club-history.html

Here we will give you a short history about our club beginnings. Take time to read this, it might be of interest if you are in the beginning stages also.

On April 17th 1998, 34 people gathered over morning tea to discuss the setting up of a computer club in Busselton for people over 55 years.

Geographe Training Club (GTC) and Stay on Your Feet (SOYF) programme had two computers, donated by The Charles Bateman Trust, for the specific use of community seniors. They also had nine other computers available for training or general use on Fridays. SOYF was prepared to fund both training and initial assistance to club members. The members of the proposed club would make all decisions as to how it would be run.

Of the people at this meeting, nineteen felt that they needed basic training to get started.
Four volunteers offered to form a committee to get the club on its feet and a fee of $10 membership/joining fee was agreed.

At a general meeting on 15th May 1998 it was decided the name of the club was to be Busselton Seniors Computer Club. Later, the name Busnet was suggested and it was decided to use it in a logo .
We had ambition even then to eventually put our club on the internet, and of course "Busnet" is a combination of the name of our town, Busselton, and "net" from internet.

By July of that year we had sixty two members and by Jan 2000 we had 121 members.
Training for beginners had been completed with future training sessions being offered including, Desktop Publishing, M.S. Works, Word Processing, Internet, Spreadsheets, and Windows 95/98.
Since then, of course, we have graduated to later versions of Windows and other courses have been developed as they became necessary.

A competition resulted in a club logo and motto being decided from many entries received from club members .
Our current logo, depicted on our home page as an animated gif, includes the net or web, the logo name Busnet, and our motto or slogan, ie.," Seniors up there with IT ", which has a bit of double entendre’.

As the result of a successful application to The Department of Veterans Affairs we were granted $16,120 which enabled the club to set up a library, purchase software and a digital camera for member’s use.

A separate application led to a grant of $5,000 from Progress Rural Western Australia, to enable us to participate in their "Bushnet" (nothing to do with our club logo!) Community of Interest Web Site Development Program.
It is entirely due to the receipt of that grant that we are now "on the net".

At the beginning of 2012, we received a grant from the Lotteries Commission which will enable the club to purchase two Apple computers. We have always previously used Windows computers exclusively and this has excluded people who might be interested in the Apple products. Considering the number of Apple users, this new move is long overdue.