A happy new year to you all and I hope everyone is feeling refreshed and ready to get back into practice in our lead up to Perth.

In relation to Perth, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the following points;

1. We need to pay for the airline tickets in early February. So we need the balance of people's money by the end of January. The details on costs etc are outlined elsewhere in the Newsletter by Amy Martin. The costing for players have been worked out on the basis that the band will subsidise 50% of players' airfare, accommodation for 5 nights, and travel to and from the ground.
2. The financial situation of the band is very tight in relation to meeting the 50% subsidy commitment for Perth. This is obviously a lot of money for the band to raise, but the Committee of the band is confident that we can achieve it. However, it will require players and supporters to be prepared to attend a number of engagements and fundraising endeavours over the next couple of months. In particular we have a fund raising night organised for February 24. It will be held in the Club, music will be by the Hugh McKenna and Norman Maclean combo and it will cost $5 per head. Please encourage as many of your friends and relatives etc to come along.

Another important development over the last month or so is that it looks like we have secured the services of a side drummer from Canada for a period of around 12 months. His name is Dan Bist aged 22 and he was one of the respondents to advertisements we have placed internationally in recent months. At this stage it looks like he will arrive in Canberra on 31 January. The deal we have offered him is that we pay half his airfare initially, then after 6 months if we are happy with his commitment and input to the band we will re-imburse him the other half of his airfare. It will be his responsibility to look for employment. However, we have indicated we will provide him with as much help in this regard as possible. He has a Bachelor of Science, with majors in mathematics, statistics and computing, He is however prepared to take on almost anything. So if you hear of any employment opportunities, please keep Dan in mind. Dan comes to us with outstanding personal references from bob and Alexandra Skelly, the Canadian couple who recently joined the band for a couple of months while they were in Canberra. Finally, a few comments on Daylesford. Overall I thought it was an enjoyable couple of days and my thanks to Eunice for organising the travel and accommodation. Both were terrific. In terms of the band's performance I have mixed feelings. On the positive side, it was good to pick up a couple of prizes. I was also pleased with the performance of the drum corps in both bands. The 2nd grade corps came 2nd and the 4th grade corps came 4th. In both cases they finished ahead of the pipe corps and showed an improvement on previous performances. This certainly suggests that the players have benefited from the Jim Kilpatrick visit and are improving steadily. On the negative side however I am disappointed in our piping performance. Errors and players cutting in and out were occurring in both bands. In competitions of that standard - and of course in an Australian Championship - we are no chance of winning if these are errors consistently throughout a performance. No matter how good we can get the sound, we cannot expect to win under these circumstances. The responsibility for eliminating these problems rests with each individual. I cannot do it for you. So in terms of reducing and hopefully eliminating the error rate - the ball is in your court. And if the errors keep coming, I really will have no option but to leave the offenders out. There is too much at stake in Perth for me to jeopardise our chances by playing people I am not confident about. We have a couple of competitions coming up prior to Perth and I am hoping to see a considerable improvement in this aspect of out piping performances. Athol Chalmers