Abstract
One of the really enjoyable things about having been the AATE Research and Initiatives Officer for the past seven years has been the opportunity I have had to work with the very special group of highly competent and committed English teachers and educators who have served on Council during this period. When I first started to attend national conferences in the early 1990s, I gradually became aware of tall tales (and probably true) of the long and heated AATE Council meetings that preceded or followed AATE conferences, of the bitter interstate rivalries that spawned intense lobbying at election times, and of both successful and failed (though rarely 'bloodless') internal coups.