A Spy for Love

The club and partners were entertained with an enlightened talk about a first world war German Spy, a man of honour whos dedication to his country and his divorced wife were unfortunately not equalled by his skills in  spying. 

In the spirit of the Mousetrap, before commencing her talk titled simply ‘A Spy for Love’, speaker Melanie Gibson-Barton swore us all to keep secret the name of the special agent who was the subject of her talk so that future audiences would equally enjoy the suspense as the story unfolds.

Melanie used her own historic postcard collection to fully illustrate the key locations of the events throughout the talk and shared with the audience the names of the buildings on the sites today.  Melanie’s far-reaching research for her talk included examining archive documents and the audience were shown illustrations of existing artefacts featured in the story.  By providing her own view of the events and the key players throughout the secret agent’s story encouraged the audience to consider whether the actions of the protagonist were indeed motivated by love and honour, which resulted in much discussion following the talk.

One intriguing aspect of the talk was how the actions of the secret agent affect us all today.

Melanie has been giving talks for several years to the National Trust, U3A, history groups, church groups, Oddfellows, Women’s Institutes, Soroptimists and retirement social groups such as Rotary, CSMA, ARAs and PROBUS – ‘live’ and in recent months via Zoom.us - and tells us she has the privilege of meeting new audiences to entertain and inform every day.  Her range of currently seventeen talks can be viewed at www.toonstelling.com

Raouf Oderuth - Quarter of a century in Rotary

We also delighted to cogradulate Raouf for his quarter of a century with Rotary, Past President and a talented artist Raouf has given much to our club over his half centuary. We wish to thank him and his wife Vivian for their dedication to Rotary.