No sooner was Anna Longlune safely on her way home to Belgium than we were welcoming our new exchange student, Johanna Lundblad, who arrived last Friday from Uppsala, Sweden. After spending the weekend in the Karri Valley with her host parents, Emma and Kane Kaka, she went "above and beyond" by attending our meeting with host Dad, Kane. Johanna who is seventeen already has a connection with us. Her mother did an exchange in Australia, and Johanna has visited before. This has not diminished her excitement about returning, finding out more about her adopted Club and state, attending school, making new friends and learning new words (the first of which was "servo" ED). We'll be hearing more about Johanna in a couple of weeks when she addresses the Club. 

We also welcomed prospective member, Ila Brewer, who came to the meeting with Club Director of Membership, Vic Camp, to look us over. New members are great for the Club as we have seen with Noel Galopin who joined us in April this year and so could be described  as "newish". He was certainly new enough to be our "guest" speaker and provide a very interesting, entertaining and informative thumb nail sketch about his life and times which we report on below. 

Our Club Director of Public Relations, David Honeychurch, also got a guernsey or more to the point, a surprise, sprung with great effect by Past District Governor (PDG) Pushpa Pushpalingam representing Immediate Past District Governor (IPDG) Robyn Yates, to present her Certificate of Appreciation for David's work as District Webmaster in 2018/19. The certificate came with a personalised, miniature bottle of red wine at right and it would appear David's reputation preceded him..

Our Director of Club Service, Greg Hamilton, and Lorraine are off to Canada in September so it easy to understand why he chose the Rotary Club of Vancouver for his international toast It's in the right hand column.

Club Director of Youth Service, Simon Cubitt, brought us up to date on our involvement in the National Youth Science forum (NYSF) for which we have one confirmed participant and one on the waitlist. Also applications are now open for the Rotary Youth Programme of Enrichment (RYPEN) camp in September 2019 and the Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) camp in January 2020. Simon hopes that a couple of Executive members from the Willetton Senior High School (WSHS) Interact Club will be able to attend the RYLA camp. He also reported that a previous awardee, Josephine Santosa, attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Extension Advanced Programme (RYLEAP) run by our sister District 9455 from Friday 6 July to Monday 9 July 2019. At some point Josephine will come to the Club to tell us all about it. For now it's enough to say that RYLEAP is an intensive program for people eighteen (18) to thirty (30) years of age who are serious about learning cutting edge leadership skills. With a maximum of fifteen (15) participants, a much deeper level of information can be taught.

In his role as a Trustee, Stuart Diggins brought us the news that the Pat Moylan Memorial Trust has made a grant of $500 to WSHS Year 12 student and State player for the WA Rugby Union U18s, Merci Tuiavi’i, to help her meet the cost of travelling to Sydney to compete with her team.         

Please don't forget that the WSHS Interact Club is holding a Quiz Night from 7pm to 10pm on Friday 9 August 2019 in the WSHS Performing Arts Centre to raise funds for Mercy Ships and Water For Africa. Simon Cubitt has volunteered to put a table together to show our support, just as they do for us. See the details below.

Our Sergeant-At-Arms. "Lethal" Leigh Thorp, has wasted no time in making his mark and for the next instalment of "Leigh's Laughs" Click here.