Bulletin 18 January 2026 (Jan 18, 2026)

Hello all.

The caravan of courage continues this week. I hope to see you all at the Blackburn Hotel on Wednesday for the next stop of our hopefully limited tour of venues as we decide on a more permanent home for our club. We're definitely not looking for a John Farnham situation.

For those who attended this past Wednesday, it was a fantastic if slightly chaotic first meeting back. We heard about bellringing and saw some confusing -- to my eyes -- musical notation and some of us, rhythmically deficient though we might have been, even got a chance to ring some hand bells. Many thanks to Sarah and her crew and to Jeff at Blackburn Bowls Club for his incredible hosting. If nothing else this is giving us a chance to see possible venues for trivia nights or other big events that we'll have in future.

It's also worth a major round of applause to the members who were in communication during our break and made sure the club got our equipment from Bucatini and had a place to meet last week and this one. Those members know who they are and I won't list them all here, but I do want to credit Gabby specifically for the significant and ongoing work she's done and continues to do on behalf of the club.

This week we have a club forum scheduled. We may not get a chance to cover every single topic proposed, but there will be a sheet at the start of the evening so we can organise things and ensure we give as many items an airing as possible.

Over the next few weeks, we've got some opportunities for volunteering at Blackburn Lake Sanctuary and the Burwood Brickworks Umbrella Dementia Cafe as well as a playground that needs to be removed. Graeme's use of the volunteer module of ClubRunner to fill the roster for the next Bunnings sausage sizzle was very effective and proves the value of this tool. Please reach out for help in incorporating it in your next callout for assistance for working bees or similar.

See you Wednesday,

Mike Finke