A Comprehensive History of Australian Rowing

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.