President's Report - January 2023

This report was presented at the Annual General Meeting for 2023. (View Draft Minutes of this meeting.)

Another year has really flown by and I can’t believe we are here at the AGM again! The WA borders opened in February, and we weren’t sure how Covid would affect our events. Fortunately, it had very little effect and our members have been great at looking after each other with hygiene and common sense at any of the events. There was a lot of re-scheduling of the Calendar, especially in the 2nd part of the year, for various reasons. Where an event was cancelled, we were mostly able to slot something else in its place. 

To summarise 2022:

We ran:

  • 7 trail rides

  • 7 training days

  • 2 weekenders

  • 6 committee meetings, and

  • 1 Christmas lunch 


Training days were:

  • Alpacas on the farm with Lisa

  • Little Missenden with Jenne

  • AEC Obstacles, three part series, with Eva

  • AEC indoor with Julie & Lisa

  • Quaranup Confidence with water with Eva

Trail rides were:

  • Quaranup Loop with Melanie

  • Denmark Heritage ride to Kent River with Marie

  • Perkins Beach to Cosy Corner Café with Melanie

  • Muttonbird Loop with Melanie

  • Styx River with Melanie

  • Marron Farm with Bronwyn

  • Denmark Lakehouse with Melanie

Weekenders:

  • Shannon River weekender with Melanie

  • Kordabup weekender with Melanie

Weekenders:

  • Shannon River weekender with Melanie

  • Crooked Creek weekender was a great success, with Melanie

Changes that happened:

  1. West Cape Howe was planned but then replaced by Cheryl’s ride (Julie)

  2. Cheryl’s ride was cancelled due to covid (Julie)

  3. Wittigo outing was unfortunately cancelled (Melanie)

  4. August outing was postponed as the trailboss was unwell and other other trailbosses weren’t available.

  5. Marron Farm was also postponed to a later date due to bad weather

All events have been well attended, with Training Days remaining very popular. Eva’s three-part Obstacles Training series was much appreciated and well attended. The final in her training events was Water Confidence at Quaranup. Thankyou Eva for all the amazing effort and energy that you have put into making these training days so great.

We have been using the Gameday platform for membership payments for the last 12 months, and it has been great to streamline this bit of administration. There have been a few minor hiccups, but these have all been ironed out by ATHRA and the system seems to be working well for us. Further enhancements of the platform will hopefully make our admin work even smoother as we sail into the future. 

As you know this club is made of volunteers and we are fortunate to have awesome members. It is great testament to those who give up their personal time to make the club enjoyable for others…so I thank you for all your energy and effort.

Thanks also needs to be given to non-club members, who help out in the background. We didn’t have to call on the support people throughout the year, except for Marie’s Kent River ride where Mark & Ryan were in charge of moving floats. There are many others in the background, supporting their better halves, and we must thank them for that too.

There were no major incidents or accidents this year.

Our website is looking fabulous. Having the Google Calendar imbedded in it is also very handy for us to make ‘real time’ changes that everyone can see. Again, many thanks to Eva for setting up our beautiful website and for maintaining it throughout this last year. As Eva will be spending more time with other pursuits, she will be training a few of us in how to drive the website…which should be fun.

Charlotte McIntyre has been a foundational driver for the rehab of the Stidwell Bridle Trail. She is a member of the working group that have done an amazing job in presenting a well-researched, and well written report which was accepted by the City of Albany Council last year. As Charlotte commented at the time, ‘now the real work begins’ which is to act upon the recommendations in the Report. She will continue to let us know what progress is happening throughout the year. We encourage everyone to become a member of the Facebook group ‘Friends of the Stidwell’ to continue that support for the upkeep of this fabulous asset.

Next year goals in brief:

  • Continue to be involved with trail advocacy in the Southcoast region

  • Continue to develop our website

  • Have more First Aid accredited members

  • Encourage members to do Trail Boss training (possibly with the Denmark club)

  • Continue to explore new areas to ride

I’d like to thank everyone for entrusting me to the presidential role in 2022. It can be a rollercoaster ride, but overall it is really rewarding and I love the people on committee. I did say at the last AGM that this was going to be my last year…haha.

A special mention is that Carol and Eva will be retiring from the committee to follow other pursuits, so I wholeheartedly thank them for their time with us. They have provided a great flow of ideas and a lot of laughter at our committee meetings.

And finally, a big thankyou to committee members Melanie, Melissa, Lisa, Carol, and Eva, for all your support, enthusiasm and great ideas and for being a great bunch of ladies. This is a great club and we have an amazing team who continue to make it fabulous.

I look forward to another great year of being on the trail with you all. 

Julie Robins - 2022 President

Eva Bett