Speaker Peter Meredith - Recent Trip to New Zealand

Peter had only returned from his latest 3 month trip to his holiday home in Mangawhai Heads on New Zealand's North Island. He said that one of the most disappointing aspects of the trip was discovering that a lot of friends they had made over the years had died.. The weather this time had been glorious but they did have a couple of days rain which kept his water tanks topped up. 
One encouraging aspect of his visit was that a new Rotary Club had been formed in Mangawhai with 19 members of which 10 were women and 9 men. The age group appeared to be 45 to 50. This allowed Peter to make several visits during his stay. Previously he had had to travel for over an hour to get to the nearest club.
The club meets once every two week at a local golf club where they have negotiated special rates. Attendance at the meal which is held around 5:30pm is not compulsory. The meal is then followed afterwards by the meeting proper which starts around 7pm. The catering at the club is by a Thai chef so the menu features mainly curries. The new club is raising funds by teaching young children to sail on the Mangawhai river who pay for the lessons. They also have a sand sculpture competition which raises money for club funds. Last year the area had a very high tide at the wrong time so the competition had to be cancelled.
One of the projects that the club are trying to finance is the building of 3 or 4 bus shelters for school children waiting to catch the school bus. Rain showers in the area can be very sudden and very heavy that the children can be caught out. As the area is so rural the only bus service is for school children. To date the club is struggling to obtain planning permission to build the shelters.
The club also sponsored a bowls night once per week which raises money from entry fee. The matches are played over 5 weeks and then the winner declared on 6th week.
Peter gave them details of how we run our golf competition but they said they probably would not  do it as they thought they didn't have the depth in members to run one.
For further details of their club please see https://www.facebook.com/mangawhai.rotary/