkpoint volunteers more thoroughly.
For 4-hour event we need 2 volunteers at each checkpoint to allow for coffee and other breaks and to avoid being confronted by naked males jumping into the river next to checkpoint! [??? the mind boggles... Ed.]
No team completed all 10 sites in 1 hour and most walked between 4 and 5 kms.
Everyone who competed had fun and would recommend to others.
Describe it as 'Rotary's Amazing Race' to improve understanding of event.
And not mentioned: Team Darrell Brown took out the top prize! Ed.
Andy Bell fined the following members and guests: PresidentSimon Brook - Standing fine for missing the Sergeant at the Change Over luncheon... Mitch Brown - Dress code at the BBQ - see picture on right dressed up as a 70's brother boy, compliments of Larry Murray. But methinks he shows his age. (E.g. much younger than our average member!) Ed.Fred Hamblen, tried to curry favours by donating the “Gourmet Sausages” to the team on duty... Ray Higgs - something about being the worst cook and burnt sausages... Tania Laird has a new hairstyle... Doug Lipp - fined twice, firstly for non payment of fines last week and secondly for “keeping” the dollar difference between cost of Melbourne cup function $49.00 from $50 payment... Angus Miller, after umpteen times, he still cannot cut onions without crying... Mark Twyford - for wearing his “Five Finger Vibrams” toe shoes [whoever said accountants were boring? Ed.] ... Tony Winwood for sending Jo out to work... Geoff Lane - for not being the shortest at the meeting, dispelling the myth about jockeys and their size. Fred Hamblen - again - for feeding the “miscreants” at the BBQ, who apparently had just shoplifted from the store. And Jo Gorman was trying to double her chances of winning the raffle by putting both parts of the ticket into the draw...
A horse walks into a bar. The barman, in a somewhat perturbed voice says "Hey".
The horse says "No, I'll have some oats."
Three race horses stood in their stalls. One said to others: “I ran 20 races and I won 15 of them!” he bragged. The next said with a snort, “Well, I ran 30 races and won 25 of them!” Then the third horse spoke up proudly, “Yeah, I ran 41 races and won 39 of them!” This seemed to settle the topic when the horses noticed a Greyhound outside their stalls. The Greyhound said, “I ran 100 races and I won 99 of them.” The horses looked at each other in amazement and one gasped, “Wow! A talking greyhound!”
Establishing a 0.03 percent Wall Street speculation fee, similar to what we had from 1914-1966, would dampen the dangerous level of speculation and gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy and reduce the deficit by more than $350 billion over 10 years. Bernie Sanders
This week, our newest member Rosie will reveal all about herself in her "Behind the Badge" presentation. Well, as a trained psychologist and clinical hypnotist, watch out: instead it might be YOU who will reveal all..! ☺.JPG)
In the absence of the Editor, Secretary Mark Twyford kindly took notes, including Geoff's tips for the Melbourne Cup:
A couple of weeks ago, whilst in Sydney, I attended a meeting of the Brookvale Rotary Club. If you met their guest speaker, Liz McDougall on the street, you may simply consider her to be an “ordinary” person. Ordinary? Yeah Right. You’d change your view very quickly after hearing her speak for just a few minutes! Liz is extensively involved with Fiji “outside of the tourist areas” and has visited the Ra Maternity Hospital at Navunibutu, at the head of Viti Levu Bay for almost 20 years. It serves the remote north coast and interior of Fiji’s main island. You may recall that the first 10 wheelchairs our club produced went to Fiji, documented in a video broadcast by Ray Martin’s A Current Affair, in August 1997 (see report in the Download section on the right). The huge devastation caused by Cyclone Winston in February 2016 is off the scale: 46 people were killed, tens of thousands of homes destroyed, 500,000 people left homeless. Winston was the worst cyclone to ever hit the southern hemisphere, hitting the northern islands, as well as the northern parts of Viti Levu, the main island. But that is NOT where the tourists go, so the view from an outsider is that “everything looks quite normal”.
.JPG)
Assistant Governor David Baguley sent the following report of the (now renamed) Rotary Ramble Trial on Sunday 23rd October:.jpg)
Andy Bell fined the following members and guests: President Simon Brook - Standing fine for missing the Sergeant at the Change Over luncheon... 
Mitch Brown - Dress code at the BBQ - 
Mark Twyford - for wearing his “Five Finger Vibrams” toe shoes
A horse walks into a bar. The barman, in a somewhat perturbed voice says "Hey". 