“Sometime in early 1994 or late 93, Peter Hales and I discussed the option of having a local hand surgery association. We purloined a copy of the New South Wales Hand Surgery Association Constitution and I modified that to suit Western Australia. I wrote to all plastic and orthopaedic surgeons as well as the therapists to canvass interest. I’m not sure whether I wrote to the therapists' associations or just to the individuals I thought would be interested.

I don’t even have a copy of our Constitution. I did give Rohan a copy of the hand modified NSW constitution.

The first meeting was held on 28th May 1994 at the rooms of Hales, Smith and myself. I attach a scan of the minutes. I was to be secretary and Hales the president, which meant I did all the organising. After that meeting I wrote to various parties such as the college, AOA local, WASPS, AHSS etc. I also confirmed our tax free status with the ATO. The three levels of membership referred to consultants as active members, trainees as associate members and therapists as affiliate members.

As you will see from the minutes we held journal clubs about every three months at usually at our rooms I recall and we usually got in Indian food from across the road. Attendance was variable.

We also had clinical meetings twice a year with cases etc sometimes at our rooms and at others in the teaching hospitals.

We had annual meetings with a guest local speaker and dinner that evening. A couple of times we had interstate guests Michael Sandow and Greg Bain for instance. One time we held a joint meeting with the rheumatologists for our AGM. That was a bit of a disaster as they had no discipline time wise. There was never any sponsorship by the trade as I recall.

We also had meetings when there was a overseas hand surgeon in town, usually the AHSS visitor and we made them honorary members. Giorgio Brunelli, Ulrich Mennen, John Stanley, Michael Sandow as well as Bill Gilmore and Peter Silbert I recall were made honorary members.

After about five years Hales decided he didn’t want to be president and I took over the job with Tony Jeffries secretary. After that things sort of ground to a halt for one reason or another until Jeff resurrected it some years ago.”

The more recent history of the society has been enabled by the hard work of Jeff Ecker. Jeff’s dedication to education has facilitated the ongoing collegiate meetings amongst members and our hand therapy colleagues.