By JESSE GRAHAM
MORE than 150 people marked Australia Day with breakfast, friends and inspirational speakers, packing into the Wandin Public Hall for an annual meet-up.
About 160 Rotary club members, local residents, politicians and special guests packed out the hall before 8am on Tuesday 26 January for the annual Rotary Club of Wandin Australia Day Breakfast.
Visitors made their way in, greeting old friends and new, before standing and singing the Advance Australia Fair, and raising a glass to Australia in a toast led by Evelyn MP Christine Fyffe.
Speaking briefly on her own experience with the country, Ms Fyffe said she came to the country 47 years ago, and said it had become part of her identity.
“I love Australia,” she said.
“It’s not only my home, it’s who I am. It is what I am.”
After a cereal breakfast – which would later be followed up with a hot breakfast featuring sausages, bacon and tomato – Jim Brown took to the stage to perform Dorothea Mackellar’s stirring poem, My Country.
After finishing the poem, and receiving a large round of applause, Mr Brown remarked that Australians “should be proud of what we are and what we’ve become”.
He said that, like Ms Fyffe, he was an ABC – an Australian by Choice.
Wandin Rotary Club president Ray Barrett then presented a community service award to the Hoddles Creek Fire Brigade Catering Team, paying tribute to their work in feeding firefighters during long emergencies, such as the fires in Wandin late last year.
Kilsyth resident, Rotarian and NGO founder Bright Chinganya then spoke to the audience about his life and moving to the country from Zambia 14 years ago.
He said that, shortly after arriving, he drove around and was fascinated by mattresses dumped for hard garbage collection – and so he collected some.
After studying at Charles Sturt, Deakin and Monash universities, Mr Chinganya formed his own NGO, Carers of Africa, which provides services for people of African heritage or refugee backgrounds who are living with mental health issues or alcohol problems.
Mr Chinganya’s 13-year-old son Luyando, 10-year-old daughter Lushomo and 10-month-old daughter Luumuno were in the crowd, with Luumuno quickly becoming a crowd favourite with the Rotarians.
Towards the end of the morning, guest speaker Murray McLean spoke about his work as a career diplomat, in China, Japan, Singapore and even North Korea.
Mr McLean the audience about working in cold-war China, carrying diplomatic envelopes chained to their wrists, and then spoke about “celebrating the best of what being Australian is” on 26 January.
“Wherever we are in the world, on Australia Day, we celebrate the best of what being Australian is, and what being Australian means to each of us, individually,” he said.
He said that Australians needed to be “global citizens”, and must reach out “beyond our extraordinarily blessed comfort zones”.
“First, we must prepare for the challenges we will face in making that move; secondly we must see that we cannot just take for granted what we enjoy as Australians; and third, we can’t be all fear and greed, defensive and on the take,” he said.
“We must have something to give, a generosity of spirit and a vision for something better, not just for ourselves, but for the world.”
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