The Queenstown rotary club

November has been an eventful month in our Rotary calendar. One of the highlights for me was inducting Rebeca Barnes and Alistair Forde as new members to Rotary – congratulations Rebeca and Alistair.  This brings our total to three new Rotarians in the club since July. Please make sure they are welcomed into the club, and we will aim to involve them as much as possible in our community and service activities. I always think this is the part of Rotary that provides the greatest rewards.

 

As you know the Annual Duck Race was an outstanding success. It looks like we raised between $9,000-$10,000 for our two nominated charities – the Whakatipu Youth Trust and the Southern Sanctuary/Whakatipu Wildlife Trust. Our sincere thanks to Fiona and Tim for their tireless efforts as well as to those businesses and individuals who entered ducks and to everyone else who helped out on the day. One person who did not attend the event in spite of planning to be there will remain nameless.

 

Our Adopt-a-Plot wilding pine session up above the Skyline went very well on Saturday 22^nd November. Six of us took part and in total we removed around 2300 Douglas fir seedlings in 2 hours. The plot is looking good and should not need to do another weed until this time next year. Great work team.

Some of us took the opportunity to take part in a quiz night held at Arrowtown Lifestyle Village on 21 November. Rotary fielded 2 and half teams and one team came out the winner. A really fun night thanks to ALV and their team for putting it on.

 

Our meeting programme has provided some memorable events and speakers this month.   Unfortunately, our meeting on 28 October could not be held because we received just  24 hours’ notice that our regular place had been  overbooked by the Holiday Inn. Subsequently we have met with their management and hopefully they will not do this again without at least a weeks’ notice. On 4 November around 10 members came along to the Melbourne Cup night at the Pavilion. The big winner on the night was Tim who picked the right horse in the sweepstake. However, all of us went home winners as well having had a very enjoyable night out. On 11 November we had an illuminating presentation from Matthew Jones of Rubix who introduced us to the world of project management. Thanks to all who came along on 18 November for our special general meeting to consider approval of the updated District constitution. Although it appeared that a majority voted in favour, queries have been raised since about the eligibility of some of those voting. The Board will need to consider this at its next meeting. In our last meeting we were presented with a bold plan to create a new indoor sports centre in the district by Angela Spackman and Jono Brown. I think they were using us to test the community support for this idea which was clearly forthcoming from those Rotary members present.

 

We have now formed an organising committee for the Charity Art Auction. This comprises me as the project coordinator, Joan Kiernan, Fiona Van Waveren-Wilshire, Hamish Murray, Stuart MacLean, Sharon Leamy, Lee-Ann Murray and Julie Forde. We have an excellent venue at the Arrowtown Lifestyle Village, agreement in principle from Focus on Food as the caterer and a high profile guest speaker in Tony Quinn. The date is initially set as Tuesday 14 April 2026, but this will get a final confirmation in January.  So now it’s into the detail. As the plan develops, we are going to need lots of help from members to make this  event an outstanding success.

 

We are now looking to the final frantic run up to Christmas which the Club will now celebrate at Gantley’s on 9 December. Unfortunately, we could not meet the booking conditions set by the Casino but I’m sure the night will be just as enjoyable at the alternative venue.

President Richard