WEDNESDAY ( 11 Mar 2020) was a night of celebration for Palm Beach Rotarians, partners and friends.
The club thanked a swag of local people who helped make the city’s annual beach horse races — the Rockingham Beach Cup — such an iconic event
FROM LEFT: Brad Dean, Genevieve Bailey, Renee Forrest and Rob McGavin.
Accountant Brad Dean and real estate agent and investor Rob McGavin were given Rotary International’s highest recognition, being made Paul Harris Fellows, for their outstanding community service.
Genevieve Bailey, CEO of Bailey’s Fertilisers, and 2020 cup winning jockey Renee Forrest received community service awards.
“No Rob, no horses, no event,” was how Palm Beach Rotary president Kevin McDonnell summed up Rob McGavin’s contribution.
His contacts with the racing industry made the whole event possible, from when past club president Laurie Smith first sounded him out about the idea five years ago.
Brad Dean is the Rockingham Beach Cup committee’s “finance guy”, managing budgets and helping committee chair Donna McDonald with all the necessary acquittals of council and government grants.
Genevieve Bailey put in an amazing amount of work and took event marketing “to a whole new level”, Kevin said.
Committee members were terrified when she came on board and magnified the budget, but “she was integral to the success of the 2019 Beach Cup”.
Jockey Renee Forrest (“our own Louise Payne”) did much more than win last year’s Beach Cup, Kevin said. She became Rob McGavin’s lieutenant, mustering jockeys, strappers and horses for this charity event.
Palm Beach Rotarian Mick le-Cocq was also honoured by Rotary Australia Worldwide Community Service for his many trips to Timor-Leste (East Timor) building clean water supplies to local villages.
He was presented with his “thank you” by Max Bird, who is manager of Rotary projects in East Timor and a former Kwinana Rotary Club president.
Mick and Max are both suffering since their last trip. They were infected by a water-borne bacterium which caused severe gut disturbance and considerable weight loss.