The End

The SBW committee decided to cancel the membership of Brett Davis (with absolutely no warning at all) at a meeting on April 15th 2025 - as shown on the Cancellation page. Under the terms of the club's constitution, Brett then had one month to present an explanation to the committee - although the most likely explanation is shown in the panel at right

The committee had called Brett's many suggestions for improvements to the club "a vexatious deployment of email communication", but unfortunately had not specified whether it was the number, the length, the frequency or the content of the emails that was vexatious. In addition, the committee had never produced guidelines about any limitations on the number, length, frequency or content of emails that could be sent to the club, so providing an explanation was difficult because no rules had been broken.

Brett provided the committee with a comprehensive response - sent on May 12th - which can be read here - the former Webmaster's response to his SBW membership cancellation

The content of that response email was deliberately vexatious so the committee could see what a vexatious email actually looked like. 😀

After receiving Brett's response, the SBW committee met again on May 17th and unanimously confirmed its decision to cancel Brett's membership. They sent their confirmation email on May 19th. As the committee that sentenced the former Webmaster was the same committee that considered Brett's explanation, it is not surprising that their decision remained the same. Brett had until Saturday 19th July to exercise his right to appeal this decision at a general meeting.

For more than a month - from May 20th until June 20th - the former Webmaster made repeated requests via email for the committee to provide club members with access to the allegedly "vexatious emails" so they could make an informed decision at a general meeting about whether those emails were "vexatious" or not.

Brett made this process as simple as possible by creating a web page containing a list of his emailed suggestions - see https://www.emailstoshoalhavenbushwalkers.com/index.html

He sent one email to the club's email address of info@shoalhavenbushwalkers.com on May 20th. After 15 days without a response, he sent a second email to the same address on June 4th.

After nine more days of committee silence, Brett sent his third request for the committee to provide club members with access to the allegedly "vexatious emails" - but this time he sent the email to the private email addresses of all committee members, fearing that the lack of response from the committee to his first two emails may have indicated that the info@shoalhavenbushwalkers.com email address had stopped working. This third request was sent on June 13th.

Again, the committee failed to respond to that email, but additionally, not one of the individual Shoalhaven Bushwalkers committee members responded to that third email either, clearly demonstrating their disregard of fairness and lack of integrity of all Shoalhaven Bushwalkers committee members - Andy Winfield, John Souter, Marg O’Shea, Rick O’Shea, Clare Lord, Sue Feary, Albert Forgan, Ines Gale, Jennifer Himmelreich, Greg Smith, Lee Cordner and Ellis Gentle. Brett's latest emails have been kept SECRET and have never been answered or actioned, just as the details of his allegedly "vexatious emails" were kept SECRET from the members of the club who were supposed to decide his fate.

After more than seven weeks of silence from the committee - which showed that they would not provide club members with the information they would need to determine the former Webmaster's guilt or innocence - Brett emailed the committee on July 11th with his decision to exercise his right to appeal at a general meeting, under Rule 6 (b) (iii) of the SBW constitution.

The committee - who had not bothered acknowledging or replying to any of Brett's emails for the previous eight weeks - now responded within two days! Here is the body of that response ...

Receipt of your email of July 11, 2025 is acknowledged. Your intention to exercise your right of appeal under rule 6 (b) (iii) is noted. The Committee will meet to determine the date, time and venue of a General Meeting to hear your appeal. To assist with organisation, please indicate whether you will be making your appeal in person or in writing.

Brett replied with two emails. One stated the obvious - "Until I know the date, time and venue of the general meeting where my appeal will be heard, I have no way of determining what form my appeal will take." The second email was an annoyed response to the committee after their two months of total silence. It can be found here.

In the meantime, as a direct result of the committee's continuing SECRECY - and in the interest of openness and honesty - Brett provided the content for this website. He also sent a private email to his soon to be former "friends" on the committee as well. It can be read here.

On July 22nd the SBW committee announced that Brett's appeal would be heard at a general meeting on the evening of August 14th. The only item on the agenda at this meeting would be the cancellation of the Brett's membership. The club's AGM had been scheduled for this date, but the committee decided to postpone the AGM to a future time.

Because of their lack of knowledge about the constitution and the history of the club, the new members of the committee may have been unaware that a general meeting had always preceded the AGM up until the formation of the committees mentioned in this history, so there was no need to move the 2025 AGM to another date. The extra organisation and cost of an additional meeting could have been avoided.

Or perhaps the committee was aware of the precedent, but chose to separate the general meeting from the AGM to ensure a smaller attendance where committee members would be in the majority and the cancellation of Brett's membership would be ensured.

As it turned out, Brett would be doing two weeks of volunteer work for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy at their Scotia sanctuary in western New South Wales at the time of the general meeting, and would have to provide his appeal via email.

One wonders why the SBW committee did not liaise with Brett for a mutually agreed date for the general meeting ...

This page will be updated as required when additional relevant events transpire ... 😀

TOP