Calpac Capers 26th February 2026 (Mar 02, 2026)

Calpac Capers

Calpac Capers 26th February 2026

David Johnston opened our Meeting

Greig Lee-Archer - Tonight, my Toast is a little different from our usual toast to an International Rotary Club.
I would suggest few of us (including me) would have known that today is “World NGO Day” and was born on the 27th February 2010 in London as the brainchild of Marcis Liors Skadmanis a Latvian – British philanthropist.
My toast is not only to Skadmanis but includes all “Non-Government Organisations” around the world. The universal concept of the World NGO Day is Celebrate, Commemorate and Collaborate the various and many NGOs around the world and the people behind them! I think Rotary well deserves to stand tall amongst all NGO’s.
It’s a day for NGOs around the globe to share knowledge and experiences with one another. Plus, the day acts as an ideal opportunity for education, enabling individuals worldwide to understand more clearly what NGOs are doing for society locally, nationally and internationally. Without the humanitarian efforts around the world many countries would be further devastated.

President David Wallis reinforced requirement to submit RFI insurance detail.

Ross Harrison gave us an update on the amazing progress with the School project in the Philipines.

AND Ross won Riki Tiki - themed around St.Valentine's Day!

Greg Lee-Archer gave brief progress report on the Trivia night - if you still haven't registered to come, there's still time - get in touch with Greg.

ROMAC TRIVIAS is Thursday 5th March - so no regular meeting at the Golf Club!

Bruce Radford outlined the history of the Jack Robertson Memorial Fund for newer members who don't know it's origin, Cynthia Morgan so generously donated to the fund in memory of her late husband, Rotarian John - more details below.

Geoff Leddy introduced our guest speaker, our own Membership Officer, Will Waterford who presented a brilliant PP slide show outlining the state of membership in Rotary, across Australia.

Over the past few weeks, Will Waterford has done an awesome job of putting together a survey to establish what direction our Club should take, to not only retain members but to also attract new members. It is a common problem throughout Volunteer organisations. How do we retain our current members, how do we attract new members, how do we attract "younger" members?

Will’s theme being we can do better and if we don’t change we are unlikely to recover from the declining membership.

Having possibly identified a couple of areas that we can improve on, we are considering professional target marketing to attract new, younger members from our community.

Congratulations Will!

Terka Zankova, our Rotary Exchange Student has also been busy, creating some artwork which is entered in a competition - well done, hope you win!

Then to a favourite activity - the Raffles - David Millar picked out his own ticket from the Raffle bucket!

Meeting finished a bit earlier than usual at 7.40 pm.

“Jack Robertson Memorial Fund” – Its History.
Jack Robertson was a Rotarian and member of the Ipswich Rotary Club for many years, commencing in the late 1960s. He was Principal of the Ipswich College of TAFE and, as such, served Rotary as its Youth Service Director on many occasions. In 1976, Jack purchased a holiday home at Currimundi and became a very regular visitor to Caloundra Pacific Club. He retired from the Education Department in 1985 and became a member of our club after moving permanently to Caloundra in 1988.
However, on August 31, 1989, Jack suffered a severe heart attack and died at a breakfast meeting of the Caloundra Pacific club at the Rolling Surf Motel, Kings Beach.
Not long after, Rotarians from the Ipswich Rotary Club contacted our club with a proposition to establish the “Jack Robertson Memorial Fund”, a fund in which the principal amount was to be invested and the interest used to support youth projects in our club. Our club then raised about $3000 and this was
matched by the “anonymous” donors from Ipswich. Thus the fund came into existence.
Originally, when interest rates were higher, the monies earned were given to the Principal of the Caloundra High School as a “discretionary fund” to assist students in need from families in low socio-economic circumstances. With changing Youth Directors, this evolved into many other forms of help but still
remained the same in essence - as a fund to be invested, interested earned and then spent on youth projects. It was never set up to be a one-off spending
opportunity by any future Board.
With the passing of years and the reduction in available interest rates, several Boards also saw fit to “top up” this account if there was any money left over from the Rotary year. Thus the fund now has approximately double its original amount. Even at the present lowly return of 5%, $600 is raised annually without effort.
Thus, I hope this explains, particularly, to our newer members, a little of the fund’s history, original intent and stated objectives.
Gary Robertson (Son of Jack.)