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In the last edition I mentioned the guest speakers we've recently had and promised to provide more about them in future editions. The first of these is deep sea diver and author, Mike (Spike) McGettigan. Mike hails from a small country town in New Zealand but he and his wife, Christina and sons Ryan and Jay, now live in Perth.
Mike has always loved all things the sea has to offer and it has taken him around the world working as a commercial diver in the oil and gas industry. His book Walking on Ocean Floors (pictured at below) chronicles his diving through the cowboy days of the early 1980's around Asia and India, Australasia and Africa to the safety oriented twenty-first century in the North Sea and Gulf Of Mexico.
This often involved working for long periods at great depth for which it was necessary to carefully prepare and acclimatise in a diving bell comprising: four living chambers; two wet pots (the chambers between the living chambers which also include the showers and toilets), and the TUP (a chamber where the divers transfer under pressure (TUP)); and breathing until their lungs were saturated, a mix of oxygen and inert gas to eliminate the toxicity of oxygen under pressure. It's called Saturation diving and is a technique that allows divers working at great depths to reduce the total time spent undergoing decompression and minimises the risk of decompression sickness ("the bends"). Nevertheless, returning to the surface safely requires lengthy decompression so that the inert gases can be eliminated in the lungs. Saturation divers typically breathe a helium-oxygen mixture to prevent nitrogen narcosis, but at shallow depths saturation diving has been done on nitrox mixtures. It is a very specialized form of diving; of the 3,300 commercial divers employed in the United States in 2015, only 336 were saturation divers. Mick did a lot of this and had some very interesting sometimes downright alarming experiences, including close encounters with sharks and sea snakes and made even more challenging when working in conditions of very poor visibility.
When he was not in the water as a diver building or fixing oil fields, Mick never missed an opportunity to surf including many of the waves he dreamt about as a child.
To get a "deep sea" view of Mike's work Click here
In the last edition I also reported on some key decisions the Board had taken. Amongst these was the decision to proceed with planning for a monthly Artisan Market and also the Willetton Rotary Community Fair (WRCF). However following a wide ranging discussion with members at our meeting on 22 September 2021, we've decided to focus on the Artisan Market only. The venue will be Agincourt Park, between Burrendah Boulevard and Agincourt Road behind the Willetton Library and North of Southlands Shopping Centre. The first market will be held on Sunday 16 January 2022 from 9pm to 1pm. Thereafter, to avoid clashing with other similar events, we will be hold the market on the second Sunday of each succeeding month. The first two will have the full support of the City of Canning. It will be a challenge, but it's clear the members are up for it.
Thanks to Gordon Booth and Kevin Baruffi, two more toasts to Rotary Clubs around the world appear in the right hand column and we'll include more in the next edition.
The same goes our Club Joker's Jokes which continue to be delivered in style by Raffle Master Stuart Diggins Click here.
To view the CLUB MEETING DUTY ROSTER for our next regular Club meeting and beyond Click here |
