Each year a Raotary club elects a new committee and this is referred to as “Changeover”. For the past few years we have conducted our changeover in conjunction with South Brisbane Rotary Club as it is one way to stay in touch with our nearest neigbour and enjoy the fellowship of other rotarians.
Throughout the past year our club has been supported by the Australian National Hotel (the “Aussie Nash” to locals) so we decided to have our first face to face function in stage 3 of the Covid virus wind down. The hotel provided us with a separate area in its dining room where we conducted the traditional ceremony as modified for the unusual circumstances brought on by Covid 19. South Brisbane Club provided the master of ceremeonies Joe Thompson.
The traditional ceremony includes a toast to Rotary International and a response to the toast by the newly inducted District Governor. However the DG cannot be everywhere at the same time so the DG appoints a past DG to act as her representative. The virus restrictions have taught us how to ZOOM and that is what occurred on this occassion – DG Jitendra Prasad zoomed in and delivered a rousing toast and zoomed out again. Whilst it is astounding to be able to attend via an Ipad it is difficult to hold the Ipad such that everyone could hear and see the screen. Sticking the microphone against the speaker of the Ipad had mixed value.
The second part of the ceremony is the induction of the new President and their team. Well both South Brisbane and Woolloongabba are rotating the same members as President Secretary and Treasurer so we adopted a ceremony where each President inducted the other and the Presidents recited their pledge to lead the clubs for the next year. The previous week had seen our Club achieve a first in Rotary history with the charter of a new Rotaract club Rotartact Club of Woolloongabba Pride by the World President Mark and the World President elect Holger during the World’s first virtual International Conference. Although we knew the charter was on the boil it was through Craig’s stirring that the chareter became part of the International Conference. This stirring earned Craig the Order of the Rusty Spoon for the most stirring contribution 2019/2020.
After the formal bits we were served a delightful pub dinner and dessert and enjoyed catching up with old rotarian friends. Due to the continuing restrictions our gathering was limited to 20 and social distancing and hand sanitiasing was undertaken. No community transmissions recorded. So another year of service above self continues the Rotary legend.
