Wow! What a weekend! i think it was the largest conference we have had for some years. It was certainly the first to have a representative from every club in the federation.
The weather was good, although a bit chilly.
We met up with a lot of old friends and made some new ones.
Raffled off over $1,000 of goods, kindly donated by wholesalers and retailers.
Gave away a lot of spot prizes and auctioned off plants.
Had a great bus trip and visited the World Of Wearable Arts, along with the classic cars. Went to the Mapua Aquarium, Redwood Cellars (boy did they do a roaring trade!) and Eyebright, the country store.
Meals were tasty, even if we didn't get the custard for the apple crumble (as promised on our souvenir menus )
We had an in-house bar so those who wanted could go and watch the rugby, or attend the karaoke "White, Tight, or Bright" evening.
Larnce Witchman, from Burkhart Fisheries, gave us a Powerpoint presentation on the production of artemia (brine shrimp) eggs for the aquarium trade. Very interesting.
I would like to say WELL DONE to those Tasman Aquarium Club members who pitched in to make this weekend a success. Not only had they taken over the job of hosting conference at short notice but, being new FNZAS members, only one of them had ever attended a previous FNZAS conference so they were working blind. Talk about a steep learning curve! It all worked out in the end and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.
We look forward to next year's conference which will be at Rings Beach in the Coromandel.
Oh yeah, we had an AGM too :lol:
Congratulations to our new president - Paul Billaney! (who also won most of the trophies)
...and I will upload pics as soon as I have them resized and sorted.