A great many words of praise from all PESApersons are due to those who made so successful the AAPG 2006 International Conference and Exhibition in Perth last month. This praise is especially due to the Perth 2006 Organising Committee and the members of the Technical Program Committee.

The facts and figures of the event I will leave for the PESA President and others to present. Suffice to say that PESA’s hosting of this event made it the biggest and arguably the best AAPG International ever.

On attendance alone, the record from Rio de Janeiro has stood virtually unchallenged since 1998 (and it did include a lot of freebies anyway – but we won’t mention that). Perth not only topped Rio’s 2214 total but blew it away with 2630 registrants!

That figure includes students, partners, etc, and I prefer to use paying delegates as a measurement of attendance. The previous record was 1376, also at Rio, and the average is closer to 1100. Perth’s figure of 1733 was astounding to everyone.

Those numbers reflect the major support provided by both local and international companies, not only as attendees and presenters of papers and posters but also in generously providing sponsorship funds and participating in the exhibition.

PESA independently ran seven successful field trips, ranging from Shark Bay to the vineyards of the Southwest, and 10 short courses, and the partners’ programme was also very successful.

The Perth Organising Committee did a fantastic job. There were thank-you gifts to the Chair and Vice-Chairs at the opening ceremony but the success of an event lies in the hours (nay, days and weeks) of unseen work by the committee members.

The success of the exhibition may have been very clear to all visitors but few saw the hours of phone calls and emails by Stuart Brown (Woodside) and John Boldock (ASB), the co-chairs for the exhibition sales.

Less obvious to delegates but very important to AAPG and PESA were the generous sponsorship contributions that underwrote the expense of such an event. Roger Bartlett (Chevron) and Michael Daniels (Helix) spoke to hundreds of companies and did a fantastic job.

The success of the short courses and field trips was a bonus. In Paris last year, these programmes were not successful, with most cancelled. AAPG and PESA were both anxious to achieve a better result at Perth and did so, thanks to the efforts of Barry Goldstein (PIRSA) and Cecilia d’Ercole (Bow Energy) for short courses and Greg Carlsen (DOIR) and Roger Hocking (DOIR) for the field trips. We saw a lot of their email with attendees, and the myriad problems with accommodation, missing instructors and the like, and can vouch for the time and effort involved.

On the publicity and publications side, we had the benefit of the expertise of PESA News publisher Brian Wickins (RESolutions). Brian was able to handle the printing of the programme etc in-country, greatly simplifying the task and cost of shipping from USA, as AAPG has done at all previous conferences.

Praise also to Craig Dempsey (BHP Billiton) who organised volunteers: Pinar Yilmaz (ExxonMobil) and John Bedingfield (Apache) who did the management forum; and Lindsay Elliot (Source Consulting), Dave Cliff (Hardman) and Jon Roestenburg (Geotransformations) who did the judging.

For all that, the quality of a conference is determined fundamentally by the technical programme and this was an outstanding success. Over 600 posters and talks were presented over the three days, mostly running in five concurrent sessions.

Herein was the constant complaint of the conference: delegate after delegate bemoaned to me the high quality of so many papers, making it impossible for them to attend everything they wanted to!

Now there’s a complaint that is nought but praise for the technical programme chairs, John Kaldi (CO2 CRC) and Ian Russel (ExxonMobil) and their hard-working committee, especially Alex Kaiko (Tap/Helix) and Peter Lloyd (Heriot Watt University), posters co-chairs: Steve Moss (Apache/MMMM), Mitch Harris (Chevron) and Bill Robinson (Chevron), Oral Sessions Co-chairs: Dave Dewhurst and Neil Thompson.

At the executive end of the committee was Agu Kantsler (Woodside) as chairman, Peter Baillie as finance chair and ourselves a s vice-chair.

A special thanks is due from all to Woodside for their support, not only through Agu and Stuart, but also to many others, most especially Olivia Feltham.

PESA should enjoy a good income from the Conference and that will benefit PESApersons for years to come.

But, conference and much-deserved praisin’ over, we’ve gone fishin’. Actually, we’ve gone to see some relatives, albeit very distant, both geographically and primately. We met up in the mists of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and I want no letters pointing out the oxymoron of a meeting inside the impenetrable. Having run out of time to get more words delivered to the editor by cleft stick, we send this photo instead.

Peter Purcell

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We’ve gone to see some relatives, albeit very distant, both geographically and primately, in the mists of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda.