Wow, what a great weekend at the district conference where 12 members of the Rotary Club of Berwick trekked to Bendigo for a weekend of fun, fellowship and inspiration.

In the pre-conference activities, several of us enjoyed an afternoon of High Tean and a tour at Fortuna Villa, an amazing historical property built during the head gold rush days.

The conference start started on Saturday morning with Chinese dragons and finished on Sunday with opera singers and had a fabulous array of guest speakers in between.

We were skilfully led through the program by our MC, magician and past DG Jonathan Usher.

We learned about an unsung Victorian hero Dr. John Cade who discovered the first practical treatment for a mental disorder through the use of lithium to treat bipolar disorder. We learned about apheresis and the use of stem cells to improve the success rate of children’s cancer treatment and how the DG partner project aims to bring an apheresis program to the Monash Children’s Hospital Cancer Centre. We heard about My Room and the great work this organisation does for Children’s Cancer. We heard about the Mercy Ships program and how this is bringing vital medical treatment that is taken for granted in western countries to places such as Sierra Leone and Madagascar. We heard about Interplast and how it is conducting life changing surgeries and training doctors in developing countries.  We heard about how Disaster Aid Australia through its Sky Hydrant projects is touching on all of Rotary’s seven areas of focus. We learned about a program that is training returned service veterans to work in rural communities to assist in harvesting of crops. We also learned about how a simple game of Table Tennis can help to abolish moderna slavery thou an event simple known as a Pong-A-Thon.  We heard about the Jared Dunscombe Foundation honouring Jared by raising funds and awareness for projects that directly benefit young people in need. This is but a selection of the speakers all of which had inspiring stories to tell. We were also fortunate to have RIPPR Bharat Pandya representing Rotary Internation President Stephanie Urchick. Bharat is an amazing speaker with an equally amazing CV of the Rotary positions he has held.

We were entertained by the Melbourne Soul and Gospel Choir who treated us to a varied mix of gospel and pop songs, and ended the conference with trio of Opera singers who added a little bit of theatre to their performance.