This website tells the story of the constitutional violations, bad decisions, complete lack of transparency and general lack of competence of the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers committee since the beginning of 2023. Some of their bad decisions potentially impact the safety of over 200 SBW members.

Only Shoalhaven Bushwalkers should read this SECRET history as it will have little relevance to people outside the club. Most members of the public just won't care, but similarly, most SBW members probably won't care either because they just want to go bushwalking. As long as the walks keep happening they'll be happy - they don't really want to read about how bad their committee is! 😀

The SBW President wants all the names of SBW Committee members to be kept SECRET, so most of the SBW Committee member named on this website have been replaced by pseudonyms. Given the terrible actions and decisions of the SBW Committee, it is not surprising that committee members want their names kept SECRET - or do they?

The SBW President emailed the owner of this website using his club's official email account. He wrote - "As a minimum, the Club would like the site to be edited to the extent that no members are named or identifiable". However, there is no mention of this matter being discussed in any SBW committee minutes, nor is there any reference to the President's correspondence.

Perhaps the President kept his actions SECRET from the committee and the club in yet another violation of the SBW constitution. Or maybe the committee knows about the actions of the President, but has illegally decided to keep the minutes and the correspondence SECRET from the club. It is difficult for members to tell what is going on with the club when actions such as these go unreported.

Either action violates the SBW constitution, but this is normal for recent SBW committees. Legality, openness and transparency have long disappeared from SBW committee actions - see "Committee Violations of the SBW Constitution" below ...

On this website the term "illegal" is used to describe actions which violate national laws, state laws, the SBW Constitution, the NSW Associations Incorporation Act 2009, the NSW Associations Incorporation Regulations 2022, or the Department of Fair Trading's Model Constitution.

When a club member disputed the legality of some of the SBW Committee's decisions, rulings and the standing resolution regarding SECRECY, his club membership was cancelled, so the validity of the committee's arguments has never been decided by an impartial third party. Legal opinions are expensive, but a viable alternative is to question the various artificial intelligence (AI) agents like Gemini or ChatGPT that are available today.

AI is not foolproof however, and the wording of questions can be skewed to provide desired results rather than correct ones, so check the questions closely and feel free to duplicate this procedure with any AI models you prefer, or even to get a legal opinion ...

Gemini AI has been used for the questions asked on this website.

At the October 2022 committee meeting, then President Elizabeth Donaldson* presented a motion which stated that "All communication to the club membership must be approved by the President and signed by the President". The motion was seconded by Lloyd Christmas*, and for reasons known only to themselves, the committee passed this motion and it became a standing resolution.

* not his/her real name

Was the passing of this standing resolution legal according to the 2011 SBW constitution which governed the club at the time? -

In an email to the committee in late January 2023, President Elizabeth Donaldson* said - “A member, Edward Low*, put up suggestions re the club's safety procedures. When someone questions our safety procedures, I deem it appropriate to follow up quickly. I decided to do some preliminary work to inform our next committee meeting in March. A sub-committee of the committee met on Saturday to discuss Edward's* question re safety procedures on walks. I called the sub-committee suddenly as I was in Vincentia that day."

This sub-committee was illegal. The SBW constitution says that the President does not have the power to establish sub-committees. This can only be done by the committee - Rule 22(b)(x) -

The President was either unaware of the requirements of the SBW constitution regarding her powers and those of the committee, or chose to ignore them -

Committee members Dennis Denuto*, Mildred Ratched* and later Hedda Tesman* should never have agreed to be a part of the illegal sub-committee. They too seemed to be either unaware of the requirements of the SBW constitution, or chose to ignore them.

* not his/her real name

On September 10th, 2023, newly elected SBW President Paul Biya* received a complaint in an email via his personal email address from club member Alan Jones* with the subject of "REQUEST FOR ACTION TO ADDRESS DAMAGING BEHAVIOURS IN SBW".

* not his/her real name

The President made this email known to two other committee members for the purposes of holding an illegal complaints meeting, and to a third committee member who was the subject of the complaint.

The President kept the email SECRET from the rest of the committee and from the club, and this withholding of committee correspondence is illegal -

The illegal safety sub-committee shown in "Committee Violations of the SBW Constitution #2" (above) produced a four page document in mid 2023 for the committee to consider. In their wisdom, the SBW committee realized the document was far too complicated, so it set up another - this time legal - safety committees comprised of President Paul Biya*, Rick Rescorla* and Jeremiah Creosote* to simplify the four page safety procedure document.

* not his/her real name

At the October 2023 committee meeting, the new safety committee presented a risk assessment, three new procedures, three updated procedures and ten new Guidance / Information documents which the committee approved.

Both the safety sub-committee and the entire SBW committee ignored Rule 24 (a) of the SBW constitution which says "A Sub-committee shall deal with matters of a special nature and shall be confined to the terms under which the Sub-committee is established."

The October 2023 committee meeting minutes say that the President thanked the members of the safety sub-committee for their "comprehensive safety and risk documentation" - but that was not what the sub-committee had been asked to produce. They had been asked for a simplification of a four page document - not for "comprehensive safety and risk documentation".

The safety sub-committee had exceeded the terms under which it had been established, and the committee had accepted all of it. Everyone on the committee had therefore been unaware of, had misunderstood or had deliberately ignored Rule 24 (a) of the SBW constitution.

The SBW Committee held a SECRET committee on March 5th, 2024. The meeting was not advertised in the club Program or News, so no club members apart from committee members were aware that the meeting was being held.

The purpose of the meeting was to consider the conduct of a member of SBW in relation to Rule 6 (Cessation of membership) of the SBW constitution. The Committee resolved to make two judgements pursuant to Sub-rule 6(a) that there had been two instances of conduct prejudicial to the interests of the Club.

The member was notified of these judgements by letter dated 8th March, the letter having been approved by Committee members by an email approval process in the days following the meeting.

The SBW Committee violated the constitution by keeping this committee meeting SECRET.
The SBW Committee violated the constitution by keeping their correspondence SECRET.
The SBW Committee violated the constitution by keeping their decisions SECRET.
The SBW Committee violated the constitution by keeping this meeting's minutes SECRET -

After their illegal SECRET meeting on March 5th, 2024, the SBW committee produced no minutes for the meeting. Rule 23 (i) of the SBW constitution states – “Proceedings of committee meetings shall be available to any Club member”, so as the committee meeting minutes were not made available to club members, the constitution had been violated.

When this lack of minutes for the SECRET committee meeting was pointed out to the committee by the club member who had received the SECRET correspondence from that meeting, the SBW committee produced two sets of minutes, one for distribution to members, and a SECRET set of minutes for itself. The one for members is called the "website version" and lacks critical details.

Rule 23 (i) of the SBW constitution states – “Proceedings of committee meetings shall be available to any Club member”. If committee meeting minutes are not made available to club members, the constitution has been violated -

Is the SBW committee allowed to produce two sets of minutes for a committee meeting - one for its members and a different set for the committee? -

Section 47 of the SBW Constitution states that all meeting minutes, records, books and other financial documents must be open to inspection by club members -

However, in early 2024, the SBW Committee decided that it wanted to keep some club records associated with its illegal actions SECRET. After it was pointed out to them that this violated the SBW Constitution, the committee passed an illegal over-riding resolution in a desperate attempt to validate its SECRET behaviour -

That resolution shows the SBW Committee's complete lack of understanding of the SBW Constitution, the NSW Associations Incorporation Act 2009, the NSW Associations Incorporation Regulations 2022, the Department of Fair Trading's Model Constitution, and the limitations of its own powers.

The regulations are not difficult to understand. The Associations Incorporation Act 2009 includes a list of matters which must be addressed in an association’s constitution. This list is called Schedule 1. If Schedule 1 matters are not addressed in a constitution, the rules described in the Department of Fair Trading's "Model Constitution" then apply. However, because all matters in Schedule 1 are addressed in the SBW Constitution, the Model Constitution has no relevance to Shoalhaven Bushwalkers.

Additionally, because the Model Constitution's provisions apply automatically if a matter is not addressed in the SBW constitution, there is no need for the SBW Committee to pass a resolution to include a non-addressed matter. If the SBW resolution had been legal, it would also have been unnecessary -

Q1. Does the SBW constitution satisfy the requirements of schedule 1 of the NSW Incorporated Associations Act 2009? -

Q2. Can the SBW Committee legally include section 43 paragraph 4 of the NSW Dept of Fair Trading's Model Constitution in its standing resolutions? -

Q3. Would the adoption of section 43 (paragraph 4) of the NSW Model Constitution contradict SBW's current registered constitution? -

Q4. Is it likely that all twelve of the SBW Committee's members would fail to reach this conclusion? -

Q5. If a regular club member formally challenged the resolution by pointing to the supremacy of Clause 47, would this justify the expulsion of that member from the club? -

A club member sent four simple suggestions to the SBW committee in early 2025, and soon after received a reply from the SBW email address which was signed "The IT Team". It was obviously written by new President Jeremiah Creosote* as it was cc'd to the other two members of the IT Team - Angie Ells* and Rick Rescorla*.

The email from the IT Team showed that the four suggestions had not been referred to the SBW committee - the new President had kept them SECRET" from most of the committee and dealt with them himself.

One suggestion been actioned by the IT Team, one would be "reviewed", and two had been instantly dismissed. Obviously, nothing had changed in the "new" committee. The two former Presidents had believed that they alone ran the club, and the new President was no different.

The SBW committee should have been shown the suggestions so that they could decide whether or not the suggestions were worthwhile. The actions of the IT Team ignored the SBW constitution, explicitly Rule 16 which states that the committee (and not the IT Team) "is to control and manage the affairs of the Club".

* not his/her real name

In early 2025 a member's request for details of the upcoming April 15th committee meeting was answered by President Jeremiah Creosote* who said that "attendance to all of the meeting is restricted to Committee members". As shown above in "Committee Violations of the SBW Constitution #4", this is a violation of the SBW Constitution.

This restriction is shown in the minutes from that meeting which are available to all SBW members.

Additionally, the minutes show no reason as to why the meeting was held in SECRET. The SBW committee apparently believed they could keep any committee meetings SECRET without the need to provide any justification at all - meaning all future committee meetings could be restricted to committee members only without explanation.

A competent committee would at least have provided a reason for the attendance restriction, but then a competent committee would have understood the constitution and not held an illegal SECRET meeting in the first place.

* not his/her real name

As shown in "Committee Violations of the SBW Constitution #4" (above) - on September 10th, 2023, newly elected SBW President Paul Biya* received an email concerning club matters via his personal email address which he distributed to only three other committee members and illegally kept SECRET from the rest of the committee.

* not his/her real name

Five months later when one of those three committee members noticed that the correspondence concerning club matters which had been given to him by the President had never been reported in any committee meeting minutes, he forwarded the correspondence to all members of the committee. The committee's extraordinary response was to hold a SECRET meeting where it decided to threaten the club member with expulsion from the club for conduct prejudicial to the interests of SBW! -

The club member's actions were identical to the actions of the President in that both distributed to some committee members correspondence meant for the committee, but whereas the President's actions kept correspondence SECRET from most of the committee members, the club member's actions allowed all committee members to finally see the correspondence. Wasn't this beneficial for the club? Wasn't it allowed by the club's rules? -

Were the club member's actions an invasion of privacy for any of the concerned parties as was alleged in the committee's judgement? -

Was the club member treated unfairly -