A Comprehensive History of Australian Rowing

October 2024

During October we continued to undertake updates to several chapters adding the 2023 Australian Rowing Championships, 2024 Australian Rowing Championships, 2023 BSRA Head of the River, 2024 BSRA Head of the River, 2017 Universities Championships, 2023 Universities Championships, 2024 Universities Championships, 2023 PSA Head of the River, 2024 PSA Head of the River, 2023 IGSSA Head of the River and 2024 IGSSA Head of the River. As usual, more rower profiles were added. 

We continued our walk through time scanning several thousand negatives from the Hebfotos collection focusing this month on the 1984 and 1985 years. Specifically images were added to the Australian Rowing Images website for the 1984 Australian Rowing Championships, 1984 Olympic team whilst training in Australia, 1985 Australian Rowing Championships and the 1985 SA Head of the River. This digitisation work will continue in November with now some 75,000 historical rowing images on the site covering over 400 regattas. 

Concurrently a review of the 1980-85 national events was undertaken with programs and result sheets added, where available. This will continue as we move into the second half of the 1980s in November.

Behind the scenes, work was undertaken by our web designer Hope Stewart to enhance speed and lower processor usage given the complexity and massive size of the site - there are tens of thousands of pages.

Whilst this Australian Rowing History website has always attracted many users during the active season, pleasingly it now has a large number of users regularly throughout the year. Also, whilst the Australian Rowing Images website is still in its infancy, it is building a growing and steady number of users. Pleasingly for the editor, these usage figures show a genuine need for such information rather than being just his historical folly.

September 2024

The focus this month of the Australian Rowing Images website was on 1983 regattas. The Hebfotos images from 1983 Australian Championships in Perth were added, as were the 1983 SA Head of the River regatta, 1983 Australian senior and under 23 team photos, and finally, 1983 SA club regattas. Many other smaller collections were also enhanced with additional images. The site now contains 70,000 historic rowing images covering over 400 regattas.

Despite this month focusing on 1983, we undertook the update of the combined 2024 Olympic and Paralympic page with the Paralympic results. Also given the growth in importance of coastal rowing and beach sprints, a new chapter has been added to the history, the Australian Coastal Rowing and Beach Sprints Championships.

We were fortunate to gain access to the superbly produced 150th anniversary history of the Yarra Yarra Rowing Club in Melbourne which can be found through this link.

More rower profiles were constructed for the site as usual.

Finally, we have started collecting and adding RA annual reports to the site with the first 30 odd reports starting the collection. These are important research documents and already one request for more reports has been received.

August 2024

Despite our August focus being on 1982 regattas, current international regattas also took our attention with results flowing in and added to the site - Paris Olympic Games, 2024 World Championships, 2024 World Under 23 Championships and World Under 19 Championships.

As mentioned our focus this month was on 1982 regattas. Regatta programs and images were added. Specifically, images were added from the 1982 Australian Championships, the December 1982 Victorian Championships and local South Australian regattas in the second half of that year. If you raced in those years, follow these links to find your photos.

We were fortunate to have Dr Phil Sharp locate a 1950 history of the UTS Haberfield Rowing Club written by Kevyn Webb which has been added to the site to help commemorate that club's forthcoming centenary in 2025. It is a thorough early history of that club.

The Australian Rowing Images website continued to grow with a further 5,000 images added from the Hebfotos collection from the early 1980s. A historical photographic record of over 400 important regattas has now been created on the Australian Rowing Images website to provide a pictorial history to complement this Australian Rowing History website. On a more current regatta, images from the 2024 Australian Coastal Championships were also added. 

July 2024

A focus on the Australian Rowing Images website this month saw hundreds more historical Interstate Rowing Championships images be added through to and including 1980. We are now in the Hebfotos era. 

We were fortunate to receive a collection from the family of the late Western Australian and Victorian rower Terry Davies, which has added considerably to the mid 1950s to mid 1960s era. Early Australian Universities Championship images were also added. This site now has over 60,000 historical rowing images published covering some 350 regattas/events.

Full regatta programs of the Australian Rowing Championships have been added to this site to 1980 as we add the images from these regattas.

Rower profiles continue to grow with historical members of the UTS Haberfield Rowing Club being added thanks to the arrival of a 1950 history of that club written by Kevyn Webb. Thank you to Dr Phil Sharp for a copy of this history. This history will eventually be reproduced on this site.

Due to the great research of Kate Elliott, we were also able to add many more details to the Ballarat Head of the Lake chapter with the 1930's decade updated. This work is ongoing. Kate is the resident Ballarat rowing historian whose books on rowing in that region are significant and thorough publications.

And the great work on the SA Schools Head of the River continued with names added through to 1993.

June 2024

Much occurring on this site as usual. 

Rower profiles continue to grow in number as we break through 1900 completed. Thank you to Jim Skidmore of Yarra Yarra Rowing Club who has contributed many profiles of his fellow club members. Also thanks to Steve Roll who continues his work on the profiles. On average, each profile takes a day to produce from researching, documenting, creating a webpage for each rower, adding images and all completed in a searchable manner so that they can be found. If we assume 230 working days in a year, that is about 8 years of work on rower profiles alone. Readers will be pleased to know that thousands more profiles are in various stages of development.

A new chapter written by the Late Graham Pilger on Sydney Boys High School rowing post WWII through to 1960 makes interesting reading. Also linked to the site this month is the Tamar Rowing Club's Snapshot book thanks to the author Jim Guy.

The development of the South Australian schools chapter continues apace with much more detail from 1971 to 1982 added this month. The following years will be somewhat easier as more programs are available to us.

Updates continue on other chapters with more 2024 regattas being added.

Australian Rowing Images website - Nadine Morrison has shared her 2023 and 2024 Trans Tasman images, and Michael Sim has shared with us rowing images of his father, himself and his children. Also more Hebfotos covered regattas have been added as have many images from early Intercolonial and Interstate Championships. Enjoy

May 2024

This month brief club histories of the important Tamar Rowing Club in Launceston and the defunct Southern Rowing Club from Victoria were added.

Updates to many chapters continued as usual with a focus this month on updating the Tasmanian schools regatta from 1955 to 1969. 

Of course many more rower profiles were added. Jim Skidmore continues to provide profiles of Yarra Yarra Rowing Club members and we are always seeking more from other willing authors.

Finally, thank you to all those people who provide additional information for inclusion on the site. There are too many to mention and obviously this history improves with such assistance. We also call upon readers to send in their photos for inclusion.

The Australian Rowing Images website added a comprehensive set of photos from the 2024 Australian Masters Championships as well as more past Australian Rowing Championships and under age Australian teams.

April 2024

Despite no recent posts to this section, an enormous amount of work has been done to update the many chapters on this site. This work is continuing.

Also, we continue to add both historical and current images to the photography partner site of this history site: www.australianrowingimages.com.