Two years ago, when we both joined the Presidential Line of our organisations, few had heard of corona viruses and no-one other than science fiction fans could have envisaged the changes to the world, and how we live and work.

The pandemic has forced us to both change and reevaluate many things as well as reassessing how and why we do the things we do.

Our predecessors had expected to travel Internationally representing our sister associations around the world as well as welcoming visiting presidents and speakers to our shores.

While many things have been disrupted and changed, the nature of Orthopaedic pathology that we see, and treat remains the same and its incumbent on us all to learn from these events to develop our practice in an efficient and sustainable way.

It is with this backdrop of multiple canceled and rescheduled meetings during 2020 and 2021, that we have great pleasure in inviting you to join us in Christchurch for the next combined meeting of the New Zealand and Australian Orthopaedic Associations in October/November 2022.

This shapes up to be the largest in person meeting for some years and will provide an excellent opportunity for academic work carried out over recent times to be presented as well as renewing social ties and professional networks.

The meetings’ theme will focus on Togetherness, Diversity and Sustainability. The Programme Committee are working on a series of plenary sessions to complement the meeting themes. These will be both stimulating and challenging as we position the provision of Orthopaedic care to move forward into a post COVID, diverse and warming world.

We hope many of you can join us for a key scientific meeting and hopefully also have an opportunity to add on some well-deserved and overdue vacation time after the meeting.