30th March 2017
Rotary Club of Balwyn
NEWSLETTER
Sunday Market Funds Awarded to
Grants
2016-2017
—$800,000
—$700,000
—$600,000
—$500,000
—$400,000
—$300,000
—$200,000
Meeting Report
4th April
At our club meeting on Tuesday April 4th, our guest speaker was
Associate Professor John Sherwood from Deakin Warrnambool. He is
also the current Warrnambool Citizen of the Year. John’s topic was
the Mahogany ship – a mythical ship-wreck of Victoria’s south-west
coast. The reported sightings of the wreckage suggested it was a
Portuguese Caravel which it could be proven to be true, would totally
re-write the current history of the discovery of Australia.
Unfortunately, all efforts to locate the wreckage have proved to be
fruitless – even modern day technology has not made the task any
easier. John has been closely involved with most of the searches in
the Warrnambool sand dunes and proved to be an excellent storyteller. The only problem with the story is that we are none the wiser
as to whether the Mahogany ship was a real vessel which was
wrecked in the vicinity of Warrnambool.
—$100,000
Rotary Leadership Institute
—$0
Graduation certificates were presented to three of our members who
had attended courses at the Institute – Peter O’Brien, Anne Frueh
and Sue King.
Rotarian of the Month – March
March is the month always associated with the District
conference and there is a significant amount of
planning already underway for the Warrnambool
Conference in 2018. Our conference organiser, Di
Gillies, has been busy covering activities at the 2017
event prior to all the planning required for the 2018
extravaganza. Well done Di.
District 9800 Conference – Shepparton
2017
The club was well represented in Shepparton with 33
attendees. It was a well-organised event which started with a
“welcome function” on the Thursday evening and concluded
with a “gala dinner” on the Saturday evening. In between
these two highlights, we had some excellent speakers
interspersed with high quality entertainment featuring
Deborah Cheetham, Michael Lapina and Shauntai Batzke.
There were also several choirs involved and one the highlights
was all of the choirs assembled as one for a grand finale – this
was an uplifting performance.
Desiree Beekharry 15th April
Carol Imision 18th April
Mari Deak 23rd April
Russelll Jones 26th April
Gill Merzvinskis 3rd May
As the saying goes that you save the best to last, it is
Balwyn’s opinion that this proved to be the case. The last
three activities of the conference were
1. The passing of the “baton”
Rotary Club of Melbourne Central
passed the D9800 Conference banner
over to Kevin Walsh and David Jones
of Balwyn. It is now in our hands up
until the next conference hand-over.
2. The Warrnambool 2018 video starring
Peter and Anne Frueh
This video had its world-wide release
at our last club meeting on the 28th
March
It has now proven to be a high-quality production /
promotion Click to view
Round 2 Winners
Hugh Trumble
Jim Hopper
Mary Harnan
Helen Wilkinson
3. The grand finale which saw all the choirs involved, unite as Weekly jackpot $20s
one and perform an
YTD Ladder
inspiring number
under the direction of
15pts Hugh Trumble
Michael Lapina.
Helen Wilkinson
I think that I can
confidently say that

all our attendees
really enjoyed the
experience,

learnt a lot about
what is required to host a conference

are all willing and able to help make Warrnambool 2018
the best ever
DIK Open Day – Saturday April 8th
Don’t forget that the Donations in Kind open day is being held
this Saturday 8th April from 10am to 3pm.
Presentation speech at 12:30
14pts Mary Harnan
10pts 4 lonely nameless
Magpie supports
NEXT WEEK
Thank you
Our guest speaker next week
is Michael Baden-Powell and
his topic is “Scouting today” –
so bring your woggles along.
Chairman for the Day will be
Ian Davidson,
an old scout
himself
to all Balwyn
members who
donated to our
exchange
student's rideattempt on the
Rotary
Ovarian Cancer Research program for the Ride
to Conference. Moritz actually rode most times
and had a wow of a time especially at the
conference. Good luck to him. And thanks to
Balwyn. We raised $800! That's more than half
of what was needed. I think North Balwyn put
in the other half.
David Jones
North Balwyn Bowling Club
60 Buchanan Ave Balwyn North
Friday 21 April 2017
Time 6pm-8pm
WE CARE
RCB member Sue King said there were two
matters – Judith Lahey has not been well. She
had spent two days in hospital and is not quite
well yet.
Drinks available at the Bar
Keith Carroll said he had had tests and was
home again.
SUMMARY
MARKET REPORT
This is dual purpose
event namely;-
Past RCB President Ken McQualter thanked
the many Rotarians who had supported the
special day at the market in aid of the
Nepalese project to rebuild school and houses
damaged in the most recent earthquake. He
said the OIC Julie Gray and Michael Curry
had taken more than $3500 at the gates and
the market was now tracking to achieve $1.3$1.4 million this year. Its popularity continued
and the fresh food market on Sunday was part
of a three month trial. Not a lot of stall holders
were inside the fresh food market but they
made some money and had a good time, he
said.
And the opening of the Fresh Food market
increased access to more toilets at the market.

Fellowship – fun
night

Fund Raiser for Club
The Bowling Club will
provide us with two
members who will
instruct us in the Art of
Bowls
Cost to the Club is $200
We will be having a BBQ Cost $30 per head
Please advise Stan Gawel
([email protected]) if you would
like to attend
Meeting Attendance
42 Rotarian,
1 visiting Rotarian
1 speaker
7 on leave.
Apology – no show 23.
The on-line booking engine for internet booking
of sites was nearing completion, he said.
The caravan at the market needed a new home
during the week because the present site was
to be part of the Camberwell Community
Centre. The Boroondara Council was also
seeking to remove the garbage pen in the car
park which would open up six more sites for
the Sunday Market as well change the
character of the lower part of
the market.
Speaker
When Deakin University expanded in Warrnambool in
1990, Dr. John Sherwood joined
the Warrnambool campus and
was made an associate professor the following year, Past
President Bill Goodwin said introducing this week’s speaker.
He was now attached to a variety of committees as part of his position as part of environmental research.
rying sticks to resemble rifles to deter aboriginal attacks on the walk back to Port Fairy.
John Mills took a party to recover and
bury the bodies of the drowned sailors and
visited the wreck. It was made from a hard
timber like mahogany which was not seen as
a ship building material. It was just known as
the Ancient Wreck and formed a landmark for
navigation for quick trips to find whales. But
the ship later became lost from view. The sand
had become unstable after cattle grazed on it
and, moving it threatened Port Fairy and
Warrnambool.
But it was the fabled Mahogany Ship and
its disappearance that drew his attention to
an area of the Victorian coast between Port
Fairy and Warrnambool. He was also the national president of Australian Maritime Science. (The District 9800 annual conference
will be held next year at Warrnambool).
Botanist Baron von Mueller – who laid out
the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne – recommended a type of Maron grass covering for the
dunes whose sides became steep as the dune
built up and moved slowly towards Port Fairy.
The ship was last seen in the 1880s when Mrs
Manifold came across it on a horse ride. She
reported the deck timbers were gone and the
Dr. Sherwood ighull full of sand and it was of unusual connored the RCB’s
struction – a carvel planking construction not
microphone and
strode up and down common in ships of the 1500s and 1600s
the RCB’s area near style.
a screen showing
A total of 40 reputable people had seen it
slides of research
and there were eyewitness accounts of three
into what he called locations for it.
“a ripping yarn like
Dr. Sherwood then showed the dates of
the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, a mystery
early explorers –
“I learned about before coming to the city,”
The solving of the mahogany ship mystery
had the potential to reshape what was known
about the discovery of Australia, he said, adding that Chinese sailors may have circled Australia before later explorers who were generally credited with the discovery.
The village of Port Fairy in 1835 was a
sealing and whaling town and the Henty’s had
settled at Portland. The beginning of the European occupation of Victoria in January 1836
at Port Fairy and a ship wreck was seen high
on the sand dunes to the east when Captain
Mills was taking a boat to Warrnambool a bit
further east of the supposed wreck site along
the coast. Captain Mills’ brother John was the
harbor master at Port Fairy and his party was
looking for seals on the trip when the boat got
into trouble in the surf and the captain
drowned.
In a book called 1421 by Gavin Menzies,
the Chinese were credited with discovering
Australia. But there may have been a secret
discovery of Australia by the Portuguese 200
years earlier. In a maritime museum at Dieppe in France, map-makers had found a map
one metre by two metres in size called the
1536 Dauphine map on which Java and another land called Big Java were shown which
could be fitted to resemble Australia.
There were two survivors who were not
Disclosure of map information was pungood swimmers and, after stripping off, came
ishable
by death and maps were smuggled out
ashore between Port Fairy and Warrnambool.
There was a possibly fanciful tale of them car- in strips of paper, the wrong alignment of a
strips being responsible for
some errors on the map. Exploration by the Spanish of
the area produced circumstantial maps of the east
coast of Australia including
the supposed rounding of
Tasmania and back to the
Port Fairy and Warrnambool
area.
not of Australia but of Vietnam.
Finding the `mahogany ship’ had
involved many expeditions and
more recently technology which involved ground penetrating radar
and satellite imaging. In 1988, an
artillery regiment had run two unsuccessful expeditions to the area
to find the ship.
The size of the craft was thought to be
about that of a Portuguese
caravel – about 25 metres by
10 metres. The technology did
not rely on metal detection but
Suggestions that Captain Cook later had
object detection and it recovseen some of the Portuguese maps came from ered a rusting Vauxhall bonhis saying that beaching his ship for repairs, net and detected a buried
he found the “harbor was not good as exbarbed wire fence.
pected.” It certainly showed the he may not
In 1991, the State Governhave been the first to find the east coast of
ment offered a reward of
Australia.
$250,000 for finding the mahogany ship as
A Portuguese sailor called Mendoza had
been sent to find the “isle of gold” in the area.
In 1755, a tsunami destroyed the Portuguese
naval academy including its precious maps.
In 1593, the Dufkyn – “little dove” – used a
map which showed the Portuguese pre-dated
the Dutch to the area. Some academics such
as Richardson had argued that the maps were
part of a bid for more tourism to the area. The
international attraction of the media drew an
estimate of $60m worth of publicity was
gained.