We are celebrating, with this Annual Scienti®c Meeting, the 21st Anniversary of the Founding of the Australian and New Zealand Burn Association (ANZBA). This gives us an opportunity for a nostalgic look at earlier times, re ecting on our beginnings and deciding if, in fact, we have been leaving `footprints on the sands of time'. Moreover, we can speculate about what the future trends may be in the areas of acute care, rehabilitation and the prevention of burn injury. Some consider history as the main preoccupation of those of us too old to do anything else. I submit to you that wise men and women study it to avoid repeating past mistakes and to generate new ideas. It was Sir William Osler who said that in knowing the accomplishments of our predecessors, we can determine when to replough and when to select virgin soil. In September 1974 the International Society for Burn Injury (ISBI) held its quadrennial congress at Buenos Aires in Argentina. At that time, the late Mr Murray Clarke, who was the Director of the Burn Unit at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, and one of the foundation members of the ISBI was of the opinion that in our country we were somewhat geographically isolated from other world burn centers. So he established a travel fund with support from the pharmaceutical industry. The result was that six members of the burn team of the RCH attended that meeting and gave papers. Moreover, the Commonwealth Scienti®c and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) sent the late Dr Tom Pressely, a protein chemist who had been investigating the textile ammability of the garments of children who had sustained burns when their night clothing ignited. Tom was assisted in the research work by Drs Peter Gordon and Caird Ramsay. The collection of the burned garments was collated at the RCH and sent to CSIRO for testing. So this research was a cooperative eort of all the burn unit sta in this country. It led to an Australian Standard for children's textile ammability, a standard that was adopted world-wide. So, with this cooperation, the seeds of the beginnings of ANZBA were sown, although the Association had not yet been conceived. The ISBI meeting in Buenos Aires was held at the Sheraton Hotel during troubled times of signi®cant political unrest in Argentina. There was an armored car on the forecourt and security personnel throughout the building. It was apparent to Murray Clarke and myself that most countries had a national association of burn carers and that there was no such group in Australasia. Despite this uneasy climate, on one occasion we had lunch at a small cheap local bistro where our concerns were shared with John Heslop from Dunedin, New Zealand, and John Masterton of the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne. We resolved, when we returned home, to establish an Association of Burn Carers. Thus was ANZBA conceived. The late Murray Clarke corresponded about our ideas with colleagues in Australia and John Heslop did so in New Zealand. Subsequently, an Interim committee of the Association was formed at the time of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Annual Meeting held at Queenstown, New Zealand, in 1975. Burns 25 (1999) 247±249