Melbourne

History Club of Melbourne Inc.

Councillor R Solly (Lord Mayor of Melbourne), Jock Reid (President of Melbourne Rotary Club) and Past RI President Angus Mitchell unveiling a monument to Paul Harris in October 1953. (The Story of Rotary in Australia 1921-71 by Harold Hunt (RC Melbourne)) Photos from Rotary Global History Fellowship Historian Calum Thomson 4 January 2006

Club History The Rotary Club of Melbourne was chartered on 21 April 1921 as the first Rotary Club in Australia. The Club now has over 250 members and is proud to have many women as very active members in the club.

As the first Club, it chartered many new clubs. In 1924 the Rotary Clubs of Adelaide in South Australia and of Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania were chartered, and between 1925 and 1999 the Club directly chartered a further twenty-four clubs. The Club is also the grandparent or great grandparent to a large number of Rotary Clubs in Australia.

Within the charter membership of the Club were many of Melbourne's leading business and professional men, including Sir John Monash, the great engineer and leading general from World War I and John Latham, later Sir John Latham, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.

The Club is proud to have had one of its most distinguished members become the first Australian to be elected as the President of Rotary International. Sir Angus Mitchell was a truly great Rotarian. He was a very close friend of Paul Harris and is credited with the re-establishment of Rotary in Japan after the end of World War II.

Also the work, in Australia, of Calgary's Jim Davidson.

During their 1925 tour of Australia, Paul and Jean Harris planted a tree in Melbourne. It was during a conference where both Paul and Jean spoke. You may visit the tree planted in Melbourne at rotaryfirst100.org/trees/australia/

The first tree in Paul Harris' own "Friendship Garden" was in honor of the late Walter Drummond, second secretary of Melbourne. "..Many good will trees have been planted by Rotarians, including myself, in other cities in other countries, and many more doubtless will be planted, but the first of them all was Walter's tree." Paul P. Harris.

This page was compiled and provided by History Fellow, PDG John Louttit

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