On the eve of ANZAC Day, we are saddened that for the first time in almost 30 years, we are unable to conduct this remembrance service at the Templestowe Memorial Park. The Schools ANZAC Service has been run by the Rotary Club of Templestowe since 1990. About 800 children from a range of local Primary and Secondary schools normally participate in the event this year where wreaths are placed on the memorial.

We're now in full swing with our regular meetings, with 23 participants last Wednesday. As usual, we started off with a toast to Rotary International and the People of Australia, and almost everyone came prepared with their favourite beverage!

Before writing this April report, I was having a look at what was written in the March report and was amazed how much has changed in just one month due to the Corona virus.  All the events which we were looking forward to last month have all been cancelled and the club meetings have also been suspended.  Our 43rd Birthday celebrations were cancelled, as too was the District Conference, our Bunnings Sausage Sizzles + Shine on Awards.  Business Excellence Awards was cancelled.  Our Primary School Speech competitions have also been cancelled.  We will though, continue with Pride of Workmanship Awards, but in a modified form.  No one knows how long this situation is going to last, but once it is over, we intend to double up on our celebrations. 

We celebrated our 43rd birthday by gifting ourselves a new website! We've taken a slightly different approach to the traditional Rotary club website - less focus on our activities, and more on potential new members and volunteers, and their reasons for considering getting involved with Rotary.

We conducted our first trial video meeting last week - 15 people turned up, some with wine glasses and bottles of scotch! It was very good to see everyone again, and to catch up on how everyone is faring through this crisis.  The video meeting went fairly smoothly, and it's given us the confidence to roll it out to the whole club this week.