105 years ago on the 21st April 1921 our club first met. The first steps towards Rotary in Australia was taken by Walter Drummond, a young Melbourne architect, on a visit to Chicago in 1913. Rotary International was established in Chicago on 23 February 1905.
On 12 February 1921 the International Association of Rotary Clubs appointed 2 Commissioners, James W. Davidson, a Past President of the Rotary Club of Calgary, and Lt.Col. Layton Ralston, President of the Rotary Club of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to charter Rotary Clubs in Australia and New Zealand.
The Commissioners arrived in Sydney on 22 March 1921 with the intention of beginning their work there. As it was the Easter Holiday with the Sydney Show in progress and little prospect of making appointments, they proceeded immediately to Melbourne.
The first 4 people Ralston and Davidson consulted were among the most influential in Melbourne. They were Sir John Monash, Harold Clapp, Prof W.A. Osborne and Frank Tate. After conferring with these 4, the Commissioners' next move was to form and Organising Committee of Prof Osborne, Ernest Sullivan, Fred Ryall, and Ernest Peacock, to prepare a report for a meeting of all who had been nominated as prospective members of the proposed club.
This meeting became the inaugural luncheon of the proposed Rotary Club and was held at Scott's Hotel at 1pm on Thursday 21 April 1921.The meeting resolved that those named in the report be the Charter Members of the Rotary Club of Melbourne.
The Following have been identified in the picture of the First Rotary Lunch by John Kendall during his research as the Club Archivist.
President Prof Osborne read a telegram from the President of Rotary in Britain and Ireland, 'Forty Rotary Clubs Motherland greet first in Australia'. Other greetings came from the Commissioners' clubs of Calgary and Halifax.
The Following are listed as present in the minutes of the first luncheon meeting 21/04/1921:
Mr David Avery, Mr. Herbert Brookes, Ben. Chaffey, Capt. L.A. Cleveland, Sir John Gellibrand, Mr. R. H. Harper,
By the 1930s the Rotary Club of Melbourne had achieved a measure of maturity. From a tentative beginning when it wondered what its role was, it could now claim with confidence that when individuals and agencies needed helpline with community projects they turned naturally to Rotary. The Club's membership reached 200 in 1935 and hovered between that and 250 over the next twenty-five years.
The club continued to attract leaders of business and the professions in the central business district of inner Melbourne. It had a central office with clerical assistance in Collins Street at the National Bank Chambers, and had moved its luncheon venue in August 1928 to the banquet room of the Freemasons headquarters at 25 Collins Street, where it was to remain for the next forty years.The press reported, and 3LO broadcast, the luncheon speakers, many of whom were distinguished overseas visitors such as Lord Baden Powell, John Masefield the poet laureate, Malcolm Sargent the English conductor, and national figures including the Prime Minister.
