Welcome

Conveners' Welcome

Dear Colleagues,

We are both excited to welcome you to the 2025 Victorian Section Meeting of the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand (USANZ). After several state meetings in Melbourne, we have decided to take the ‘show on the road’ and invite you (and your family) to join us in Bendigo (Victoria’s top tourism town 2024) for either a day or the weekend. 

Bendigo is a city with a golden history with gold being found in the mid 1800’s which led to one of the first mass migrations to Australia.  That is why Bendigo boasts some of the country’s most impressive architecture, gardens, art and cultural experiences.  The meeting program aims to build on this history with the theme – “Setting the Gold Standard”.  This will include half day trainee education at the Central Deborah Gold Mine on Friday afternoon, followed by the main nursing and medical program on Saturday at the All Seasons Bendigo with a focus on practising urology to the gold standard, including speakers from various disciplines to keep us up to date across all fields of medicine. We are excited to have Prof Henry Woo from NSW join us to keep us up to date in all things prostate! We hope to provide this learning under the umbrella of ‘edutainment’! 

As well as the education program, we will be hosting a special ‘gold-themed’ dinner on Friday night at Harvest for both delegates and their partners.  This venue embodies the fact that Bendigo is Australia’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy.  Our chef for the evening is Marsha Busse, a pastry specialist, who has worked around the world (including Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, London, and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck), and has come back to home to Bendigo. Seats will be limited due to the venue size, so we encourage early registration if you are planning to attend. Please note that the dinner is not sponsored or funded by industry. 

Even if you miss out on dinner, we are starting the main program at 10:00am on Saturday so there is plenty of time to grab a Harvest almond croissant before you join us at the meeting venue. There are also many family-friendly eating options and activities to partake in, and our organising team will be happy to provide recommendations.  

We would like to thank our sponsors and the RACS organising team for their support of this event as without them it wouldn’t be possible for you to have the opportunity to enjoy our great city.

A/Prof Janelle Brennan | Urology Program Convener
Ms Jana Middlemis | Nurses' Program Convener