Problems with SBW's PLB document

From: Brett Davis To: info@shoalhavenbushwalkers.com Subject: Problems with SBW's PLB document Date sent: March 29, 2025

Hi SBW committee, Like many of the club’s safety documents, the “Use and Procedural Issues with PLBs” document has many problems which not only went unnoticed by the document’s creator but also went unnoticed by the other twelve members of the committee who supposedly examined the document prior to its publication and implementation by the club. Some of the document’s problems are relatively minor – for example, is there really a need to define “the activity leader” as “the leader of the activity”? Another relatively minor problem is the typo in the second bullet point under “Procedure” which jumbles the acronym for Personal Locator Beacon into “PBL” rather than “PLB”. Although it is relatively minor, how can the thirteen members of the committee not notice this error – especially in a safety document? The same bullet point says that “If a personal PBL (sic) is to be used on a Club activity, then the emergency contact details of that PLB must be written on the bottom of the attendance/waiver sheet before emailing to sbwwaiver@gmail.com” – but there is very little room at the bottom of the form to write the names, email addresses and phone numbers of the three emergency contacts if there are 20 or more people on the walk – see below. The procedure says to activate the PLB in an emergency and follows this up with “The Club Safety Contact will be contacted by AMSA should information be required”. Unfortunately, if the leader is using a personal PLB and not a club PLB, the procedure falls apart at this point, because AMSA will not contact the Club Safety Contact – they will actually contact the people registered as contacts on the personal PLB – who may not be associated with SBW in any way. Again, how can the thirteen members of the committee not notice this error – especially in a safety document? This procedure needs to be fixed! Regards, Brett TOP

This page shows one of the 35 suggestions to improve the club and its procedures sent by the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers webmaster to the SBW committee in 2025. The Shoalhaven Bushwalkers webmaster would have his membership cancelled for sending in these suggestions, although the real reason was probably because of two disputes he raised with the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers committee which they seemingly did not want to deal with. The cancellation of the webmaster's membership was arguably illegal under NSW law and could lead to the club being taken to court.