Who Are We and What Do We Do?
Welcome from the Chairman

Greetings and thanks for visiting the website of The Australian National Square Dance Convention Board.
We appreciate your interest and we’d be even more interested in receiving your feedback to enable us to continue and improve the information supplied to dancers and supporters.
This website is our endeavour to show dancers how and why our Board operates.
As you navigate through the various menus you’ll be able to access information about our Board Members, the Board’s duties and responsibilities, the interesting history of previous National Conventions dating back to the first in 1960, as well as exciting news about current and future Nationals.
Questions?
Contact us and we’d be delighted to guide you to and through any aspect of National Conventions which might be of intertest to you.
Nev McLachlan
Chairman
Australian National Square Dance Conventions Board Inc
Next National Square Dance Convention

Purposes
The purposes of the association are to oversee the holding of Australian National Square
Dance Conventions including, but not limited to:-
- receipt of applications (bids) to hold future conventions;
- analysis of competing bids and determination of the most suitable bid;
- licensing sub-committees to organise conventions on such terms as are deemed appropriate;
- maintaining and developing, as deemed appropriate, rules and guidelines for the operation of conventions;
- if, deemed necessary in extreme circumstances, underwriting the costs of a particular convention;
- if, deemed necessary in extreme circumstances, taking over the organisation of a particular convention.
Overview
The term “Board” is used in a number of ways but in essence “The Board” refers to the Australian National Square Dance Convention Board Inc. (hereafter referred to as the Board or the ANSDCB Inc.)
Initially formed many decades ago as the National Convention Advisory Board it consisted of the convenors of the last convention held in each state or area to guide existing convention committees with the task of conducting a National Convention in an advisory capacity. It had a process whereby the Convenor of the last convention in the state or area would step down and be replaced with the current convenor each year.
Over the course of many years this process proved to be worthwhile, however as time progressed along with the introduction of a manual for conducting a National Convention there was a need to make this more formal.
The Annual General Meeting (now called the Dancers’ Interest Meeting) used to be overburdened with constitutional amendments, manual changes along with a number of time consuming administrative requirements which overall made the meeting quite “boring & uninteresting”. To alleviate this the meeting approved that all this be the responsibility of the Board who had the expertise and knowledge to action all the requirements.
The Board become incorporated in 2008 and is now responsible for the selection of future conventions including overseeing the preparation and their reports along with monitoring and maintaining the following list of documents:
- The Rules of the Australian National Square Dance Conventions Board Inc.
- The Regulations as applies to the operations of Australian National Square Dance Conventions Board Inc.
- The Manual for the operation of Australian National Square Dance Conventions.
Convention committees were tradidtionally under the auspices of a state body and whilst this provided some structure for the committee, it still left some ‘grey areas’ and the convention committees still had to set-up a number of separate things.
With the Board being incorporated and convention committees now set-up as sub-committees of the Board this assists the convention committees with continued insurances for their convention and the establishment of bank accounts to alleviate this being done by every convention committee.
The Board meets twice at all National Conventions, once before the convention starts and once on the last afternoon to deal with all these administrative requirement thus ensuring that the Dancers Interest Meeting can be informative to all those who attend.
Our Board must not be seen as a body which tells us how our conventions are to be run.
Do you know who the Convention Board Member are?
Below is a list of past and present board members,
Management Committee
2022 – 2023
Updated 21st April 2022
Chairman | Nev McLachlan | Queensland |
Deputy Chairman | Howard Cockburn | Victoria |
Executive Secretary | Anthea Matthews * | Western Australia |
Treasurer | Bev McLachlan | Queensland |
Archives Manager | Barbara Treharne * | Victoria |
Documents Manager | Barry Chandler | Tasmania |
MyCAV Delegates | Anthea Matthews * Barry Chandler Nev McLachlan Kevin Thomas | Western Australia Tasmania Queensland Victoria |
Ordinary Members | Kevin Kelly Leanne Nicholson | Western Australia New South Wales |
* Denotes Associate Members
Members
Nev McLachlan | Queensland | Bev McLachlan | Queensland |
Barry Chandler | Tasmania | Anthea Matthews * | Western Australia |
Kevin Kelly | Western Australia | Allen Kerr | Australian Capital territory |
Leanne Nicholson | New South Wales | Kevin Thomas | Victoria |
Richard Muir | Western Australia | Jason Nicholson | New South Wales |
Robyn Kerr | Australian Capital Territory | Howard Cockburn | Victoria |
`Rosalind Todd | New South Wales | Kaye Chandler | Tasmania |
Graham Elliott | South Australia | Mike Davey | Victoria |
Marilyn van Sambeeck | Western Australia | Steve Turner | Western Australia |
Barbara Treharne * | Victoria |
Past Members
Marion Brown (Dec) | Victoria | Ivan Dawes (Dec) | Western Australia |
Frank O'Mara | New South Wales | Terry Pollycutt | Australian Capital Territory |
Graham Rigby (Dec) | Queensland | Kit Spalding | New South Wales |
Jim White (Dec) | New South Wales | Jan Woodget | South Australia |
Ron Whyte (Dec) | Victoria | Ella Whyte | Victoria |
David Armstrong | South Australia | John Weatherburn | Tasmania |
Bruce Clarke (Dec) | New South Wales | David Smythe | Queensland |
Leighton Bloomfield | Queensland | Sandra Bloomflield | Queensland |
Dawn Elliot | South Australia | Gary Brown (Dec) | Victoria |
David Todd | New South Wales | Gail Guiliano | Australian Capital Territory |
Jeff Seidel | South Australia | Gordon Hearne | New South Wales |
Tony Hooper | Northern Territory |