Meet Brodie
From Antarctica to Hobart—building things that matter
If you’ve ever wondered whether Rotary is for someone like you, Brodie is a pretty good answer.
He’s a web developer with the Australian Antarctic Division, working on websites used by millions of people each year.
His work supports one of Australia’s most important scientific programs—and yes, he’s been there, working at Davis Station in East Antarctica.
He’s previously been a tech startup co-founder, a community radio builder, a music industry entrepreneur, and a finalist in the Tasmanian Young Achiever
Awards.
And on Tuesday nights, you’ll find him at the Maypole with the
Rotary Club of North Hobart.
Building things—wherever he is
Brodie’s career sits at the intersection of technology, science, and real-world impact.
With the Australian Antarctic Division, he helps build and maintain the digital presence of Australia’s Antarctic program—helping users around the world
learn about Antarctica and the importance of science on the continent.
Alongside that, he’s a former co-founder of Cycle Inspect, a global startup using advanced testing technology to identify hidden structural damage in
bicycles—helping prevent accidents before they happen.
Different worlds, same theme:
build something useful, solve real problems, make it better
It didn’t start with a job title
What stands out about Brodie isn’t just what he does now—it’s how early he started doing it.
He co-founded a community radio station HCFM at Hobart College
Built and managed a portfolio of Tasmanian electronic music artists
Ran events and released music through his own music label
Worked in hospitality management for as a business grew from 30 to 80+ staff and multiple new locations
There’s a clear pattern:
he doesn’t wait for permission—he builds things that matter
Bringing values into the real world
Before he even joined Rotary, Brodie was already putting its values into action.
He led the installation of Rotary Peace Poles across Australian Antarctic
Division sites—bringing a global message of peace and reflection into a
scientific workplace.
It’s a simple idea, but a powerful one:
use your skills, your workplace, your environment—to make a positive impact
A global perspective, grounded in Hobart
Brodie’s work and experience have taken him far beyond Tasmania—from Antarctica to New York and Chicago, including a visit to Rotary International
headquarters in Evanston.
But his focus remains grounded:
contributing locally, building community, and connecting people
So why Rotary?
For someone like Brodie, Rotary isn’t about meetings or tradition.
It’s about:
connecting with people who with a similar passion for the community
working on projects that have real impact
being part of something bigger—locally and globally
In his words and actions, Rotary isn’t a place you go after you’ve “made it.”
It’s where people who are making things happen find each other.
A different kind of membership
Brodie is part of a new generation shaping what Rotary looks like.
As Vice President and President Nominee (2027–28), and District Webmaster,
he’s helping modernise how Rotary connects, communicates, and
engages—making it more accessible for the next wave of members.
Thinking about getting involved?
You don’t need to have been to Antarctica.
You don’t need a perfect résumé.
You just need to care about your community and be open to meeting good people.
Come along to an event, have a conversation, and see if it’s for you.
sOLDIER. ADVOCATE. AGENT. ROTARIAN.
MEET MARNIE HILL. lEARN THE QUESTION SHE ANSWERS BY JUST SHOWING UP.
Most people pick one thing to be known for. Marnie Hill didn’t get that memo — and Hobart is better for it.
She is a property professional with nearly two decades of experience at PRD Hobart, a serving Reservist in the Australian Army, a national office-holder in one of the world’s leading real estate bodies, a local community association leader, and a Past President of the Rotary Club of North Hobart. At any one of those things alone, she’d be worth knowing. Together, they raise an obvious question: how?
The short answer is that for people like Marnie, service isn’t a drain on energy — it’s the source of it.
On the National StageMarnie holds a role most Tasmanians wouldn’t even know exists. Since 2018, she has served as Australian Vice President of FIABCI — the International Real Estate Federation, a Paris-based global body representing property professionals across dozens of countries. She was re-elected to the role in 2019, representing Tasmania and South Australia at the national leadership table of one of the world’s most significant property industry organisations.
It means she has spent years thinking about real estate not just as transactions, but as a force that shapes communities, cities, and lives — locally and globally. That perspective shows in the way she talks about Hobart.
On the Parade GroundThen there’s the Army.
Marnie is a serving Reservist in the Australian Army — a commitment she carries alongside her real estate career, her national industry role, her community work, and family life as a mum of two adult children. The Army Reserve asks a lot of ordinary life: weekends, training, discipline, and a willingness to be called upon. Marnie considers that a reasonable ask. That says something about her.
Close to HomeMarnie is also an active member of the Lenah Valley Community Association, staying close to her neighbourhood and the people who live in it. Within Rotary, she has brought that same ground-level instinct to high-visibility projects — including sharing April Falls Day awareness at New Town Plaza, using her platform to educate Hobart’s seniors on fall prevention and safety.
These aren’t token gestures. They’re the work of someone who genuinely believes that proximity to a community is a form of accountability to it.
What She Brings to the RoomMarnie served as President of the Rotary Club of North Hobart in 2025–26 — a term that left the club stronger, more professionally run, and more deeply embedded in the Hobart community. She is the kind of leader who builds things up rather than coasting on them.
For a younger professional thinking about what Rotary actually looks like in a busy life, Marnie is a pretty honest answer. She isn’t here because she has spare time. She’s here because service is part of who she is — and because the Rotary Club of North Hobart is a place where that kind of person belongs.
“Service doesn’t drain your energy. It generates it.”
Could This Be You?If you’re a working professional in Hobart — already stretched, already committed — and you’ve been wondering whether Rotary is worth your time, Marnie Hill is a pretty good case study.
The Rotary Club of North Hobart is a community of people who show up. We meet every Tuesday at 6:00 pm at the Maypole Hotel in New Town. There’s no hard sell, no expectation that you arrive with all the answers. You just have to be curious about what it looks like to make a difference in the city you live in.
Come as a visitor. Leave knowing whether it’s for you.
We’d love to have you at the table.
She is a property professional with nearly two decades of experience at PRD Hobart, a serving Reservist in the Australian Army, a national office-holder in one of the world’s leading real estate bodies, a local community association leader, and a Past President of the Rotary Club of North Hobart. At any one of those things alone, she’d be worth knowing. Together, they raise an obvious question: how?
The short answer is that for people like Marnie, service isn’t a drain on energy — it’s the source of it.
On the National StageMarnie holds a role most Tasmanians wouldn’t even know exists. Since 2018, she has served as Australian Vice President of FIABCI — the International Real Estate Federation, a Paris-based global body representing property professionals across dozens of countries. She was re-elected to the role in 2019, representing Tasmania and South Australia at the national leadership table of one of the world’s most significant property industry organisations.
It means she has spent years thinking about real estate not just as transactions, but as a force that shapes communities, cities, and lives — locally and globally. That perspective shows in the way she talks about Hobart.
On the Parade GroundThen there’s the Army.
Marnie is a serving Reservist in the Australian Army — a commitment she carries alongside her real estate career, her national industry role, her community work, and family life as a mum of two adult children. The Army Reserve asks a lot of ordinary life: weekends, training, discipline, and a willingness to be called upon. Marnie considers that a reasonable ask. That says something about her.
Close to HomeMarnie is also an active member of the Lenah Valley Community Association, staying close to her neighbourhood and the people who live in it. Within Rotary, she has brought that same ground-level instinct to high-visibility projects — including sharing April Falls Day awareness at New Town Plaza, using her platform to educate Hobart’s seniors on fall prevention and safety.
These aren’t token gestures. They’re the work of someone who genuinely believes that proximity to a community is a form of accountability to it.
What She Brings to the RoomMarnie served as President of the Rotary Club of North Hobart in 2025–26 — a term that left the club stronger, more professionally run, and more deeply embedded in the Hobart community. She is the kind of leader who builds things up rather than coasting on them.
For a younger professional thinking about what Rotary actually looks like in a busy life, Marnie is a pretty honest answer. She isn’t here because she has spare time. She’s here because service is part of who she is — and because the Rotary Club of North Hobart is a place where that kind of person belongs.
“Service doesn’t drain your energy. It generates it.”
Could This Be You?If you’re a working professional in Hobart — already stretched, already committed — and you’ve been wondering whether Rotary is worth your time, Marnie Hill is a pretty good case study.
The Rotary Club of North Hobart is a community of people who show up. We meet every Tuesday at 6:00 pm at the Maypole Hotel in New Town. There’s no hard sell, no expectation that you arrive with all the answers. You just have to be curious about what it looks like to make a difference in the city you live in.
Come as a visitor. Leave knowing whether it’s for you.
We’d love to have you at the table.
She Helped Wipe Malaria Off the Map. She Lives Here.
A post in celebration of Timor-Leste's WHO Malaria-Free Certification
What does it actually look like when a Rotary club changes the world? It looks like a nurse from Hobart, a grant, 45,000 bed nets, and a nation declared malaria-free.
Last year, we celebrated one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the Rotary Club of North Hobart — and we celebrate the woman at the centre of it.
Dr Jenny Kerrison PhD, DEd, RN — Past President, member, and one of the most quietly extraordinary people you will ever meet on a Tuesday night at the Maypole Hotel — is a member of the Rotary International Cadre of Technical Advisors, in the field of Child and Maternal Health. We couldn't be prouder. And we think you should know why.
The Story Behind the Certification
Timor-Leste has been declared malaria-free by the World Health Organisation.
That is a sentence representing decades of work by governments, health systems, and communities across a fragile, post-conflict nation. And embedded in that achievement — in the bed nets, the trained health workers, the spraying units, the data — is the fingerprint of the Rotary Club of North Hobart.
Jenny led our club's US$251,334 Rotary Global Grant — the largest and most complex international project in our club's history. She didn't manage it from a desk in Hobart. She went to Timor-Leste. She sat with the Ministry of Health and the WHO. She trained community health workers in villages. She came home and raised more money and went back.
The results are not abstract:
- 45,000+ insecticide-treated bed nets distributed, prioritising pregnant women
- 80 indoor residual spraying units deployed to protect households
- 100+ community health workers trained to sustain prevention locally
- 200,000+ people directly protected
- And one nation — certified malaria-free
Who is Jenny Kerrison?
She is a registered nurse who kept going back to university until she had a PhD and a Doctor of Education, because she believed that understanding why people engage with healthcare was just as important as the healthcare itself.
Her early research in Tasmania focused on pregnant teenagers — understanding what they needed to stay connected to care. That same instinct — go to the community, listen, design for the real world, not the textbook — has defined everything she has done since.
Over more than a decade she has worked in Bangladesh, Timor-Leste and Indonesia. In Bangladesh alone, she spent seven years at Kumudini Hospital, introducing triage systems, newborn observation charts, and infection prevention practices — and doing two years of lecturing pro bono — in a resource-limited setting where every improvement had to be built to last without her.
Today she is a Nurse Learning Facilitator at Torrens University in Melbourne, shaping the next generation of nurses. She is also a Board Member of the RAM-Global Rotary Action Group and a Rotary Foundation Regional Technical Lead for Australia. She is still a member of our club.
Why This Matters for You
If you are an under-45 professional wondering what Rotary membership can actually mean — this is your answer.
Jenny didn't arrive at the Rotary International stage fully formed. She arrived at a Tuesday night meeting in North Hobart. The club gave her a platform, a network, access to Global Grant funding, and the backing of an international organisation with reach into ministries of health across the Asia-Pacific.
She did the rest.
That same platform exists for you. The Rotary Club of North Hobart is a small club with an outsized footprint — in global health, in media, in environmental action, and in the corridors of Rotary International itself. We are a club where your professional skills are taken seriously and pointed at problems that actually matter.
Timor-Leste is malaria-free. In part, because of what happened in this club.
Come and find out what we could do together next. Join us on a Tuesday night.
95 Years Young. Still Showing Up. Still Making an Impact.
What does a lifetime of service actually look like? Meet Ian Geard.
In a club that celebrates NextGen leadership, we also celebrate something rarer: the living proof of where a life of service can take you.
This month, the Rotary Club of North Hobart marks a milestone that stopped us in our tracks.
Ian Geard turned 95.
And last Tuesday, he was at the Maypole Hotel. Same as always.
The Career That Spanned the World
Ian didn't set out to be a community champion. He set out to be a scientist.
As an Agricultural Scientist with the Tasmanian Department of Agriculture, Ian spent his professional life solving one of humanity's most fundamental problems: how do we feed people well, and do it sustainably? That question took him far beyond Tasmania.
As an international consultant, Ian worked on agricultural development and food security programs alongside some of the most significant organisations on the planet — the European Union, the World Bank, and United Nations programs — supporting sustainable farming practices and improving livelihoods in developing regions across the globe.
He also made many visits to Nepal and Bhutan — two of the world's most distinctive and challenging agricultural environments — deepening his understanding of rural communities and the human dimension of food security that no textbook can teach.
This was not a man who attended conferences and filed reports. This was a man who went to the places, learned from the people, and built things that lasted.
Then He Came Home. And Kept Serving.
For more than 30 years, Ian has been a devoted member of the Rotary Club of North Hobart — long enough to have seen presidents come and go, projects launched and completed, the world change around him several times over.
He has never sought the spotlight. He has sought the work.
Fundraising. Fellowship. Community service. The quiet, reliable presence that every volunteer organisation depends on far more than it sometimes acknowledges. Ian is the kind of member who shows up — not for recognition, but because showing up is what people of character do.
At 95, He's Still On Camera
Here is our favourite detail.
When our club launched its Falls Prevention campaign — our Steady on Your Feet initiative supported by the Calvary Community Council — we needed someone to appear in a community awareness film. Someone authentic. Someone whose presence would carry genuine weight with the older Australians we were trying to reach.
Ian said yes.
At 95 years of age, he stood in front of the camera and delivered a message about staying safe, active and independent — not as a token gesture, but as a man who is the message. His contribution brought exactly the warmth and credibility that no script could manufacture.
That is Ian Geard in a single image: still learning, still contributing, still the first to put his hand up.
What Ian Means to a Club That Celebrates Under-45s
We talk a lot on this page about what Rotary offers young professionals. The networks. The platform. The global reach. The career development.
Ian is the reason those things are worth having.
He is the living answer to the question every NextGen member will eventually ask themselves: "If I pour myself into this — into service, into community, into something beyond my own career — what does that life actually look like?"
It looks like Ian Geard at 95, still sharp, still generous, still in the room.
A man who worked with the World Bank and the United Nations — and still turns up on a Tuesday night in New Town because the work matters and the people matter.
We don't use the word legend lightly. But some people earn it quietly, over decades, without ever asking for it.
Happy 95th, Ian. The club would not be what it is without you.
The Rotary Club of North Hobart is a multigenerational community of professionals united by service. From our NextGen leaders to our living legends, there is a place at our table for everyone who believes in something bigger than themselves. Come and find yours.