Community
11 July, 2025
High honour bestowed
CAMPERDOWN Rotary Club presented a special award to a community stalwart this week.
As part of the Rotary Club’s annual changeover dinner, on Monday night guest speaker Dr John Menzies OAM was presented with a Paul Harris Fellowship.
The award, which is named after Rotary’s International founder, is presented to individuals whose life demonstrates a shared purpose with the objectives of the Rotary Foundation.
While able share an in-depth perspective into his early years, Dr Menzies OAM said he was “speechless” when receiving the fellowship.
“This is very unexpected,” he said.
“It’s a lovely symmetry, because I know how much my father enjoyed this recognition from the Terang Rotary Club.
“Thank you very much.”
Club president Jan MacDonald gave a speech at the beginning of the evening, reflecting on the previous year’s theme of ‘Magic of Rotary’.
“There’s not much magic in many lives these days, with cost of living, rising prices and climate change,” she said.
“We all need to think of what we have gained and not what we have lost – what we have in our hand today may not be there tomorrow, but our community will be there.
“The 2025-2026 theme is ‘Unite for Good’ and I know that the community of Camperdown, along with the wider community of Corangamite can do exactly that – unite for good.”
Rotarians and friends and family of members enjoyed a two-course meal at the Hampden Hotel as they reflected on another busy year for the club.
The club has donated to drought relief, Corangamite Hockey Club, Camperdown Collee and Mercy Regional College – and has also made a large donation to the new aged care facility in Camperdown as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations.
The donation funded artwork and a window for the facility’s reflection room, which Rotary members were able to view through a special tour of the facility.
Camperdown Rotary Club also supported the Camperdown Show through selling showbags alongside the Corangamite Hockey Club, added a blue recycling bin in Timboon and organised fortnightly collections of donated bottle tops, blister packs, batteries and electronic aids, supported students in the Corangamite Shire to complete the Kokoda Trek, hosted barbecues at Lake Bullen Merri and the Botanic Gardens, and had a strong presence at Anzac Day, the Robert Burns Celtic Festival and Light Up Camperdown.
Mrs MacDonald said the new theme of ‘Unite for Good’ was a timely reminder about community connection and “a child is raised by a village”.
“In 2024 I began my toast to Rotary with the Declaration of Arbroath – ‘As long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting – but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself’,” she said.
“Never more has this statement been true – perhaps not the English, however.
“As we watch with wondering eyes the events in our country – let alone the world – how many of us have thought ‘this is Australia – what happened to the lucky country?’
“It is in unity that we can defend our responsibility and right to individual opinion and freedom of thought – without impunity, however bearing in mind that those around us are entitled to the same freedom of thought and opinion.”
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