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Sergeant’s Session
The multi-talented Frank O’Brien stood in for Bernie Gerlinger. Frank delivered an eclectic and entertaining Sergeant’s session, which was all the more notable given that Frank received about 10 minutes notice of the part that he was to play at the meeting.
Guest Speaker
.jpg) Russell Rolls owns four Rolls Royce vehicles, one of which is one of only three in the world. Russell has a long and intergenerational association with Rolls Royce, and continues to hold senior offices in a number of organisations associated with the marque. In 2010 Russell was appointed as a Trustee of The Sir Henry Royce Foundation of Australia, and in May 2011, Chairman
Russell spoke of the vastly different upbringing of Charlie Rolls and Henry Royce, and the events that brought them together to create one of the world’s most recognised and admired brands. Royce, the self-educated son of a small miller whose first job was to scare birds away from a local grain crop, and Rolls, the stereotypical son of the landed gentry who was educated at Eton and Cambridge.
Royce considered himself to be a “mechanic”, and by the turn of the 20th century he had developed a reputation for designing and maintaining sophisticated electrical equipment and cranes. He purchased a second hand, two cylinder French car in 1903. This lead him to design and manufacture his own car (Ed: from scratch!) to overcome what he perceived to be deficiencies in the French vehicle. As part of the manufacturing process he actually made three sets of parts.
Rolls met Royce in 1904 and the relationship developed into what was to become the global brand of Rolls Royce. Royce would manufacture the cars, and Royce would sell them. Rolls was the extravert salesperson of the duo (Ed: pretty much like our own Russell Rolls?). He became a race car driver – the equivalent of today’s F1 drivers – to race Rolls Royce cars and promote the brand. Rolls briefly flirted with the sport of ballooning, and then took up an interest in flying. He was the holder of the second aviator’s license in Great Brittain, and became the first person to fly the English Channel both ways during a single flight. In 1910 he was killed in the crash of an aircraft he had acquired from the Wright Brothers, and subsequently modified himself.
Royce died in 1933, and never saw the Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engine he designed in conjunction with R J Mitchell go into production – about 150,000 Merlin engines were subsequently produced or manufactured under license.
Russell Rolls, second left, with some of his colleagues
from The Sir Henry Royce Foundation of Australia
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Rotary networks lead to some extraordinary outcomes in the community.
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