President's Message

A message from our president Cass McCormack, as read at the 2024 AGM.

I have looked back over a lot of my president reports over the past few years and a common theme was popping up. Lack of bord member involvement. But I think I can sit here today and say we have finally achieved progress. We have had majority of our board meetings both Face to Face and Zoom be attended well. So I wish to thankyou everyone that has made the effort with this over the past year.

We have achieved so much in the past year, we have further increased the number of paid-up members, we have an even bigger new generation of followers, we have strengthened relationship with our fellow user groups, and we have just put on another successful Get together event.

My Passion still lies in the MCAV and I will continue to bring the association into the next generation. I wish to thank our Office manger Rhyll McCormack on her continued help with all the above. She is not just your average Office manager; she looks after our social media accounts– which have all grown significantly this year. She continues to update our website, which watch this space will have a fresh new look soon. Along with our ongoing merchandise store online and our public relations with getting out to stalls. All this along with her everyday duties, I know she goes above a beyond what they are. I am very lucky to have her making me look good.

I would like to congratulate Cameron and the Get together co-ordinators and their amazing team of workers and Volunteers on a very successful event at Molyullah. The event is going from strength to strength and again the number of positive things coming out of this year event is overwhelming. Special mention to our horse committee on a record number of entries, but also the feedback from respected riders on how well our event is ran. I would also like to thank everyone that was involved in the incident with Graham Forge, it was an unfortunate event to happen, but we have been credited by the Police on our procedures and how well everyone responded. So again, thank you and our condolences to the forge family once again. We look forward to celebrating 50 years of Get togethers at the 2026 Merrijig G2G.
We have begun our first Major raffle, huge thanks to Mansfield Power Ag for the help in getting this up and going. We launched at this year’s Get together event and have already taken it to our first stall at Mansfield long weekend Bush market, with great success in ticket sales and hope it will be a big successful fundraising for us.

We find ourselves in one of the best financial positions we have ever been in, both with our increased membership, merchandise sales and our successful get together. But we have also been left a bequest in the will of Kenneth Asplin. I am very excited to see what the Board can do and hopefully we can fulfill his wishes which is aligning with our values to see the funds be applied towards the campaign to restore State Forests status throughout Victoria from National Parks, the abolition of all current Parks legislation, and the regaining of unfettered free access for everyone to public lands for camping and recreational use under the Multiple Use principle and the reopening of all closed roads and tracks therein for free vehicular access and the abolition of Native Title. We will try our best Kenneth.

We had a huge presence with the public this year, have formed relationships with many Bush Users, and politicians and we hope to grow these connections and make a difference with our Fight for Better land management for all generations.
I look forward to continuing to work together as a strong united team.

Cass McCormack - President 2026