A Comprehensive History of Australian Rowing

March 2025

The focus this month was on the year 1990 with the following updates added.

• 1990 World Under 19 Championships Final A result sheets
• 1990 Lucerne Regatta regatta program and result sheets
• 1990 World Championships regatta program and full result sheets
• 1990 Australian Rowing Championships regatta program
• 1990 Australian Rowing Championships results sheets - incomplete

Images from 1990 were also added to the Australian Rowing Images website for the 1990 Australian Rowing Championships.

Other images have been added to the Australian Rowing Images website for the following regattas:

• 2025 Australian Henley Regatta
• 2025 Victorian Championships
• 2025 Australian Rowing Championships

Additional rower profiles and as usual more additions and corrections including the 1952 and 1953 Interstate Women's Regatta programs courtesy of the Coe family.

February 2025

No let up in productivity despite it being the peak of the rowing season.

This month our focus has been on 1989 with images scanned from negative film and added for:

• 1989 World Championships and 
• 1989 Australian Rowing Championships.

These have been published on the Australian Rowing Images website. 

Also added to the this site have been:

• 1989 Australian Rowing Championships regatta program and result sheets
• 1989 World Championships regatta program
• 1989 World Championships daily result sheets
• 1989 Lucerne regatta program
• 1989 Lucerne regatta full result sheets

As usual, new regattas are added such as the 2023 APS Head of the River regatta and other additions as received.

And as always, additional rower profiles have been added. Having exceeded 2,000 rower profiles, the aim is now for 2,500. Rower profile contributions are always welcomed. They will be published under the author's name.

Also images for 2025 Australian Henley regatta have been published on the Australian Rowing Images website.

January 2025

Happy New Year to all our readers. The New Year has not allowed the site to rest. The focus this month has been on 1988 with comprehensive sets of images added to the Australian Rowing Images website for the following regattas:

• 1988 Australian Rowing Championships, the last ARC on the Nepean River
• 1988 Olympic Games
• 1988 Trans Tasman Series

1988 additions to this site include:

• 1988 Australian Championships regatta program and available results sheets
• 1988 World Lightweight and Junior Championships regatta program, participant list by country, and full results.

Over 2,000 rower profiles have now been published as we continue to add more. This is a significant milestone for this site given the time and effort involved in creating them.

Also added was was a short history of a long disbanded rowing club - Williamstown Rowing Club in Victoria.

December 2024

The focus this month was on the year 1987. This work included providing the Australian rowing community with historical images for that year. Specifically and all from the Hebfotos collection:

• a comprehensive set of images of 1987 Australian Championships
• 1987 Australian team camp in Canberra
• 1987 World Championships

To complement this work, the regatta program for the 1987 Australian Championships and other information have been added.

Of course, other work continues including:

• more contemporary rower profiles from Jack Hargreaves
• more re-organisation of the back end of the site by web designer Hope Stewart and
• updates from kind readers of the site.

Merry Christmas to all in the Australian rowing community. May every stroke you take be perfect.

November 2024

The focus this month was on 1986, with regatta program and result sheets added for both the Interstate and National Championships for that year and updated the information available on the 1986 regattas. The big task for 1986 was the scanning of the Hebfotos collections for the 1986 Australian Rowing Championships and the 1986 Australian Universities Championships. These are now available on the Australian Rowing Images website. We now have over 76,000 historical rowing images on this site covering over 400 major regattas.

We also managed to add 2006 National Championships images from the Hebfotos collection onto the Australian Rowing Images website. We are making good progress digitising the Hebfotos collection.

We have started to add annual reports of Rowing Australia and it's previous incarnations at: https://www.rowinghistory-aus.info/rowing-associations/rowing-australia/07-annual-reports. Where we do not have reports, we will replicate extracts of the minutes of the annual conferences written by others of both the Australian Ladies' Rowing Council from 1920 to 1961 and of the Australian Amateur Rowing Council. These provide valuable insights. This work is continuing. We would welcome gaining copies of missing annual reports to replace these extracts.

Also, more contemporary rower profiles are being added through the good work of Jack Hargreaves. This work will gain pace in December as more of his work is published. Updates to other chapters and other new rower profiles continue to be added as usual.

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