John has moved to Strath Haven and has a room that looks out over Condon St.
Elma will be able to visit on a daily basis for the next few days while John gets accustomed to his new surroundings.
During COVID lock down I have been scanning lots of old Rotary photos. After scanning the photos I sent some members some old photos for old times sake including some to Elma of John and Elma on a Rotary trip to Samoa in 1995. Elma tells me she has put a couple of these photos in a frame and put in his new room.
Ray C has been in contact with Elma and reports that John has settled well into Strath Haven.
John is allowed only two visitors for 1 hour. ( Elma and their daughter) during this period of lockdown.
Elma sounded more relaxed now that John is settled.
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Behind the Badge – Stan Hendy
Like our President Ted, I was raised on a farm not at Brim but at Buckrabanyule in central Victoria. If you Google it, you will see that it is a dot on the map about 15 kms east of Charlton where I was born in 1952. My parents purchased a farm on the east side of Mount Buckrabanyule soon after dad returned from service in the second world war in the late 1940’s.
I went to primary school at Buckrabanyule State School No 2783 where student numbers hovered around the 10 – 12 during my time there. My secondary schooling was at the Charlton High School and wasn’t that a culture shock, going from a whole school population of about 12 kids and one teacher to around 150 kids and multiple teachers. I enjoyed my time at high school even though I wasn’t an A grade student I managed to get by. I wasn’t a strong sportsman, but I did enjoy tennis and badminton. One of my fellow students in forms 1 to 4 was Graeme Lynas.
Photo:
Grade 1 1959
Photo:
My first and last Aussie rules team that I made (That’s me asleep). Charlton High School Junior Team 1966. I think I spent most of the time on the bench. Footy wasn’t my sport. The young guy next to me was a handy player if I remember correctly.
Being the oldest of four boys I had the opportunity to be a farmer, but I could see that there wasn’t going to be room for all of us on the property that Dad had so on the 21st January 1969 I started as a technician in training with the then Postmaster General department (PMG) at the Wendouree training school in Ballarat. The course that I had taken on was basically a five year apprenticeship and after the first twelve months at Ballarat I was then posted to Nhill in the Wimmera.
Nhill was where I met Rhonda and we were married in 1973. Both of our daughters were born in Nhill. It was a great place to raise young kids especially with their Nanna just around the corner who was very supportive when the girls were little. Nhill was a great community to live in and I was involved in a number actives outside of work in the time I lived there. I became involved in the Victoria State Emergency Service (VICSES) as a volunteer in 1975. My involvement in VICSES grew over our time in Nhill both within the local unit and as a regional trainer across the western border areas of the state.
In the late 1980’s I was looking for a career change from what was then Telstra and after having spent twenty years with PMG/Telecom/Telstra I wanted to try something different. In 1989 and opportunity came available in Bendigo and Rhonda and I packed up the family and moved to Strathfieldsaye. I was successful in getting a payed role with VICSES as a Regional Officer which involved working with local government and providing training and support to the volunteer units within central Victoria. During my time with VICSES as a staff member I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on a number of working groups at a state level to develop new emergency management planning arrangements that have stood the test of time and have been beneficial to the way in which emergencies are dealt with in Victoria. I was also able to be involved in the response to some of Victoria’s largest emergency events over the last twenty or so years including the aftermath of the Black Saturday fires and numerous flood and storm events across the state.
On the 13/12/13 I officially retired from VICSES as a staff member but was not quite ready give away my involvement completely, so I became a volunteer for the second time. This time as a member of the NW Region Headquarters Unit in Bendigo.
My Rotary involvement commenced in 1992 when I was invited to join the Rotary Club of Bendigo Sandhurst by Andrew Pipkorn who I knew through work. My time in Rotary has been extremely rewarding for me personally. I am lucky to have been president in 2004-05 and held several other positions in the club over the years.
Since my retirement from the payed workforce and after Rhonda also retired, we have been able to involve ourselves more in one of the activities that we have enjoyed since about 1976 and that is caravan travel around Australia. I have been able to combine my Rotary involvement with our passion for caravan travel by becoming involved in the Recreational Vehicle Fellowship of Rotarians (RVFR). This has allowed us to meet a whole lot of other Rotarians from up and down the east of Australia who like travelling in caravans and motorhomes. I am currently chairman of the RVFR Southern Zone until November and vice-president of the RVFR National Committee. I take over as the National President in October 2021 for a two-year term. I am happy that I can have two of the activities that I enjoy come together and that Rhonda and I can enjoy them in this non-working stage of our life.
