Venue: Castello's Cucina, Living Choice
Guest Speaker: Paul Taylor
Guests: Richard Peake, Rachel Randel and Robert Freak with 2 assistants
Attendance: 28 members 6 guests
Opening
Patsy Beckett nailed the invocation with a fair dinkum aussie welcome.......sharp and short!
President John opened the meeting and reported that the recent Bunnings BBQ yielded a profit of $794, while the Thrift Shop took in $1717 last week and nearly $7400 for the month. Next Sunday he will be attending a meeting of the Area 9 Governance Committee. This week the Thrift Shop lease renewal will be discussed with the landlady. Drafts of the revamped Club Constitution and ByLaws are being displayed on our website.......members urged to view and provide feedback.
Guest Speaker: Paul Taylor - Walking Sticks
President John provided a very abbreviated introduction of Paul which went something like this......Paul spent his working life in Renmark as a newspaper and publications proprietor. He retired to Pt Elliott 7 years ago and loves collecting walking sticks.
Paul thanked his mate Paul (as in Dukes of Hazzard) for the invitation. He collected his first walking stick belonging to a grandparent at the age of 8 and is still accumulating through scrounging in antique and thrift shops, mainly down south. His inspiration.......Maurice Chevalier with a reputed collection of 700 canes.
Wherever he travelled in Australia and overseas to many parts of the world, opportunity abounded. Most of these sticks have unique cultural characteristics with shafts made of hardwoods, softwoods, silver, steel, ivory etc and hidden gadget features like sword, dagger, gun, telescope, clock. Umbrellas have been incorporated. Some handles are very ornate with intricate carvings and inlaid gold, silver, semi-precious stones and ivory. Over the past 60 years of collecting he has accumulated 250 sticks and about 2/3rds are over 100 years old. And some of them have gruesome histories with their owners responsible for murder and mayhem. His two favourites are:
- a 17th century jade handled stick fashioned for the Maharajah of Jaisalmer (Rajasthan, India).
- the stick presented to Prime Minister Billy Hughes on a visit to Fiji in 1916.
John is holding his favourite club and Paul his two specials with Billy on the right.
We were treated to handling/mishandling 29 of his marvelous collection as they passed from table to table. It should be noted that the keenest interest from males who are old enough to know better (including the editor) was the unsheathing of the hidden sword and dagger.......and the imagination soared!
Paul was acclaimed for his thoroughly enjoyable presentation.
SPOTS
Rhonda Hoare reported that the Young Friends of Rotary fundraising film event - Barbie - was a huge success raising $4585 for Shelter Box. Thanks go to members who provided support (and survived the screening). The Regal Theatre was outstanding in the way that they helped with food, cleaning up and screening of the Shelter Box video.
David Middleton explained that he had found a copy of the History of the Thrift Shop while assiduously dusting and polishing there. The launch date was 23 July 1973..........a 50 year golden anniversary .......remarkable longevity.
Virginia Cossid urged members to attend the coffee chat on Friday.
Finale
Winner of the filthy lucre was Richard Peake; the Prez scored the chocolates which he passed onto Vivienne for the Thrift Shop......perhaps in atonement for the joke he was about to tell. There will be a Board meeting tonight, a Mitre 10 BBQ next Saturday, and Robert Freak will be inducted next week.
The meeting closed in a timely fashion with 5 minutes to spare
In July, I became the youngest president in the history of my Rotary club, and the first president of color.
