I want to let everyone know that from next week, the Club's matted training surface will unfortunately shrink, as Toowoomba Aikikai Aikido has asked us to return the remainder of their mats that we have in our possession.

While this reduces the maximum usable training surface to 64 square meters, this will not affect the Club's regular classes, only our capacity to host large seminars of more than 20 participants. We will, of course, be looking to extend our training surface through a variety of grants, fund raisers and savings to eventually be able to provide a full sized Adult judo shiai-jo to train and compete on (just shy of 200 square meters).

I would like to thank Aiki Kai Australia for their initial offer to provide an interest free loan for the purchase of the mats, and their agreement for the Club to continue paying a pro rata amount for the residual mats left with us once Toowoomba Aikikai Aikido relocated to the Clive Berghofer Recreation Centre. This has allowed us to continue training and purchase our own mats over the past four years.