Hard Business Meeting

Minutes to be attached.

Cleanup Australia Day!

An army of Rovers arrived at Walton Bridge on a bright Sunday morning at 7AM. The army consisted of Rovers, Steve and Jono, and Steve's friend, Nicole, who, though not a Rover, is worthy of note. Thank you Nicole.

This year, Cleanup Australia Day was organised by the Rotary Organisation. We were able to catch up with some of our Rotary friends who we had assisted in their Santa Sleigh endeavour in Ashgrove, in late 2009.

Our mission was to scour the bush surrounding the Gap Past Time Football Club for litter. After one and a half hours of bush bashing and determined trash-busting we had finished and headed back to base for some water and, thanks to Steve, a trip to Brumby's.

Other groups working on the project were tasked with cleaning up much of Payne Road and Walton Bridge. Overall it was a good effort and, although we returned back to base early, there was already a large pile of bags containing unwanted trash, ready to be disposed of. It was good to see!

It was a great opportunity to do our bit for the environment and, once again, work alongside our Rotary friends.

Den Clean up continues

Following the huge clean up of the Q Store, Sam and RA Chris loaded the second load of rubbish into the trailer and took it to the dump.

Rover Reunion Summary

This is a brief summary of the presentation I gave at the Crew Reunion last Friday;

Welcome to the 50th Anniversary History of the St Johns Wood Rover Crew. This CD is a prototype – an extract of the full Monty. The finished CD will probably run to about 650 meg; is point and click friendly, and you’ll find yourself in there without a great deal of difficulty. It is a CD, not a DVD.

Depending on your computer screen, appearances may differ slightly.

The Opening Screen is the Home Page and is straight forward. It sets out the Welcome and the 4 volume structure of the CD.

The Welcome section typically has an Introduction, Acknowledgements, Foreword and Contents. The Chief Commissioner, Maurie Law has written the Foreword, which arrived by email last Wednesday.

The Contents give more detail on what’s in each of the Volumes.

Volume 1 is the Twenty-Five Year Booklet; 1959 – 1984, with corrections to my earlier errors. It is reproduced as written, but paginated to this CD format. I have recreated the cover from the original art work done by Ian Webb and Russ Davie.

Each Volume has a side bar, listing the point and click index of “chapters” as I call them. This can be changed to a page index – or removed altogether.

Volume 2 is, “The Next 25 Years – 1984 to 2009”, and is in the same mould as Vol 1 – but a bit longer and with a few more photos.

Volume 3 continues the story, covering The St Johns Wood Fellowship, Crew Sponsorship, SOFA, and Annexes depicting Who’s Who of the Crew, a Crew Chronological Tree, an Annex of Lists for the trivia buffs, and of course a section dedicated to deceased members and associates.
Both SOFA Logs are reproduced in full in Vol 3 – which shows I hope that there is life after the Crew.

Volume 4 is “The Saints Pictorial”, a photo album covering the fifty year period – again using the “chapter” headings used in the History. [I’ve included photos of thirty two of the thirty four investiture sites that the Crew has used, captioning the name and year of each Rover’s investiture at that site].

There will be a Volume 5 containing multiple Slide Shows. The slide shows will be structured on the “chapters” used in the History. There will also be an additional file listing each photo in the slide show. It is hoped that this file will be able to be printed out, even though the rest of the History will be locked.


URGENT URGENT URGENT
I’m still putting these slide shows together, so if there is a particular photo or photos that you would like included, please email (or snail mail) it/them to me ASAP with details of when, where, what and who. (max 5 per email please). Cut off date is Friday April 9, 2010

The first booklet ran to some 50, ½ xA4 pages; 10000 words, and 8 B & W photos – 4 colour separation was rather expensive back then.

A printed version of this 50th Anniversary History will run to more than 300 pages; 72000 words and at last count 750 photos and images, excluding the slide shows.

The whole thing should be done and dusted and ready for launch by the end of July.

Rob Bruce

Rover annual reunion 2010

Thanks to our RA Chris Goninon's catering and financial efforts, this year's annual rover reunion was a great success, with multiple generations getting together for a beer, or nine, food and a great slideshow and presentation collated by our resident historian. The entry fee was $5 at the door that went into the costs of catering (and of course bash car/maintenance funds!). Iain spent the night on the door shaking older Rovers down for this cash.

The current Rover Crew (all 14 of us) would like to thank our older Rovers for turning up and providing us with some very interesting conversations. Additionally, the reunion resulted in the return of memorial photos of deceased Rovers, which now hang proudly once again on the wall.

After the reunion the plan was to sleep over at Emile's place and then the next day go out OP-shopping for the St George's Ball, but since it was postponed to the 9th of October this year (due to a double booking) we decided against the Op-shopping. Half the rover crew still packed Emile's shed, however.

Q-Store gets a clean.

On the 4th of March, approximately 10 Rovers congregated at the den ready to clean out the crew Q-Store. What a daunting job! Sam and 4 or 5 other Rovers were constantly in the Q-Store sorting everything into a "Bash Car", "Keep", and "Toss" pile outside.

Ex-Rover Owen Downes also came down to help on this night to sort out the Bash Car stuff from the other miscellaneous rubbish in the den (as he, primarily, was the Rover in charge of Bash Car maintenance).

Meanwhile, the remaining Rovers did the finishing touches on the main part of the Rover den and prepared for the Rover reunion the next day. Unfortunately, not all the debris from the Q-Store could be disposed of before the Reunion, as RA Goninon's car was having some troubles getting to the dump. The remaining Rubbish was concealed with a tarp in front of the garage door.

As a result of this evening, you can actually now walk through the Q-Store! Astonishing! We also finished cleaning about an hour earlier than expected (as we started at 6:30 instead of the normal 7:30, where we expected to finish at 10:30!), and Sam departed, exhausted, at 9:30, while others stayed to talk.

Sam

Business Meeting and Starting Cleaning!

The objective of this night was mainly to clean up the main area of the den and rearrange furniture in a way that would allow freer movement through the den (though rearrangement of the furniture had been already attempted by Rachel and Sam, the furniture needed to move in order for cleaning to occur).

Sam also had new documentation for a change in Squire Training and Office Positions that he wanted to propose to the crew. This was reviewed by the Crew and the required changes were made and emailed to the crew as a 2nd draft the following day, to be finalised on 11th March, when elections would be held.