branch strongly criticised the standard of the Emu, the administrative disorder, and the passivity regarding conservation and field studies. It finished by proposing two formal motions to (i) adopt active policies for organising research, publicity and education, and to (ii) set up a committee to implement the former. Subsequently, in September 1966, such a reform committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Keith Hindwood. However, the lack of agreement between committee members led to its disbandment in August 1967, less than a year later. The RAOU was in crisis. Reform and revival Up to this point, the Emu had been the only serial publication produced by the RAOU for all members, and was by far the biggest financial cost to the organisation. For a majority of members the receipt of the journal was the only direct contact they had with the RAOU. Yet the content of Emu was being assailed from both the 'scientists' who wanted more rigour and less in-house material, and from the 'amateurs' who disliked the scientific language of many papers. The long-term solution would be to cater separately for both groups. The start of this process came with the decision by the RAOU Council in 1968 to allow for a type of membership without a subscription to Emu. The next step was when Jack Hyett resigned as editor of Emu in 1968, the ACT Branch nominated Stephen Marchant for the editorship, and he was elected unopposed. Marchant was editor for the next twelve years and he transformed Emu into the lean and rigorous journal the 'scientists' wanted. With regard to other necessary reforms, the new president, Allan McEvey, set up a new review committee of two, Dom Serventy and himself. Serventy, a scientist with the CSIRO, was the principal writer of the review report and he addressed both the need for a sense of what the RAOU should be doing, and the structure that would allow it to do so. Although there was considerable vocal opposition to the reform proposals (including cutting the number of people on Council from an unwieldy forty to just nine) the report was ratified by Council in April 1969 and adopted at an Extraordinary General Meeting in June 1969, with the vote being over 80% in favour. Later that year came the first issue of the RAOU Newsletter, a publication that would evolve to become the magazine Wingspan. A perhaps unavoidable