Dr Gus Kigotho was our guest speaker. Gus is Director of Emergency Services for Albury Hospital. He took time out of his very busy day to speak to our club. Gus was very complimentary about how Rotarians give their time for service to the community. He was born in Kenya a few years before independence and started primary school in 1964. He walked 10kms to and from school every day and was one of only a few students lucky enough to own shoes. After 7 years, he was accepted into an excellent high school, which was a great opportunity for him to get on in life. Early on, Gus was appointed school timekeeper and this helped him to develop superior time management skills. He was always a highly competitive person and sport was something he was naturally drawn to. It was here that he learnt the importance of being well prepared, although he also learnt that even the most well prepared person can be beaten by a better person and that there is no shame in this. Eventually, Gus was made Captain of the School Athletics team, leading to him recognising the importance of leadership. Practice, more practice and endurance are important elements of competition and if you want something, you have to search for it and be prepared to take risks

After 6^th form, he was accepted into Medical School. This was the start of the journey which ultimately led to him moving to Australia. After completing Medical School, he worked in a regional hospital for 2 years before starting his own general practice, which he continued in for 7 years. He decided to apply for a job in Australia, for which there were over 1,600 applicants. He got the job, although needed to do more training, which took a total of 9 years. His underlying mantra is never complain – never explain – just do. As part of his leadership journey, Gus realised that failure is a form of feedback, which needs to be embraced in order to experience self-improvement.

He is heavily involved in development and delivery of HACCP systems for the food industry and associated management of food companies.He does Internal and Business Focused Auditing, AQIS – Food safety and has been a RABQSA Principal Food Safety Auditor since 2005.He is also a director of HACCP Fiji, and National Food Institute.David will talk about his roll in developing Food safety systems in the Pacific region.

He spoke about food safety in the Pacific and his work to help make sure that we all stay safe and well. David works for HACCP Australia. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point. HACCP is a risk management methodology used by the food and related industries for the control of food safety hazards to acceptable risk levels. This standard was established in 1989 and in the South Pacific since 2004. More specifically, David has worked in Fiji since 2010 and Tonga/Papua New Guinea since 2014. One of his primary tasks is to deliver training around food safety in the region. He has discovered over the years that because of varying standards of living, it can be difficult to identify hazards in various countries. For example, some people are so used to never wearing shoes that their feet become incredibly tough. An outcome of this can be that when they walk across broken glass (for example) it doesn’t hurt them at all. And of course for us, this would be catastrophic! Things that HACCP look at are worker safety, food safety, quality assurance, environment and productivity. A major consideration for HACCP is cross contamination, which can lead to all sorts of problems including food poisoning. Did you know that there are over 5 million cases of food poisoning every year in Australia? 81% of these cases are blamed on retail food purchases. David told us that whilst at university, he did a research project into how many layers of toilet paper are necessary to ensure that there is no cross contamination after going the toilet – the answer was at least 27! HACCP standards also apply to storage and packaging. David spoke of an incident in a restaurant where drano was stored amongst condiments and a new employee was asked to fill salt containers with no supervision. She thought that the drano looked like salt and so filled the containers with it. Many patrons fell ill with severely burnt throats and other ailments. We can never be too careful.

Arran Macdougall was a rugby union front row Prop, and is used to using his broad shoulders to support some pretty big blokes in the heat of battle, in pain and tiring from physical exertion. But it is away from the football field that Arran is now propping up guys in need of strength and encouragement to get on with pressures of their daily lives. Arran arrived in Albury in 2014 to play rugby with the Steamers, and has now settled here. He is a UK qualified electrician, and also ran a market stall in London, but Arran’s passion is helping others. Arran recently founded The Albury Wodonga Men’s Group, which meets regularly to discuss Men’s issues, pressures, and create a supportive and positive community. He calls it a safe space for men to discuss what’s going on in their lives and start important conversations with blokes who may have walked that path.

After ten years as a speech pathologist and ten as a health research coordinator, Lizette Salmon liquidated her health career in 2007 to become a volunteer climate campaigner. She is the founding coordinator of climate advocacy group WATCH (Wodonga Albury Toward Climate Health) and three years ago became the founding coordinator of Albury-Wodonga’s popular Repair Café. Lizette received Environment Victoria’s Community Environmental Recognition Award in 2014 and was named Albury Zonta Club’s outstanding woman of the year in 2016. She is married with two teenage children. WATCH is a climate advocacy group that was formed in 2007 with the intention of engaging with community and people in positions of influence, urging them to take stronger action on climate change that’s consistent with the science.

We were very fortunate last week to have Peter Adams as our guest speaker. It was very pleasing that he commenced his talk by playing the piece illara and outlining his involvement with the local production of Out of Chaos Comes Beauty. Peter’s roots are in the country as he grew up in Sale and currently lives in Rutherglen. His first career opportunity – which he declined – was being offered a scholarship to teacher’s college. Instead, he commenced working as a radio announcer. After a few years doing this, Peter took on an off-air role as a producer, which led to him working with Bert Newton. Peter told us that Bert was an incredibly brave and gifted entertainer, who he went on to work with in TV and theatre. Peter then went on to work for Opera Australia, which brought him into contact with Dame Joan Sutherland. Peter eventually managed to get her on to the Mike Walsh Show. After his stint at OA, Peter worked extensively in the corporate sector as an Artistic Director. In the last few years, he has focussed on “An Evening With” type shows where he worked with people such as Julie Andrews, David Attenborough, Bear Grylls, Louis Theroux, Jane Fonda and many others. He described this as a challenging and enjoyable job that involves incredible amounts of research to get the shows on to the stage. Peter told us that he has been privileged to do 4 tours with David Attenborough, who he described as a rare creature who has great skills as a performer, producer and story teller. Earnings in main stage productions and other theatre presentations are forecast to reach $43.7B in the next year, making this type of entertainment a huge money spinner for Australia. He attributed the growth of this industry to creativity in the technical area through the establishment of new creative industries, which drive innovation in the sector. Peter pointed out that live entertainment will continue to be relevant because stories will always be told, and excellence will always find an audience. His catchcry is make ‘em laugh, make ‘em gasp, make ‘em cry.