March 12, 2020
Hundreds of Rotarians will be heading to Kingaroy next year – and between $500,000 and $750,000 pumped into the local economy – thanks to local businessman Neil Black.
Neil will be sworn in as District Governor of Rotary District 9600 in June.
As District Governor-elect, Neil has the privilege of selecting the venue for Rotary’s next District Conference so he’s selected his hometown of Kingaroy.
District 9600 includes part of south-east Queensland as well as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Nauru.
An estimated 300 to 600 delegates from across this region and beyond – including members of the Rotary Nomads E-Club – will be travelling to Kingaroy for the event.
Conference chairman Tim Keeler told southburnett.com.au the conference would be held from March 26-28, 2021, at Kingaroy State High School and KPAC.
The opening night welcome, on the Friday, will be at the Bjelke-Petersen property, ‘Bethany’.
The official opening will be held on Saturday morning, with local councillors and Federal and State MPs as invited guests.
The conference dinner – featuring local foods and South Burnett wines – will be held in Kingaroy Town Hall.
“The conference is going to be a real boost for the local economy,” Tim said.
He said Kingaroy had been chosen, not only because it was Neil’s home town but because Rotary realised the region had been doing it tough in recent years through drought.
“We know that economic conditions have not been good,” he said.
The conference was being organised so that other local service clubs and organisations would also benefit.
“For example, the high school P&C are looking after all the lunches and morning and afternoon teas,” he said.
Local caterers will be used at the dinner, and local buses will be used to ferry Rotary partners to various activities and tourist spots as part of the “Partners’ Program”.
Tim said he had been involved in organising Rotary conferences for many years but had never had so much local support from a community.
“More than $20,000 in prizes have been donated locally for the raffle, including a Mitsubishi Mirage ES by Mark and Margaret Huston, from Dundas Mitsubishi,” Tim said.
He said he was leading a team of 17 local residents – not all Rotarians – organising the event.
The theme will be “Outside The Box”, challenging Rotarians and others in the community to think “outside the box” when looking for solutions to issues such as youth suicide.
Guest speakers will include Tamsyn Rosenberg, who founded “Alive”, a program designed to end youth suicide in Australia.
“Tamsyn has put 65,000 Queensland children through the Alive program, and they haven’t lost one of these kids,” Tim said.
Other guest speakers already pencilled in include journalist and author Rick Morton – whose advocacy on behalf of mental health programs encouraged the Federal Government to include more funds in its Budgets – and Stephanie Woollard OAM, a young Australian who founded the Nepal-based social enterprise Seven Women at the age of 22 which has improved the lives of thousands of Nepalese women.
Tony Dee, who was the face of the 2016 Rio Paralympics, will also be a guest as well as Murgon-born actor, author and film director Leah Purcell.
The conference will also be an historic event as it will be the last District 9600 conference because Rotary is undergoing a structural reorganisation.
“It was also probably be the last time we can have a Rotary conference in Kingaroy as the new ‘super District’ being formed will have close to 3000 members and a conference would swamp a town the size of Kingaroy,” Tim said.
The last Rotary conference held in Kingaroy was about 20 years ago when Neil’s father, the late Ray Black, was District Governor.
