A Short History of Bairnsdale Rowing Club

Bairnsdale Rowing Club, Founded 1872

Regatta Day pre WWI

This short history will hopefully encourage others to delve deeper into this interesting and historical club. Like most country clubs, it has a rich and full history.

It is so pleasing to see that the club was revived and today remains active.

This has been compiled by Andrew Guerin and Tim Hamilton in 2026 from a number of sources including:

This website
Path Among the Years -The history of the Shire of Bairnsdale by John Adams
Eulogy Tom Hoffman
The Victorian Oarsman by John Lang published in 1919 by Massina & Co
Images from many sources
Australian Dictionary of Biography
East Gippsland Historical Society

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, errors may exist. Please send advice of any errors or inaccuracies by email to:

Also your comments, suggestions and photos are sought to enhance this site.

The idea for this history originated from the Olympic Rowing and World Senior Rowing Championship histories written by Andrew Guerin and Margot Foster in 1991, 1992 & 1993 for the Australian team handbooks. Andrew Guerin developed and extended these histories to the current format in 2004 for publication in 2004 and then expanded the site.

Steve Roll has been an invaluable contributor to the website in locating errors and finding Christian names of rowers. His superb work is acknowledged.

© Andrew Guerin – 2004
These contents of this history are copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. However given that the purpose of the history is to assist rowers and rowing clubs, written permission is not required for non-commercial usage by rowers and rowing clubs provided acknowledgement is made.

Disclaimer: Whilst extensive efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied, the editors take no responsibility for any loss or damage whatsoever arising from inaccuracies contained in this work.