Friday was a full day for tutors and trainees, giving them an opportunity to discuss their needs and challenges, along with some solutions and new ideas for the sessions. Carole McCarthy’s contribution was very beneficial and Sister Antoinette Baldwin covered the topic of adult learning principles with her presentation ‘I Cannot Hear with my Hand’. The last part of the afternoon’s program had topics of interest to all attending the conference, not only the tutors. Joy Gullan’s presentation ‘Support Plan for Better Hearing in Health Care’ is an area that we would like to see incorporated into all hospitals, and in particular hostels and nursing homes where there are so many people with a hearing impairment. Louise Skelt gave an extremely interesting presentation ‘Non-Verbal Clues in Conversation’. The Friday night buffet dinner/quiz was a great evening. Our quiz masters ‘Professors’ Christopher Arnott and Graham Skarratt were lots of fun – some of their questions had many of us scratching our heads.

The local Federal Member of Parliament, Hon. Jim Lloyd, officially opened the Conference on the Saturday morning. Sharan Westcott, as Keynote Speaker, outlined the maze of technological advances that the hearing impaired can utilise, but John Thorne reminded us that ordinary one-to-one conversation remains an essential art. Other Saturday presentations covered technology, old and new, along with topics on ‘Understanding Hearing Loss’ and ‘Noise Damage to Hearing’, and with updates from Deafness Forum, Media Access Australia, Cochlear, Australia Hearing and Telstra.

The conference Dinner saw the presentation of awards, Sydney again winning the Marie Henderson trophy. The second presentation by the “BHA Shakespearean Company”, following its Adelaide success, was enjoyed by all present and we look forward to the next episode in 2007.

On Sunday, we had a very entertaining presentation by Tom Sweeney on ‘Acquiring and Inspiring Volunteers’ and if those present can put some of his ideas into practice at their branches we should see an increase in BHA membership. Tom suggests we need to ask people to become members/volunteers, to inspire them once they show an interest, be enthusiastic about what we do, make sure we have activities for them that are interesting and varied and make sure we retain our volunteers (A.I.R. - Ask, Inspire, Retain). We also need to reward our volunteers, the words ‘Thank you’ always go a long way.

The AGM on Sunday saw a new Vice-President for Finance, John Steel replacing Carol Parkinson (Gay). That afternoon was ‘Branch Issues’ time and breaking into discussion groups was most beneficial, providing an insight to members who are new to conferences and to those who are not as involved as others, as well as a pooling of ideas giving possible platforms for action in the future. Sunday evening was a reward for all the ‘hard work’ spent listening, concentrating, absorbing information, discussing – a short bus tour of the area before a sunset dinner cruise on Brisbane Water. The weather provided a beautiful spring evening and a lovely sunset.

The Monday program included a presentation on ‘Tinnitus’, then three of our Central Coast residents gave their success stories of coping with their hearing loss. The Maryborough presentation for the 61st National Conference was followed with the handover of the banner.