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Kalymaro Eras

About This History

The era summaries and narrative chapters that follow have been compiled with the help of Claude, an AI assistant, working from Kalymaro's scanned historical records — minutes, correspondence, financial reports, newsletters, and member accounts — spanning many decades.

Every effort has been made to check facts against the original documents and to flag anything uncertain, contradictory, or based on recollection rather than written record. Even so, gaps in the archive, inconsistencies between records, and the limits of any such process mean some details may be incomplete or, in places, mistaken.

Members are warmly encouraged to add further detail, clarification, or correction. Please get in touch with the Secretary at alpinesports@kalymaro.com.

Kalymaro Lodge, 1995–1999

Kalymaro was founded in 1963 — a date supported by more than one reference in this era's own records: a mention of the "Twenty-Eighth Annual General Meeting" held in June 1990, a 1999 notice to members describing an upcoming rule change as the first since "the founding of Kalymaro in the 1960s," and an October 1999 Newsletter that traces the club's Rules back to "the birth of the club in the early 1960s." By the mid-1990s, then, the club was in its early thirties — long enough to have settled habits, and long enough for some of its rules and practices to need revisiting.

Office holders, 1995–1999

Peter Ball held the Presidency through the middle of this era. He's recorded as President at the Annual General Meetings of both 27 June 1997 and 26 June 1998, chairing each meeting. By the Board meeting of 5 December 1998, and again in the 1999 AGM notice, Barry McFadzean is President. The handover happened sometime in the second half of 1998; the exact date isn't recorded. Both men also appear at different points connected to the Treasurer's role in the records, so it isn't fully clear how the two offices were shared or handed on around this time.

Mary Clemesha served as Director and Secretary for most of this period. The 1997 AGM was held at her home in Olola Avenue, Vaucluse, with Mary and fellow Director Robert Mason thanked for providing food and drink, and Mary again for the use of the house. By late 1999, Gerald Lynch signs the AGM notice as "Secretary and Director," so the role passed to him at some point that year; again, no exact date survives.

The Board across these years also included Mark Cahill, Peter Shea, Eric Sierins (who resigned in 1998/99 and was replaced by Jill Murray), Madeleine Spitzer (who retired from the Board in 1999), and Janet McFadzean, who was a Director in her own right as well as the club's Booking Officer.

Membership and family life

Kalymaro's membership through this era was made up largely of families. The Ball family alone had eight members recorded at once; the Druces, McFadzeans, Clemeshas, Lynches, Cahills, Carlisles, Hallidays, Hendrys, O'Briens, Murrays and Sheas each had four or more. Parents and children skied under the same family name, and much of the club's day-to-day character came from this — an extended group of families who happened to also run a lodge and a set of accounts together.

Members left as well as joined, and the record of departures is often as warm as the record of arrivals. When Campbell Capel wrote to the Board in June 1998 to resign — he could no longer get to the snow for family medical reasons — he thanked the Board for "the great work you are all doing," called their role "at times a difficult and thankless task," and said he hoped his resignation would make space for "a more active member" to join. He'd attended that year's AGM in person, under the name "Cam Capel," a few days before writing the letter.

The club's finances, 1996–1999

Across the three years to 31 March 1998, Kalymaro's income stayed close to $38,000–$40,000 a year, with accommodation receipts making up most of it. The club ran a surplus each of those years — $8,327, then $12,784, then $7,275 — and accumulated funds grew from $51,885 to $71,944 over the period. Interest income declined gradually each year, and the members' loan liability, dating to the 1987 levy, fell from $83,650 to around $77,000. By December 1998 the Treasurer described the position as "comfortable," and the Board moved $30,000 into an investment bond.

The year to 31 March 1999 recorded a loss of $7,594.14 — the first loss in this run of figures. The auditor's notes attribute this to a combination of factors: some FY1998 expenses that had gone unrecorded that year were caught up in FY1999; depreciation increased sharply as old furniture and fittings were written down to nil; and the National Parks and Wildlife Service changed the timing of its Community Service Charge instalments, so that four fell within this one financial year instead of the usual two ($12,290 in FY1999 against $1,116 the year before). Despite the loss on paper, the club's bank balance rose slightly over the year, from $38,485 to $39,781.

The maintenance budget for this period was $5,000 a year, which the Board itself noted, in a February 1999 Newsletter, was "not adequate to meet annual, routine items of maintenance." Specific items awaiting attention included ageing drying-room heaters (one, the Newsletter noted, "as old as the Lodge itself"), dining and lounge room heaters with no parts support left from the manufacturer, fire-resistant ceiling work, connecting the two hot water services, external painting, and a longer-term need to refurbish the bathrooms and toilets and address damp downstairs.

The January 1999 member questionnaire also asked directly how satisfied members were with specific parts of the lodge. Bathroom facilities came in at 77.7% satisfied, with 14.8% of respondents specifically suggesting the upstairs bathrooms could be upgraded in time. Kitchen facilities scored lowest of all at 66.6% satisfied, with members describing it as cramped, poorly laid out, and difficult to work in with more than two people at once, and asking for a better dishwasher and lighting. Bedrooms came in at 85.2% satisfied, general state of repair at 81.4% (with painting, stonework, and the drying-room and dining heaters mentioned again), and quality of furnishings at 88.9%. Separately, 74% of members agreed the Board should provide more funding for maintenance and improvements as the lodge aged, though a number were careful to draw a line between ordinary maintenance, which they were happy to fund, and larger capital improvements, which some felt should wait.

The building itself was carried in the accounts at a cost of $257,914, against accumulated depreciation. The 1999 accounts note that this figure wasn't independently revalued that year — the Board relied on the value carried in previous years' accounts. A separate, one-off accounting clean-up took place on 1 April 1997, when $30,860 in old furniture and fittings balances was written off the books, alongside the normal year's depreciation.

Rules and subscriptions, 1990–1998

At Kalymaro's 28th Annual General Meeting, on 15 June 1990, members had voted in two rules: one defining "active membership," and one fixing the annual subscription at $25 a year, with an amendment on the night — moved by Mark Cahill, seconded by Peter Carlisle — that gave members, not the Board, the power to vote on forfeiting a member's shares for non-payment. Member Robert Murray proposed the final, amended motion himself.

Behind this whole subscription and loan question sat an earlier decision with a very concrete purpose. The original loan resolution, passed on 30 June 1987, is quoted in full in the 1997 AGM minutes: it raised $1,000 from each member, interest-free, specifically "towards the funding of extensions to the lodge," with the principal to be repaid by 31 December 2002. The records don't say exactly what the extension involved — which rooms or wing were added — but the loan itself was building finance, not general working capital, and it's this same loan that the club spent the rest of the 1990s trying to work out how to repay.

In the years that followed, the subscription rose well above $25, reaching $100 by 1997 (per Robert Murray's letters) and $150 by 1998–99 (per the February 1999 Newsletter), softened by discounts for members who used the lodge or attended working bees. Robert Murray wrote to Secretary Mary Clemesha about this in June 1997, pointing out that the increases weren't consistent with the 1990 rule, and received no reply. He raised the same point from the floor at the 1997 AGM, and again by fax to Mark Cahill in June 1998.

The Board addressed this at its meeting of 5 December 1998: Peter Carlisle moved, and Mark Cahill seconded, that the subscription be reduced to $25 from the 1999 season. The February 1999 Newsletter confirms this was implemented, with subscriptions from then on invoiced directly rather than deducted from members' loan balances.

The 1997 Annual General Meeting

The 34th AGM was held on 27 June 1997 at Mary Clemesha's home in Vaucluse. Peter Ball, as President, chaired. A tribute was paid to Jenny Druce "for many years of service... on behalf of Michael," followed by condolences on the passing of "Mike" — understood to be Michael Druce, a long-standing member.

The meeting's main business concerned the 1987 loan levy and its 2002 repayment date. A Board motion to remove the fixed 2002 date, replacing it with repayment only when a member left the club or the lease expired, was put to the members. An amendment (Jerry — properly Gerry — Lynch, seconded Mark Cahill) proposing instead a three-yearly review after 2002 was lost, 20 votes to 17. The main motion, moved by Mary Clemesha and seconded by Eric Sierins, was then also lost, 23 to 15. A counter-motion from members Charles and Linda Hoy, to reaffirm the Board's 1987 commitment to repay by 2002, was recorded as lost as well, 19 votes for to 18 against — an outcome the minutes don't explain, since more members voted for it than against. As a result, the loan-repayment question remained unresolved after this meeting.

A proposed Life Membership rule — eligibility after 30 continuous years as a senior member — was also put to this AGM and lost, 18 to 14. This is the reason no life members appear anywhere in this era's records: the rule that would have created the category was never passed.

A Proxy Voting rule, moved by Ian and Rosie Hendry, was debated and passed, 29 votes to 4.

Under Other Business, Ross Hendry raised, without formally moving, two proposals about Board conflicts of interest and disclosure of benefits; these were discussed generally but not put to a vote. Robert Murray also asked, from the floor, that subscription increases only be made at an AGM rather than by the Board alone, and asked for a written reply.

The 1998 Annual General Meeting

The AGM of 26 June 1998 was held at the White City Club, Sydney, with Peter Ball again presiding. The Directors' Report and accounts for the year to 31 March 1998 were received and adopted (moved Rob O'Brien, seconded Eric Sierins, unanimous). The meeting then covered a range of maintenance items: new heaters installed at a cost of $6,000, the lounge room and architraves painted, the chimney flue replaced and reinforced against heavy snow, and a request that members not run the thermostat at full. A tradesman's cost was noted at $700 a day "in the valley."

When the meeting reached the item on electing Directors, Gerry Lynch raised a point of order that all Directors should stand down, since a rule change underpinning their eligibility hadn't been registered with the Department. Peter Carlisle suggested the meeting be abandoned; Mark Cahill raised the possibility of using rule 28b of the constitution to address the issue properly. After discussion, the Chairman closed the meeting at 9:30pm, with the remaining items to be worked through informally and a follow-up meeting to be arranged once the eligibility question was resolved.

A Special (Extraordinary) General Meeting followed on 11 September 1998, evidently to address this. Both the October 1998 and October 1999 Newsletters also mention a further attempt at holding a meeting that turned out, on the day, not to be a valid AGM due to a separate procedural issue — it isn't clear from the records whether this refers to the same sequence of meetings or a distinct occasion.

The Board meeting of 5 December 1998

The Board met on 5 December 1998 at Dormie House, Moss Vale — the 196th Board meeting on record. Several governance matters were addressed at this meeting, in addition to the subscription decision noted above.

A barrister's opinion was obtained on whether Directors appointed after the Board's expansion to nine members had been validly appointed, given the expansion had not been registered as a Rule change. The official 1998 Annual Return, lodged with the Registrar of Co-operatives, records the Board's size as eight active member Directors as at 31 March 1997, rising to nine as at 31 March 1998 — dating the expansion to the 1997/98 financial year.

The Board also identified a likely breach of Rule 6(b), which capped loans raised from members at $20,000, and discussed whether members' loans had been made compulsory, which could have implications under the Co-operatives Act. Rule 6 and a Proxy Voting amendment, both passed at the 11 September 1998 EGM, were noted as needing registration with the Registrar.

Following the December meeting, a questionnaire went to members in January 1999. Of the responses received, 70% favoured remaining a co-operative rather than adopting a corporate structure; 63% agreed members bore primary responsibility for repaying the club's loans; and 85.2% did not support a further upgrade of the lodge (such as ensuite bedrooms), citing the club's affordable, family-focused character.

Towards a new Constitution, 1999

Through 1999, the NSW Department of Fair Trading required co-operatives to adopt updated Constitutions, based on a model set of Rules, by the end of that year, or risk having the model imposed by the Registrar. Kalymaro's Board, with a draft prepared by Mark Cahill, called the 37th AGM for 6 November 1999 at the White City Tennis Club, Paddington, with the new Constitution as Special Business. The Notice describes this as the first full rewrite of the club's Rules "since the founding of Kalymaro in the 1960s." The vote passed unanimously.

At the same AGM, Barry McFadzean was re-elected President, Jill Murray (who had joined the Board to fill Eric Sierins's vacancy) was confirmed in her position, and Madeleine Spitzer retired from the Board without seeking re-election.

Life at the lodge

The club's Newsletters from this period give a good sense of daily life alongside the governance business. On 7 February 1999, the Board held its regular meeting at the lodge itself, combined with a working bee — described in the Newsletter as "probably one of a very few meetings held at the Lodge and possibly the only such meeting in the Club's history." Five of seven Directors made the trip; the other two joined by phone. Painting and stonework repointing were completed over the weekend. Barry McFadzean "provided a feast of burnt offerings for lunch on Saturday," and thanks were extended to "the Murray Family (who turned out in full strength... Robert, Jill, Douglas and Peter), Sid McFadzean's taxi service and Jan Lynch's Rhubarb Crumble."

The Newsletters carried a fair amount of humour alongside the practical business. A recurring mention of "Harry the Wombat" appears in connection with the Ski Patrol; a description of the local Pygmy Possum as "shy, agile, nocturnal... which also describes a number of Kalymaro members"; a "Corrections" column fixing small errors from the previous issue; and, after a membership census was circulated, a report that "the two members (0.87% of possible responses)" had replied.

Membership changes were reported in the same pages. Kevin Cahill resigned from the club, making space available for new members to join; his granddaughter, Dominique Cahill, is recorded joining as a member around the same time. Adrianne Pecotic also joined, alongside existing members Mark and Dominique Cahill. Charles and Lindy Hoy, and Vimala O'Brien, resigned. A number of Juniors turned 18 within a short space of time and converted to Senior membership together. The club's Visitors' Book was noted as being onto its fourth volume, the first volume having been lost some years earlier by a member who had borrowed it and not returned it.

Sources

Founding year (1963) established elsewhere in this Project; corroborating references in 1998_Kalymaro_Rules_Rob_Murray_Letter, p.2; 1999_Kalymaro__AGM_Notice_of_Meeting, p.1; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_News_Oct99, p.1
1997_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, p.1; 1998_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, p.1; 1998__5_December_Board_Meeting_Minutes, p.9; 1999_Kalymaro__AGM_Notice_of_Meeting, p.2
1997_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, p.1
1998__Clifford_Audited_Financials_Full, multiple pages ("Clemsha"); 1997_Kalymaro__Payments_Made_April_1996_to_March_1997 ("Clemesha")
1998_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, p.1; 1998_Kalymaro_Membership__Campbell_Capel
1997_Kalymaro_Financial_Reports, p.1; 1998_Kalymaro_Financial_Reports, pp.1–2; 1998__5_December_Board_Meeting_Minutes, p.3
1999_Kalymaro_Accounts_Audited, pp.4–6
1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, pp.3–4
1998_Kalymaro_Rules_Rob_Murray_Letter, pp.1–4; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, p.1
1998__5_December_Board_Meeting_Minutes, p.7; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, p.1
1997_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, pp.1, 3–7
1998_Kalymaro_AGM_Minutes, pp.1, 3
1998_Kalymaro_Newsletter_Newsletter199810, p.1; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_News_Oct99, p.1
1998__5_December_Board_Meeting_Minutes, pp.1, 7–8; 1998_Kalymaro_Annual_Return, p.1
1999_Kalymaro__6_February_Board_Meeting_Agenda, pp.11–15
1999_Kalymaro__AGM_Notice_of_Meeting, pp.1–2
1998__Clifford_Audited_Financials_Full, p.10 (furniture and fittings write-off, 1 April 1997)
1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, p.3
1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_News_Christmas99, pp.2–3; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, p.4
1998_Kalymaro_Newsletter_Newsletter199810, p.2; 1999_Kalymaro_Newsletter_199902_Newsletter, p.5

Note: Several items remain flagged as uncertain or unresolved and are deliberately not stated as settled fact here: the exact date of Peter Ball's handover of the Presidency to Barry McFadzean; whether Peter Ball held the Treasurer's role concurrently with the Presidency; the exact date of Mary Clemesha's handover of the Secretary's role to Gerald Lynch; the membership figure of 116 versus 127 questionnaire responses; the exact pre-1987 loan amount; the timing of Kalymaro's 1995 lease payment relative to the 1996 Kosciuszko Lease Extensions project; a $300 reconciliation gap between two figures for the 1998 members' loan balance, both appearing in the club's own official Annual Return; an inconsistency in the AGM's own sequential numbering across 1997–1999 documents; the 19-for/18-against vote recorded as "lost" at the 1997 AGM; the exact date of the additional meeting attempt referenced in the Newsletters; the gap between a membership census's implied survey population and the ~112–116 active members recorded elsewhere; and exactly when the subscription moved from $100 to $150 before being cut to $25. These should be resolved, where possible, before this era is finalised for publication.

Kalymaro Lodge, 2000–2009: A Decade of Rebuilding

A changing of the guard

The decade opens with the 38th Annual General Meeting, held at the White City Tennis Club in Paddington on 26 August 2000. It was, by the record, a modest gathering — "a small but dedicated band," as the newsletter put it — but a significant one for the Board. Barry and Janet McFadzean, long-serving figures in the club's leadership through the 1990s, stood down. Barry chaired that AGM as the outgoing President; shortly afterward, the Board elected Mark Cahill to take over the role for 2000–2001, a position he would go on to hold continuously for the rest of the decade and beyond. Three newer members — Peter Shea, Jean Lynch and Andrew McFadzean — joined the Board at the same meeting.

Gerald Lynch continued as Secretary, a role he had taken on the previous year and would hold for roughly the next decade. It was Gerald's voice — warm, self-deprecating, and fond of a pun — that would give the newsletters of this era their distinctive character. Peter Carlisle remained Treasurer into 2001, before deciding not to continue in the role (no reason is recorded); Peter Shea took over as Treasurer from the December 2001 AGM and stayed in the post for years afterward — still, by 2009, described in the newsletter as "the current long suffering Treasurer."

Michael Clifford continued as the club's auditor throughout, reappointed at every AGM in this batch of records.

A club that needed money spent on it

The season immediately following that changeover was not an easy one. The Sydney Olympics drew visitors away from the mountains that September, and Kalymaro's accommodation income for the year came in well down — the newsletter noted receipts of around $21,000 for the year against $38,000 the year before. At the same AGM, the outgoing President had already flagged a more serious, longer-running problem: stonework on the 1980s extension was failing, water was getting into places it shouldn't, and a fair amount of money was going to be needed to put things right.

That problem had, in fact, already started to bite. Earlier in 2000, Bellevarde Constructions had quoted $13,000–$15,000 to fix the failing stone cladding — stones were coming loose near where people walked. The Board could only afford to do the safety-critical part straight away, which came in at around $6,260. In the course of that work, the builder found a support beam under the verandah rotted through by water penetration, with no damp course ever having been installed. It was shored up with steel props to get through the 2000 season, and the newsletter was candid with members that this was very much a stopgap rather than a fix.

By the end of 2000, the Board was telling members plainly that a serious injection of funds was needed — potentially $1,500 to $2,000 per member — and flagged a meeting early in the new year to discuss how to raise it.

The March 2001 Special General Meeting

That meeting was held on 3 March 2001. The Board's own explanatory paper to members, prepared for the occasion, is worth pausing on, because it lays out — for the first time in the records reviewed for this era — how the club had funded its big projects in the past. The original 1963 construction had been funded partly by a compulsory loan of £125 per member, which converted to $250 when Australia moved to decimal currency in February 1966. The 1980s extension had been funded by a further $1,000 compulsory loan, plus the sale of ten new memberships at an $8,000 premium each.

Members at the 2001 meeting approved a similar approach for the present problem: a $500 building levy on every existing member, a $2,000 non-refundable entrance fee for new members, and an expansion of the membership ceiling from 116 to 130. One member, Peter Ball, put forward an alternative proposal — a larger expansion to 136 members, funded through higher premiums rather than a levy — which the Board did not support, believing it would end up costing members more overall. Both proposals went to the meeting; the records reviewed here don't show how members actually voted on the alternative.

Peter Ball had earlier held the club's presidency, stepping down from that role in 1998 in favour of Barry McFadzean. He remained an ordinary member for some years after that, submitting this funding proposal in 2001, before retiring from the club later the same year along with a number of other long-time members — among them Graham and Louise Ball, Campbell and Richard Capel, Yvonne and Robert Clemesha, and Mac Halliday. The newsletter thanked them warmly for their contribution over the years, singling out Peter Ball's and his brother Graham's service on the Board in particular.

With the levy approved, Bellevarde Constructions went back to work over the following months. The trouble had started, as club memory has it, in a fairly undignified way: a member's knee went straight through the downstairs bathroom wall, which was how everyone first learned that the wall framing behind the tiles had rotted through. Once the builders opened things up, the problem turned out to run further than one soft patch of Gyprock. Continuous underground drainage was installed around the lodge for the first time, addressing a damp, musty smell in the basement that members had apparently long assumed was just part of the lodge's character. The verandah roof was rebuilt with proper flashing. The load-bearing wall at the western end of the verandah — found to have no waterproofing at all — was demolished and rebuilt, after the Secretary discovered a supporting timber so rotten that a table knife could be pushed straight through it to touch the Gyprock on the other side. The balustrade was replaced with a taller stainless-steel-wire railing to meet building code, and wall insulation went in for the first time as the cladding was replaced. The work was finished in time for the June 2001 season, and the newsletter's account of it — candid about how bad the underlying problems had turned out to be — is one of the liveliest pieces of writing in the whole decade's newsletters. Years later, in 2009, the newsletter would still refer back to this episode only obliquely, as "the Great Downstairs Bathroom Disaster," "spoken of only in hushed tones" — evidently a story every member of the time knew well, even if it never made it into the minutes in quite so much detail.

Kaly's story, told in full

It was also in these early-2000s newsletters that the club's long-standing mounted stag head — known to generations of members as "Kaly" — got his fullest telling. According to the account published in the newsletters of 2000 and 2001, the mount was bought by foundation President Don Hendry at the closing-down sale of a small restaurant in Asquith, north of Hornsby, "nearly forty winters ago" — that is, around the time of the lodge's founding, which other club records place at 1963. Don is said to have wedged the mounted head into the passenger seat of his Vauxhall Velox for the drive home to Vaucluse, to the visible astonishment of other motorists along the way. An inscription on the back of the mount — "Hardcastle – 1922 – Rotorua" — was traced, by a chance social encounter, to a Mrs Hardcastle, whose late husband had shot the animal on a hunting trip to New Zealand. A companion piece has Kaly himself writing in to object, with some indignation, to being nicknamed "Oscar" by less respectful younger members. It's the kind of story that could easily have been embellished in the retelling — but this is simply how it was recorded in the club's own newsletters at the time.

Settling into a rhythm — and a refurbishment plan takes shape

By December 2001, with the drainage and verandah work behind them, the Board turned its attention to the upstairs of the lodge. Architects Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke (working through Vince Myson) were commissioned to draw up three alternative refurbishment schemes for the kitchen, bathrooms, entry and stairwell, with indicative budgets ranging from around $60,750 to $122,162. These were shown to members at the AGM for comment; no particular scheme was committed to at this point; the club would spend the next few years working out exactly what it could afford.

In the meantime, ordinary club life continued. In 2002, the Board adopted a smoke-free policy across the whole lodge, including the basement — a decision the newsletter noted had been well accepted by members. The January 2003 bushfires, which burnt some 468,000 hectares of Kosciuszko National Park, brought temporary NPWS access restrictions to fire-affected areas around the resort. Later that year the Board added a formal by-law on illegal drug use, prompted partly by the patchwork of different marijuana laws between the ACT and NSW at the time, and keen to remove any ambiguity for members and guests.

The 2003 Annual General Meeting

At the 40th AGM, held 29 March 2003, saw Nicole Harris and Tony Mallis elected to the Board. Tony Mallis would go on to serve continuously through the rest of the decade and well beyond.

The long road to a new roof and bathrooms

By 2003 and 2004, the newsletters were candidly listing an accumulating backlog of jobs: new upstairs bathrooms and kitchen improvements, a wider and safer staircase, a rebuilt entry to replace the rotting back verandah, and re-roofing — "much of the roof," the Board told members in 2003, "is at the point of rusting through." A modest change made in 2004 — moving the weekly booking changeover from Saturday to Sunday — sits alongside these bigger concerns as a small, practical adjustment to how the lodge was used. That same year, "Big Bertha," the original basement water heater installed when the lodge was built in the 1960s, finally gave up after around forty years of service and was replaced.

In December 2004, the club lodged a Development Application for combined roof re-sheeting, upstairs bathroom reconstruction, and a new entry/airlock. A Special General Meeting that same month approved the funding for it: annual subscriptions rose from $25 to $100, and members agreed to a further $1,000-per-head levy, intended to raise about $100,000 toward a project the Board itself estimated would cost around $130,000 in total — the gap to be bridged from reserves and the coming seasons' takings.

What followed was not a quick job. Through 2005 and into 2006, the roof component of the project ran into serious engineering complications once building-code compliance was properly assessed. One structural engineer proposed underpinning the entire building with steel girders to support a new roof designed to withstand a 150-year snow event — a specification that, as the newsletter dryly pointed out, assumed a flat roof the lodge didn't actually have — at an estimated cost of around $90,000 on its own. A second engineer was brought in to look for a more workable and affordable solution, and three separate builders were asked to quote, with wildly different results (one estimate came in roughly $100,000 above the original budget). The newsletters covering this period are unusually candid about how frustrating and drawn-out the process was, without ever suggesting the club's viability was actually in doubt.

Construction finally proceeded through 2006 and into 2007, managed by Fairidge Construction Management, with Vince Myson continuing as architect and Murtagh Bond engaged for the structural engineering sign-off against current NPWS and Building Code requirements. Bellevarde Constructions, by now a familiar name in the club's maintenance history, carried out further related works.

The refurbishment, finished

The newsletter of 18 June 2007 announced that the long project was, at last, complete. What members found on their return: two new upstairs bathrooms, with heated flooring, sensor lighting and double glazing — one fully accessible, one fitted with a small bath for children — plus a third toilet kept separate from the upstairs bedrooms; a new entry airlock to keep the draughts out; a new access ramp bringing guests almost level from the road; a completely new roof; a wider upstairs hallway; a bedroom suitable for disabled use; new energy-efficient lighting throughout; resealed dining-room flooring; a full repaint; a new double-glazed front door and window; and — a smaller but well-remembered touch — a new gas barbecue on the verandah. The newsletter credited President Mark Cahill by name for having driven the project through to completion, alongside thanks to Heath Davies for his painting and renovation know-how, and to the Bessell, Mallis and Murray families for turning out to help with a working bee (fed, the record notes, on pizza from the Bredbo Pizzeria).

Smaller finishing touches — cupboards and coat hooks for the new airlock, improvements to the downstairs showers and taps — were left for future working bees, held at Easter and over January in the seasons that followed. In 2009, the club continued the improvement programme downstairs: bedrooms and bathrooms were repainted, and new carpet went into two upstairs bedrooms, the downstairs bedroom area, and the lounge.

Money in and money out

Financially, the decade tells a story of a club funding its own renewal almost entirely through its own members. Subscriptions rose from $25 a year at the start of the decade to $100 (from the December 2004 SGM) and then $150 (from the 2008 AGM), while weekly accommodation rates for members crept from $200 to $240 over the same period. The FY2002 accounts show a net loss of $54,312 for that year, driven mostly by $48,140 in repairs — the verandah reconstruction — plus a one-off NPWS sewerage levy. Members' loans, the legacy of the 1980s extension, fell from around $52,000 in 2000 to under $3,000 by 2003/04, steadily repaid, waived as gifts by some members, or offset against new joining fees and levies. The Capital Reserve, built almost entirely from levies, entrance fees and share premiums, grew from $19,000 in 2001 to over $100,000 by 2004/05 — the fund that, together with members' direct contributions, ultimately paid for the 2005–2007 refurbishment.

Relations with the Park

Throughout the decade, Kalymaro's dealings with its landlord, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and with the resort operator Perisher Blue, ran along fairly consistent lines, mostly conducted through the lodges' own representative body, SLOPES. The Board was a steady opponent of Perisher Blue's periodic push to have the resort's internal roads cleared of snow in winter, regarding it as contrary to the character of a snowbound valley. An IPART review in 2004–05 brought increases to NPWS rent and community-service charges, tied to CPI plus a margin. In 2006, NPWS offered lodges an extended lease to 2027 (with further renewal options) in exchange for a premium payment; the Board judged the terms too onerous and declined, noting the existing lease already ran to 2025. A separate 2006 proposal from NPWS to reclassify the access road serving Kalymaro, Sydney Ski Club and Lampada as a private track requiring a licence and shared maintenance contribution was not accepted by the three lodges, and appears to have quietly lapsed.

The next generation

The decade closes on a warm note. The 2008 and 2009 newsletters report, with evident pride, on the ski and snowboard achievements of two junior members, Henry Bessell and Madeleine Mallis — placings at the Redlands Cup, the Scots Cup, state and national Interschools competitions, and, for Henry, a training camp at Mammoth Mountain in California and a result at the New Zealand Nationals. It's a small but telling sign of a club whose membership, and its next generation, were still very much active.

And in March 2009, the Board bid farewell to Gerald Lynch, who had served as Secretary for roughly a decade — through, as the newsletter put it, "the re-writing of the Constitution" and the upstairs renovations, among much else. Heath Davies took over as Secretary, and David Ferguson joined the Board, carrying the club's leadership on into the next decade

Kalymaro Lodge, 2010–2014: Fifty Years On

A steady Board, a change of secretary

Mark Cahill was into his second decade as President when this era opens, and would remain so throughout it — a continuity that runs right through the club's records of this period. Behind him sat a Board that barely changed shape for five years: Tony Mallis on maintenance, Jean Lynch on bookings, Kim Bessell on snow sports, Adrienne Isbister, and Peter Shea as Treasurer, a role he'd already held for the best part of a decade by this point.

The one real change at the top was in the Secretary's chair. Heath Davies was still signing the newsletters as Secretary in March 2010; by the time the club's AGM notice went out for October 2011, it was David Ferguson signing off as "Secretary and Director." The records don't pin down the exact handover date any more closely than that eighteen-month window — a gap the Membership Register is still trying to close as more documents come to light. What is clear is that Ferguson settled into the role quickly and stayed in it for the rest of this era, re-elected alongside Tony Mallis and Adrienne Isbister on the regular two-year Board rotation in both 2011 and 2013.

Turning fifty

2012 was the year Kalymaro marked its 50th birthday. The March 2012 newsletter called on members to "put in plenty of kilometres on snow to mark 50 years of fun filled family skiing at Kalymaro," and rates were held flat for the season in the anniversary's honour. A gathering was held on 2 June 2012, with a lucky door prize of a week's accommodation on offer; a wrap-up the following year recalled around 30 members and friends at a celebration lunch, older members swapping stories over old photographs, Paul Shea cutting a cake organised by Mary Mallis, and Doug Murray and Mina Ferguson taking home the lucky door prizes.

Also around this time, Madeleine Mallis took on a project to interview older members and research a written history of the club for the anniversary — an early version of the very kind of project behind this document. The newsletters don't record how far that project got, but it's a nice thread to know was there.

Bringing in Strata Plus

One of the more consequential changes of this era had nothing to do with skiing at all. From 1 April 2012, the club's day-to-day administration and accounting passed to Strata Plus Pty Ltd — a company owned by David Ferguson and his wife Olivera, provided to the club at no cost. The Board's own papers from a fortnight or so earlier show the mechanics of the handover: Peter Shea moved that the club's cash reserves — a cheque account holding $15,901 and an ING "building fund" of $31,353 — be transferred across, that the old accounts be closed, and that Strata Plus take over the club's bank guarantee arrangements with National Parks and Wildlife in place of an existing Westpac term deposit.

From that point on, invoices, levy notices, correspondence and the club's financial statements all carried the Strata Plus letterhead, prepared first by David Ferguson himself and later by Strata Plus staff including Rosemary Mcmaugh. Members noticed and said so: at the AGM held in May 2013, a vote of thanks was specifically extended to "Pete Shea, David Ferguson and the staff of Strata Plus for this assistance in improving the financial reporting." It's a modest-sounding line in a set of minutes, but it marks the start of an arrangement that would go on to shape how the club managed its affairs for years afterward.

Keeping the lodge in good repair

The lodge itself kept receiving the kind of steady, unglamorous attention that had defined its upkeep for years. Room by room, the single-glazed windows that had been part of the original build kept being swapped out for double glazing — bedrooms and the dining corner in 2010, the lounge room in 2011, the downstairs bathrooms in 2013. Beds were replaced with extra-long frames that could be joined into a queen configuration, and every pillow in the place went with them.

2012, the anniversary year, brought a bigger push: the exterior was repainted, a handrail went into the stairwell, the back door got a code-operated lock, and — perhaps most usefully — a program of drainage work went in on the western side of the building, including new uphill drains and a waterproof membrane along the drying room wall, aimed at keeping the lower floor dry in heavy weather.

By March 2014, the Board was thinking several years ahead: a kitchen replacement pencilled in for 2016, a downstairs bathroom refurbishment for "2017 or 2018" (both of which did, in fact, come to pass, as the club's next era of records shows), a ski room redesign, and a lounge replacement budgeted at $3,000–$5,000 for the coming season.

One year's accounts stand out from the rest. The financial year to 31 March 2013 carried a $55,541 impairment against Buildings & Improvements, alongside a $28,558 payment to a builder, Wilbild Pty Ltd, for "various maintenance repairs" — by a wide margin the largest building-related figures anywhere in this era's accounts, with an architect's fee to Myson & Berkery Architects appearing in the same year. Pete's own recollection is that this relates to construction of the upstairs bathrooms, the widening of a corridor, a disabled ramp, and a roadside deck — though he's flagged this as memory rather than a confirmed fact, and it's noted here as such, pending a document that can confirm it directly.

A new lease with National Parks

The club's lease with National Parks and Wildlife came up for renewal during this period, and the newsletters and Board papers between 2012 and 2014 track the process in some detail. National Parks offered Kalymaro, along with the other Perisher Range lodges, the chance to move to a new lease running to 2028 with a further option of either one 30-year term or three separate 10-year terms. The Board had looked at this once before and decided against it on cost grounds — the Lease Grant Fee alone came to $20,125 plus GST, on top of a new Base Rent of $10,836 (set against a Market Land Value of $180,604) and several thousand dollars more in legal and registration costs.

What changed the calculation was a deadline. In February 2013, National Parks wrote to David Ferguson to say that if Kalymaro didn't submit a formal application by 31 May 2013, it wouldn't be considered for a new lease at all. The Board took the question back to members, and at the AGM held on 4 May 2013 — just ahead of that deadline — members unanimously resolved to go ahead. The club's accounts for the following year confirm a new lease dated 1 July 2014 was in place by then.

The rhythm of running the club

Away from the bigger projects, the club's day-to-day governance carried on in its usual unhurried way. Membership was reviewed periodically for long-inactive accounts; a lucky-door prize of $100 off accommodation was introduced to encourage AGM attendance; and in early 2014 the Board accepted a resignation from a member (Chaska Halliday, via her mother Melissa) while simultaneously asking a Director to confirm whether the resignation was genuine — an ordinary piece of administrative follow-up, and one that the records available for this era don't show being finally settled.

The club also tried, for one cycle, moving its AGM earlier in the year — from the long-standing October date to 4 May in 2013 — before returning to October for the following year's meeting. Rates rose gently and predictably across the period, from $155 a year in 2010 to $175 by 2014, and the Board's long-serving auditor, Michael Clifford, handed over to Kelly and Partners in 2013 after years of service — marked, in the minutes, by a standing joke that the accommodation he'd been offered in lieu of a fee, and rarely used, would always be there for him.

Paperwork occasionally needed a nudge, as it does for any small organisation. NSW Fair Trading wrote in October 2012 to note that the club's annual report lodgement for the year just ended was incomplete, with two director forms still outstanding. Both were signed and dated within the week, comfortably ahead of that year's AGM — the kind of routine administrative catch-up that every co-operative deals with from time to time.

Looking ahead

By the close of this era, the shape of the next one was already visible in the Board's own forward planning: a kitchen due for replacement, a downstairs bathroom refurbishment on the horizon, and an administrative arrangement with Strata Plus now well bedded in. David Ferguson, having served as both Secretary and Director since around 2011, would step down from the Board altogether at the 2015 AGM — thanked, at the time, for his part in streamlining how the club was run — while staying on, through Strata Plus, as the quiet engine of its administration for years to come.

Kalymaro Lodge, 2015–2019: A Settled Board and a Renewed Lease

A President who stayed, and a Secretary who wore two hats

Mark Cahill was President right through this era, his name at the top of every AGM notice from 2015 to 2018. Around him, the Board changed only gently. Peter Shea signed on as Secretary from 2015, taking over from David Ferguson — and, as the Board's own minutes show plainly in their meeting headers, he was quietly the Treasurer too, right from the start of this era. It's not something the AGM minutes ever spelled out; members reporting each year simply heard from "the Treasurer" without necessarily knowing it was the same person taking the minutes. But the Board's own paperwork is unambiguous: "Secretary / Treasurer: Peter Shea" appears at the top of meeting after meeting, from March 2015 through to 2018.

Tony Mallis held maintenance duties throughout, matching the "Mr Maintenance" nickname the 2015 Newsletter gave him. Adrienne Isbister looked after environmental matters. Jean Lynch — who also went by her married name, Rollings — ran bookings in the earlier years of this era, a role Tony Mallis picked up alongside his own sometime in 2017. Kim Bessell and, from 2015, Peter Murray rounded out the Board, with Peter Murray taking on the alpine sports portfolio in 2017.

The one real change at the top of the Board came at the 2015 AGM, where David Ferguson stood down after several years as Secretary and Director. Members thanked him — and his family — warmly, for what the minutes call "his initiative in streamlining the management practices of the Club," and Peter Murray joined the Board unopposed in his place. The 2015 Newsletter added its own note of thanks to "David Ferguson (and Oli)," and signed off, in a nice bit of club shorthand, with "Ski Heil!" — a phrase it credited to "our most esteemed former secretary."

New members, old paperwork

Nine new members joined in the 2014–15 year, and — unusually for a club history built mostly from minutes and newsletters — their own signed application forms have survived and made it into these records. They tell a fuller story than the AGM minutes alone.

The Callard family — Justin, Ruth, Bryn and Connor — applied together from Curl Curl, their forms all stamped as received on 24 February 2015. Toby McFadzean, son of Andrew, applied from Watson in the ACT, his form giving his full name for the first time as Toby Alexander Drennan McFadzean. Jae D. Pike applied from North Narrabeen — from an address that, tellingly, is the same one later given for Sally McFadzean when she joined the Board in 2019, which fits neatly with the Newsletter's own note that Jae is her son. And three members of the Halliday-Shand family — Isabelle, Lisa and Rachael — all applied from East Lindfield on 26 February 2015, joining Fiona's side of a family that had been part of Kalymaro for years.

All nine were approved at the Board's March 2015 meeting, taking membership to 130. A tenth piece of family business closed out around the same time: Chaska Halliday's earlier resignation, handled by her mother Melissa, was formally accepted by the Board with her small share capital returned to her.

Renewing the lease

The biggest piece of unfinished business Kalymaro carried into this era was its lease with National Parks and Wildlife, and it took most of the era to see through. The Board had been talking about a new lease since at least 2014, and by March 2015 the shape of the deal was clear: an upfront cost of a little over $21,000 plus GST, a base rent for the first year of $11,450 plus a small per-bed environmental levy, and rent that would rise with CPI or a share of turnover through to a market review in 2028 — with the right, at no extra cost, to take up three further ten-year terms after that. The Board judged the terms sound and resolved to go ahead.

Mark Cahill and Peter Murray signed the new lease on the club's behalf in 2016. Alongside it came a new bank guarantee arrangement — a Macquarie Bank guarantee sitting next to the existing Westpac one for a time, while the club waited for National Parks to confirm the older guarantees could be released. The costs of the whole exercise — registration and permit fees, leasing costs, a GST premium on the lease itself — landed in the 2016–17 financial year, adding up to just over $36,000 in one-off expenses that the club's own year-end notes were careful to explain as non-recurring, once the ordinary running of the lodge was looked at on its own.

Keeping the lodge in good repair

By 2015, the long-running project of double-glazing every window in the lodge was essentially complete — only one window, in the large downstairs bedroom, was still left to do — and new curtains went up throughout the bedrooms that same year.

The next big piece of building work was the downstairs bathrooms, carried out in 2016 and 2017. It wasn't entirely a project of the club's own choosing: in February 2017, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment issued the club a formal Notice of Intention to give a compliance order over the state of the bathrooms, giving the Board a short window to respond before any order was made. The Board's approach evidently succeeded, and no order followed — but it does mean this particular renovation had a regulatory nudge behind it as well as the Board's own wishes. Wilbild Pty Ltd of Jindabyne carried out the work: both downstairs bathrooms renovated, a new instantaneous gas hot water system installed, underfloor heating added, and a garbage enclosure built onto the balcony, with the bulk of the work finished by the end of April 2017. Total plumbing costs for that financial year came to just over $61,000.

Other, smaller projects moved along in parallel. A kitchen upgrade was discussed at length through 2016 — the Board asked for more design options, agreed the northern-corner dining seat had to stay whatever else changed, but ultimately deferred a decision, and it doesn't appear to have gone ahead within this era. The lodge's lockers were replaced in 2016 and 2017, timed around a changeover weekend in April so members could move their gear across before the old ones came out — and by 2018 the new lockers were already full, with more planned for the following summer.

Modernising how members booked

Alongside the building work, the club modernised how it took bookings, moving to a new online booking system through 2016 aimed at being ready for that year's winter season — the same "revamped booking process" Tony Mallis reported on at that year's AGM. It's a small thing next to a bathroom renovation or a lease renewal, but it's part of the same pattern: a club steadily updating its everyday systems alongside its bigger, more visible projects.

A change of Treasurer

Peter Shea had held the Treasurer's role alongside Secretary for some years by the time, in April 2017, he told the Board plainly that he wanted to step back from it — citing, in his own words to the Board, "his very limited accounting knowledge and background," and that he felt "very uncomfortable continuing" in the role past that year's AGM. He stayed on as Secretary and Director. The Board agreed to look for a suitable replacement, and by October that year Peter Shea had, in the Board's own words, "effectively resigned" the Treasurer's role, circulating a summary of its duties to help find someone to take it on. Colin House offered his help ahead of the 2018 AGM, and by June 2019 he had joined the Board formally as a Director — a step that lines up neatly with his having taken on the Treasurer's responsibilities around the same time.

Honouring Barry McFadzean

At the 2016 AGM, members voted unanimously to make Barry McFadzean an honorary life member — a non-active, non-voting recognition of what the minutes call his "long and dedicated service to the co-operative." His health had been a matter the Board was asked to consider the year before, and the life membership, when it came, was carried with thanks to the whole McFadzean family for his "exemplary service" to the club over the years.

The rhythm of running the club

Subscriptions rose gently across the era, tracking the CPI figure the Board reviewed each February: $175 in 2014, $180 through 2015 and 2016, up to $183 in 2017 and $186 in 2018 — the Board, in 2018, noting they'd rather "stick with round numbers" than chase the CPI figure to the cent. AGMs moved around Sydney each year — Strata Plus's own offices in Surry Hills in 2015, the Crows Nest Centre in 2016 and 2017, Manly Library in 2018 — with members generally heading off to dinner together afterwards; the 2015 notice alone canvasses three different Sydney restaurants before settling on a venue. By 2018, one member was joining the AGM by Skype rather than travelling in — a small but telling sign of how meetings were changing, given board meetings themselves had already been run remotely for years, first over Skype and then, from late 2016, over Zoom.

Membership numbers held fairly steady through the era, and a handful of long-inactive memberships were formally cancelled by the Board in October 2018 under the club's usual constitutional process — an ordinary piece of housekeeping rather than anything out of the ordinary for a club of Kalymaro's age. Kelly and Partners continued as auditors throughout, and the club's accounts were prepared, as they had been for some years by this point, through Strata Plus.

Part of a bigger valley

Kalymaro's members weren't only occupied with their own lodge. The 2015 Newsletter points members toward two events that brought the whole Perisher Valley together each year: the "Back to Perisher Weekend" each April, with its fun run to Charlotte Pass, a duck race on Perisher Creek raising money for the volunteer ski patrol, and an evening barbecue in aid of the Burns Unit at Westmead Hospital; and the Perisher Peak Festival each June, opening the winter season with folk and roots music. Kalymaro also lodged its own annual report each year with the Perisher Range Resorts Environmental Management System — a quiet, ongoing piece of the Environmental Coordinator's work that doesn't get much space in the minutes but ran steadily throughout the era all the same.

And the club held onto its own small domestic notes along the way — a Board meeting in March 2015 that opened not with an agenda item but with congratulations to Jean and Andrew Rollings on an expected baby, and a members' website in 2015 that sat, endearingly, behind the password "themoose."

Looking ahead

By the time this era closed, a new group was stepping onto the Board: Julia Isbister, Colin House and Sally McFadzean were all appointed Directors from June 2019, with Adrienne Isbister — Julia's mother — stepping down from the Board around the same time, after some years of service. The lease was settled for years to come, the downstairs bathrooms were done, and the club's administration continued to run through Strata Plus much as it had for most of the decade. It's the kind of quiet handover that doesn't make for a dramatic ending, but it's very much how Kalymaro seems to have always worked: one steady Board passing things on to the next.

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