January 20th 2021 saw members of the Zonta Club of Sydney get off to a good start to the New Year with our first club meeting for the year. As has been pointed out to us and as we have been acknowledging across the last year, ZCS and many (although not all) Zonta Clubs in Australia have been very lucky to be able to have some in person meetings, as we have not had the full lockdowns and restrictions which have affected many within our own country but particularly across the world. We hope all our fellow Zontians across the world are able to keep safe, keep in contact by virtual means and that once the Covid-19 pandemic has been controlled more fully that clubs will once again be able to meet in person to work towards improving the status of women.
At our January meeting, we were lucky enough to be joined by our guest speaker, Dr Danielle Moreau. Dr Moreau is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of New South Wales. We had invited Dr Moreau to speak to us last year for Amelia Earhart month, given her work in aeroacoustics and as a member of the Flow Noise Group. At the time however, we had to postpone our meeting due to the passing of one of our members, and then with Covid-19 hitting soon after we had to postpone a number of meetings.
But this year, everything aligned and so we were treated to a fascinating talk. Although most of us in the room are not engineers, we were none the less intrigued and Dr Moreau had the excellent ability to explain what are extremely technical details in a way that the lay people in the room could still understand (well, to a point!)
As well as learning about how noise is made and how it can be reduced, we also took the opportunity to share a delicious dinner and fellowship between club members, and applauded the excellent efforts of our fundraising committee, who against all difficulties managed to raise over $6000 at our Christmas club raffle, an amazing effort.
Zonta Club of Sydney 