Rotary District 9780 – Annual Conference in Mt Gambier, SA
Last weekend I was privileged to be a keynote speaker at Rotary’s District 9780 Annual Conference in Mt Gambier, SA. This conference hosted hundreds of Rotarians from 59 different clubs extending from Drysdale in central south Victoria, up to Swan Hill in the far north of Victoria and across to Millicent in south-east South Australia.
I felt very honoured to be invited and first to speak at this conference about my purpose and passion in life which is helping End Polio (a major Rotary Project for the past 30 years), supporting its survivors and protecting kids from those who hold the ridiculous notion that immunisation is a bad thing. I was delighted to talk to the many hundreds assembled there about my life with polio, polio today and the health of its survivors, the work Polio Australia does and why, the importance of vaccines and the damage that can come from those who deny the science.
I was very fortunate to do this alongside some very popular and outstanding speakers such as terrorism expert Prof Greg Barton, one of Australia’s leading scholars of modern Indonesia and countering violent extremism, and double amputee and 2005 London Bombing Survivor Gill Hicks, one of the most thought provoking, powerful and life-affirming speakers in Australia and the UK today.
The aim of this 3 day conference was to inform, inspire, involve, interact and entertain and from my perspective it certainly did all that.