Dapto Rotarian Anne McQueen said the service club was going to have a celebratory dinner in March but were forced to keep postponing.

"All the people had paid their money and we had the cake organised. Then COVID-19 happened. We are still hoping to have the dinner but we are not just not sure when we will be able to."

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Mrs McQueen expects the 60th anniversary dinner will still attract between 75 and 100 people when it is finally held.

"We got in contact with a lot of past members, past presidents, politicians, people in the community and the Lord Mayor," she said.

In the meantime, planting 60 trees with the help of a dozen students from Dapto High School as part of their environmental program was seen as a fitting way to mark the occasion in 2020.

The tree planting idea came about when Ian Fitzgibbon contacted Wollongong City Council. He and Mrs McQueen had seen an article about Corrimal High School doing something similar and everyone thought it was a good idea as it fit in perfectly with Rotary International's environmental awareness project.

Dapto Rotary was already working with a local environment business to clean up areas around Kanahooka and Dapto every month.

"We spend a couple of hours each month just picking up rubbish," Mrs McQueen said.

"We think it is important to keep cleaning up the environment and have been targeting things like plastics in creeks and waterways."

Mrs McQueen said the council gave the Rotary club four different options of where it could plant trees and it chose the one beside the skate park.

"We think that over time we will also plant trees at the other locations in Kanahooka, Koonawarra and William Beach Park. We go in with council to share the costs like we did with the shelter in William Beach Park."

Mrs McQueen said Rotarians all enjoyed putting service before self and have done many projects in the Dapto community over the last six decades such as the Graffiti Removal Project that takes in the whole Wollongong local government area. She said the Christmas Trailer Raffle was also proceeding in Crown Street Mall.

"We didn't know if we would be able to proceed or not but Wollongong Central Shopping Centre were still very keen for us to be there. And COVID just eased sufficiently for us to be able to do it again this year," she said.

"We are also able to start doing the BBQ's again at Bunnings."

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