Sandgate Toastmasters celebrated its 50th anniversary!
It was an evening filled with reflections, memories and, of course, laughter.
Just look how a room can be transformed by guests and decorations. Gail H had organised the latter and many helping hands put them into the right place.
John T and Liz Wo manned the sign-in desk, welcomed each guest and handed out drink vouchers, dietary cards and name tags.
Soon, the entry hall was swarming with guests - all to catch up with each other.
Raffle Master Narelle was kept busy selling raffle tickets for seven raffle prizes.
Marlene had prepared a photo presentation reflecting on the many (!) different dress-up themes, change-over dinners, conferences and awards - we bet she had a hard time selecting the best photo from 50 years of those.
Caterer Con and his team were all well-prepared, ready to serve us with
yummy main and dessert
(as always, the photographer was too excited
about food, so the main went without photo)Catching up continues...
Catching up continues...
The bar was kept busy with drink orders.
Sergeant At Arms Helen gave us a 5 minutes warning, which enabled everyone to find a seat at the tables.
Sergeant At Arms Helen called the meeting to order, read the apologies for the evening and gave us the mission statement.
President Gail welcomed the guests and expressed her awe when she summed up the combined years of Toastmasters' experience in the room.
Toastmaster of the evening Jonathon led us through the evening with personal reflections on his IceBreaker and other speech evaluations.
Narelle gave us the invocation and mentioned all the contributors and contributions of the event.
Peter toasted to Toastmasters International and told of his hilarious encounter with his tax accountant. (As our treasurer, he surely knows how much money we are sending to headquarters)
Chris led the Round Robin which gave everybody the opportunity to speak on the proposed topic "The personal highlight of Toastmasters". It was hard to stick to those 20 seconds allocated per speaker.
Shaun recounted his journey through different home clubs (due to work movements) and toasted to "Sandgate Toastmasters and all the Toastmasters clubs in the area making us all stronger".
In his reflection speech, charter member John S did a brilliant job of combining history, highlights and personal achievements.
Area Director Suzanne told us of the many highlights of visiting and interacting with Sandgate Toastmasters.
The recollection segment was led by Marlene. When she mentioned "the incident" (on September 9, xxxx), John T gave us first a clean-up version of the event. Since this didn't cut it for Marlene and Jonathon, Marlene recounted her memories which included an open beer bottle being inserted where it didn't belong. Unfortunately, there exists no photo evidence of the "incident" since all members present were too dumb-founded to take photos of each other.
Christiane took the opportunity to tell us of her funniest Table Topic response a past member gave, before past member Peter V entertained us with a song.
Division Director Suresh retold his first encounter with Sandgate Toastmasters as then Area Director and the many visits thereafter. He was proud to award Sandgate Toastmasters with the 50 years award certificate.
President Gail presented charter member John S with a clock to show Sandgate Toastmaster's appreciation of his involvement over all the 50 years.
Following this, they both cut our celebratory cake.
District Director Denise spoke about the centenary celebration of Toastmasters International before presenting awards to John Scouller: a 50 year badge as well as a plaque.
Since there can't be a Toastmasters event without Table Topics, Table Topics Master Christiane called on:
- Liz Wo with "What was your best speech ever?"
Her humorous speech about her imaginary magazine "Lizzie" - and how some audience members inquired after the speech where they could buy the magazine.
- Liz We with "What is your least favourite segment of a Toastmasters meeting?"
Grammarian since she is from the UK. However, she also was adamant to remind us how important the segment was to improve our speaking skills.
Raffle Master Narelle and John T called on various dignities to draw the winning raffles. Ben, Blake, Sandra, Leonie, Colin, John T, Trevor and Merv could take a raffle prize home (yes, you are right, there are eight names - Toastmaster Jonathon decided to split a big prize in two).
Caterer Con had prepared take-home packs for the cake. Everybody could take home a piece of cake, a placemat and the memories of a fun-filled evening.
The dinner wouldn't have been such a success without the following:
Planning committee - Daniel Abey, Narelle H., Marlene Hatton, Chris Horne, Gail Horne, Christiane Pedler, Arun Tanwar, John Topping, Gokul Vijayakumar;
Treasurer Peter Dooley;
Invitation design Paul Horton;
Grants: Councillor Jared Cassidy & Hon Stirling Hinchliffe;
Venue: Michelle from Brighton Bowls Club;
Catering: Con Papamitros from My Catering Club;
Printing: Andrew Pearson from Appello Media;
Raffle prize donations:
- Bracken Ridge Tavern
- Round Table Coffee, Bracken Ridge
- Full Moon Hotel
- Myrtle and Bloom, Sandgate
Plus the many unnamed people who helped in the background.
Sandgate Toastmasters' next meeting is on May 14.
