Last Monday, 22nd February, I inducted two new members, Abysinia(Aby) and Lucy Sibanda into our club. We also welcomed a transferring member, Michael Archer. It was my pleasure to perform the ceremony of induction and welcome, however, it is now up to every member to make themselves known to Michael, Aby and Lucy and show them what Ngāmotu Rotary is all about.
As you will have seen from my message to everyone last week we are having a working bee at the Rotary Flats in Lemon Street. For those who have never been there this is an ideal opportunity to acquaint yourself with the flats. Saturday 27th February, 8.30am. If you can bring along gardening tools that would be helpful. This will mainly be a garden clean-up. Des and Murray have offered to do the cleaning of the spouting this Thursday. If you can help please message me by email or text (
sallymorch@gmail.com or 0274738554). We need to know numbers coming as Barbara Garrett and I are making morning tea.
Also a big call out to members to help at the Relay4Life on 27th March in Inglewood at TET Stadium. Please email or text me(as above) if you can help out. So far we have 6 members covering from 10am to 10.30pm. Now you know that is not possible even with breaks. Please come and help. In previous years we have helped on the Ice-Cream Truck but this year we are handing out beads as the participants come around the track. If you can let me know as soon as possible how long you can help. 2 hour slots are what I am planning, with 2 people on at a time.
The club needs to have a discussion about the future running of the Charitable Trust for the Flats. We are having a speaker on the night of 22nd March but we will have very few other formalities and when the speaker has gone we will meet as a club to discuss some issues that have come up. It may need to go to about 8pm that night.
Yours in Rotary
President Sally
Induction of New Members by President Sally
Abysinia and Lucy Sibanda
Michael Archer
A big welcome to our new members Lucy and Abysinia and Michael Archer a transferee from another club.
Guest Speaker: Paul Anderson
Introduced by Jan Dempsey
Paul is the Waitara Bin Inn owner
His very interesting talk however was about his experience working in Antartica in the 1990's at Scott Base which is New Zealand only base in Antartica.
He was a warrant officer in the NZ Defence Department at the time. He had to attend a 2 week selection course at The Hobsinville Airbase designed to select the right mix of people after training, sports, PT and social activity ensuring the selected people would gel with each other.
He was posted there first for 5 months and then had a second trip for 8 weeks. Even now if asked to go he wouldn't hesitate it was such a rewarding experience.
He described his role which was helping to unload supplies of equipment sent down on a varied range of aircraft C130 Hercules (NZ) Starlifters, C5 Galaxies(USA)). The runway is on a Frozen Ice Shelf on Ross Island. Ice is 6 feet thick.The runway is 5 miles from McMurdo Base. Essentially a 24 hour operation at the peak of the summer season 2 x 12 hour shifts. A ship comes down in January and a wharf is created from the ice shelf as a solid floating block.
There are 12-1300 people there during the summer and 250 winter over. At the south pole 50 scientists in winter and 200 in summer.
Temperatures at McMurdo range from -10 to 18 degrees C and at The south Pole -65 to -75 Degrees C.
Interestingly Paul mentioned that an Ice road has been constructed from McMurdo to the South Pole 1300Km.
Takes 40-45 days for a bulldozer to negotiate.
He described the scenery from Scott Base as quite breathtaking particularly Mt Erebus which is only 20 miles away and the worlds most southern active volcano.
Wildlife particularly Killer Whales, Seals and Penguins are amazing.
Clothing has to be adequate to cope with the high wind shield factor and extreme cold conditions. Mist can come in quickly, it doesn't rain but there are ice crystals and mirages that look like waterfalls.
Early days toilets were long drops in the ice often leading to funny situations where seals blew icicles up the toilets with incumbents getting a real fright.
All rubbish is now taken away from Antartica for disposal elsewhere to maintain pristine conditions. A nuclear reactor was an initial source of power but has been closed down and removed. Wind, solar and diesel generators provide electricity requirements now.
Stephen Bovett thanked Paul, commenting that he would go if he had the opportunity.
