1980 Club accepted the invitation to organise and run Family Day as a Rotorua Centennial Project for the Rotorua District Council. Upwards of 30,000 people attended. We won the D993 Significant Project Award for the year.
1981 Charter member Trevor Culley and Brian Stewart started work on establishment of the Princess of Wales Health Camp in Tarawera Road. Large sums were raised by the club over the next few years for the camp project. 1981 Medicines were escorted to a mission station in Zambia by Hank Buissink. Hank came home with pieces of African art and the last wooden giraffe in Africa to auction for club funds. He returned home to the club many times over following years with the very last wooden giraffe left in Africa.
1982 Club organised through President Maurie McGill the formation of the Inner Wheel Club of Rotorua and helped establish the Probus Club of Rotorua. P.P. Peter Humphrey was the founding President of Probus. 1982 A new club banner to exchange with Rotary visitors was introduced featuring the now familiar Trout Rampant design. It also opened the way for Presidents to impress the visitors with tall tales about the size of the trout in lake Rotorua. 1982 Club started manning a Water Station at the Fletcher Marathon. We were soon joined each year by Rotorua North at the Oturoa Road station for a very wet annual social occasion. 1982 The club painted the historic St. Chads Church for the St. Chads Communication Centre in Devon Street and donated $2000 raised at the Golf Classic for further renovations.
1983 P.P. Chas Woolley spent six weeks in the village of Holopeka, Tonga, rebuilding things after a devastating hurricane. Prominent among the Rotary projects was installation of simple village water collection and storage systems. Several kits of plastic spouting, pipe ware, fittings and plastic water tanks were donated from N.Z. over the next few years with each one packed for the trip with clothing and other goodies.
1983 Citizenship Ceremonies for new Rotorua migrants were hosted by the club at the Racecourse to highlight and put into action international understanding. Further ceremonies were hosted at the club in subsequent years.
1984 Club Sergeant Alan McCaulay endeared himself to fellows with a witty piece of doggerel related to the programme at each meeting. The standard had been set in earlier years by President Graham Couldrey but Alan outdid the President by publishing his weekly rhymes in a booklet at the end of the year. Autographed copies sold very well.
1985 Charter President Tom Tierney had a Paul Harris Fellow Award conferred upon him by the visiting World President, Ed Cadman. 1985 The new club of Rotorua North was sponsored by Rotorua West with P.P. Brian Dickson becoming the new club’s Charter President. Membership of Rotary in Rotorua was very strong with numbers in Rotorua West alone well over 85 members. Seventeen club members joined Rotorua North with Brian. Chas Bryers, Graham Hall, Harvey Hornblow, Kerry Murphy, George Robertson, Bing Haase, Chris Collins, Peter Hodsell, Mac Judd, Mita Mohi, Bruce Rykers, Len Wakefield, Peter Fletcher, Lloyd Holt, George Mees, Rex Murray, Warren Thompson. 1985 The Chair Project - Old redundant sets of chairs were purchased at 50 cents per set from the Rotorua District Council then refurbished and on sold to raise $6000 to establish a fund that would return an income for the club. The effort was extensive and needed numerous working bees over many months to man the production line of stripping, dipping, de-rusting, re-painting and re-assembly of several hundred sets of chairs to fill the order books. A Chair Fund continues to be a part of the clubs finances.
1986 In the 21st year since founding, Rotorua West found itself embroiled in events and unwelcome attention centred on the South African exchange student, Nicole Oschger. It became necessary to withdraw her from Waiariki Community College when the club became targeted by protesters and activists from H.A.R.T. (Halt All Racist Tours), the Trades Council, some college staff, some students, and members of the Rotorua public. The club and President Mel Friend were labelled racist and the very heated public controversy raged on for months. 1986 Abandoned the Racecourse for club dinner meetings and returned to the Soundshell Restaurant, at the Lakefront, refurbished as Suaves Restaurant, to complete a 21 year cycle of meeting venues.
1987 P.P. Chase Wooley became District Governor 993. 1987 Suaves Restaurant at the Lakefront abandoned the clubs custom for the first meeting of the new year with a lockout and after a hastily arranged BBQ around the corner at Princess Gate Hotel the club immediately relocated there permanently.
1989 Membership of Rotary was opened worldwide to women however, the club was not yet prepared to embrace the change in Rotary legislation by having women members. 1989 Club developed the Pathways and Gardens for Whare Aroha Continuing Care Home. 1989 Malvina Major was the star attraction for a successful fund-raising concert organised by the club. Also featured on the programme was blind classical pianist Musumi Scherb, son of a club member Rudi Scherb. Family Day The club was invited by the Rotorua District Council to organise and run a family event for the community to celebrate the Centennial Year of Rotorua. The brief, to run a free admission, no alcohol, three ring circus type extravaganza. It was a major project for the club led by President Des Craig and organiser Maurie McGill and many organisations and businesses came on board to provide continuous entertainment in front of 30,000 people on a glorious summer day at the newly established Rotorua International Stadium complex. Everything from candy floss to clowns, Army and local bands, marching girls to sports and cultural displays, a mock military land/air battle with helicopter and howitzers. The club won the plaudits of the community and the District 993 Significant Project Award at Conference. Gardens for Whare Aroha - 1989 Proceeds from the Charity Classic that year were directed to financing the development of gardens and pathways in the grounds of the Rotorua Continuing Care Trust, formally the Queen Elizabeth Nurses home, and eventually to be known as Whare Aroha. It was a particularly successful project over several weekends very ably led by Ben Benfield, Ross Malcolm, and Peter Bently with huge contributions from club members and families. It required the constructing and paving of elevated pathways for less able patients to negotiate the gardens and grounds. Club Member Brian Gregory had become a wheel chair resident of the home but apart from anything else it appealed to the club at the time because it came along after a number of rather passive projects and allowed members to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in with wheel barrow and shovel for a change. It also qualified as a legitimate excuse to escape Saturday morning chores at home so there was a great turnout each day by members and families.
1990 The Silver Anniversary (25th) of the Club was celebrated in the Soundshell Auditorium 29 September 1990 with a stylish Dine and Dance, complete with swing orchestra. Along with the celebratory speeches. Paul Harris Fellow Awards were presented to John Keaney (Mayor of Rotorua), and club member Brian Gregory. Earlier in the day an informal get together proved the ideal reunion for the many out of town guests and older members to catch up on old times before the main evening event.
1991 Club set up a permanent Car Park on the corner of Amohia/Arawa streets corner through the generosity of the La Grouw family. Public parking by monthly subscription was a significant and ongoing fund raiser for the club until the section was sold in 2002.
1992 Sue Marsh became the first woman inducted into the club followed shortly by Royna Hook.
1992 Club entered a float in the Xmas Santa Parade along with the other clubs which promoted Rotary and Rotary projects in Rotorua such as Polio Plus, the Rotorua Legionnaires Academy, and the Rotorua Farm Trust.
1994First official NZ Two Day Walk event run by the club. The Walk achieved International status in 1996 and ran the event under International Marching League criteria in 1997.
1997 Club project to place Heart Defibrillators in the community with trained operators commenced. Club purchased the first unit and secured finance for many more. 1997 We sold Xmas Trees to raise funds. A stock of several hundred freshly cut pine trees were donated and a reasonable fund generated which would have been greater except that other organisations had also seen the same opportunity and created an over supply. It was an entertaining and somewhat challenging exercise to get a six foot Xmas tree into the buyers vehicle which usually already contained a couple of tired kids and a months groceries.
1998 Club provided funding to set up a pilot After School Homework Club for two terms at Sunset Primary School. It acknowledged that a number of pupils from the decile 1 school were seriously disadvantaged in their classroom learning due to their very poor home an social circumstances. Funding from RECT followed to keep the club going for two further years. 1998 Club became an Incorporated Society along with a general move among other clubs throughout NZ Clubs became legal entities which required the rotary rules and by-laws to be formulated into a new context with a legal constitution and by-laws subject to NZ law.
PROJECTS TO REMEMBER.
ROTORUA WEST NZ International Two Day Walk - 1994
The Two Day Walk was the result of a search in 1992 to find a project that would raise funds previously returned by the Charity Classic Golf Tournament. The first Two Day Walk was run from headquarters in the Dutch Clubrooms at Neil Hunt Park in March 1994 with less than 200 walkers each day. The network of spectacular tracks in the Redwoods and Whaka Forest offered something special for the first day of the weekend and established the future potential for the event.
In 1995 the club joined the International Marching League (IML) based in The Netherlands with a submission delivered in person by Evan Jordan and Deryck Shaw at the annual IML meeting in England. Roger McElroy then went to Japan, another member country, in 1996 to look at the organisational aspects.
The first IML accredited New Zealand event was run in 1997 with 500 participants. Membership of the IML has committed the club to attend the annual meetings overseas and involvement in promoting the leisure walk on the IML circuit in some 22 countries.
The Rotorua event has grown steadily and become an icon event for the City with huge support from many local organisations. The NZ Two Day Walk is now well known among walkers in NZ and overseas as something special. It also fulfils the ideals of Rotary by providing a unique vehicle to promote international understanding, healthy community involvement, and an appreciation of the environment while raising funds for charity by way of the entry fees. Numbers have steadily grown with the next one in 2003, the tenth event, expected to attract 1500 participants.
Heart Defibrillators in the Community
1997 (and continuing) Compact Automated Heart Defibrillator machines came on the market only a few months after the sudden passing of P.P. Evan Jordan in early 1997. This led the club to set up a project and purchase the first defibrillator unit. Then followed substantial funding from the Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust for several more and the dream of widespread placement of heart defibrillators in the community became a reality.
The club established a project group led by Kingsley Logan which included St. Johns, the Rotorua Heart support group, Rosemary Feary (cardiac nurse educator), David Laidlaw (anaesthetist), Patti Thompson (resuscitation trainer), the heart Foundation, Korowai Aroha and the Ngongotaha Lions who all provided valuable expertise, time, and input to the launch of the project. It was hoped that the number of unskilled operators would be able to be trained to provide defibrillation within the critical first five minute period, but it soon became apparent that identifying and training community people was best focused in already established areas.
Units have been placed with fire services at Rotorua, Okareka, and Rotoma, recognising that they often respond first and other services can sometimes be significantly delayed. Another is at the Ngati Pikiao health Cente to serve the Rotoiti area. Two further units have been donated by Rotarians, Skertens Real Estate purchased a unit for training at St. Johns and Gould Photographic purchased one for the City Focus where the staff have been trained in the use of a defibrillator as well as basic CPR. To date lives have already been saved by having theses devices in the community but they have also provided a unique opportunity to educate and raise the profile of CPR. Phase two of the project is now well advanced and will see even more units and trained operators in the community. | 
