I have been noodling around the idea of a book with the working title of ‘The Tunnels of Kooljimup’ … and other sporting tales of regional Australia. It’ll be an anthology of fictional tales highlighting the quirky nature of community sport and the role it plays in the shaping of rural Australian communities. The list of ideas includes …
The tale of woe of the Finbar River Aussie Rules Football Club who recruited low security players from the local prison, only to find that their club was taken over the Debrazio Cartel with links to the Sicilian mafia.
The Donnelly Plains Tennis Club whose players all change their names by deed poll to those of famous international players in an attempt to intimidate opposition teams. However, despite Martina Navratalova and Bjorn Borg playing mixed doubles against Flowervale in Division 3, they lost in straight sets.
The Dusty Bay Bowls Club, who mysteriously began playing with metallic, biased bowls. It was later discovered that they had built a tunnel under the rink and installed a mobile magnet to gain an advantage against unwitting opponents.
The first completed story is published below. Each story will begin with extracts from the fictional township’s wikipedia entry.
High Tea at Winbaroo CC
Winbaroo [ Wikipedia extract]
Winbaroo is a township in The Wittagong Plains region of South Australia close to the Victorian border. It is on the Wittagong Highway and the Boogadoon Railway Line (closed 1985), At the 2016 Census, the locality of Winbaroo had a population of 678, with 401 living in and around the town centre. It is primarily a service town for the surrounding sheep grazing area. Recent diversification has seen the introduction of wheat, sorghum and lentils added to the traditional local crop of custard apples.
Historic buildings
· The Golden Fleece Hotel (1912 - now a 24 hour gym franchise)
· The Winbaroo Court House (1903 – now a paint & sip art studio)
· Winbaroo Mechanics Institute Hall (1900)
· The Bedlam Squirt Hotel (1922) - the town’s sole remaining pub. Currently operates as a community owned operation. Slam Bush Poetry is a staple on Tuesdays nights.
The town and surrounds were used as key locations in the Australian feature film ‘Streuth, Barry’s Flown off the Handle’ (1973) Starring Ken Buckworth & Maureen Gribble. It was described on IMDB as ‘ … a film that should never have been made, let alone released. The horse seemed to sense this when it threw the lead actor in the opening scene and ran off, never to be seen again.’
Notable residents (or those with a connection to Winbaroo)
· Steve Wiefeldt - Olympic Badminton Judge at the Barcelona Olympics (1992),
· Fran Vanderpool - Appeared on season 2 of ABCTV’s Hard Quiz. Her specialty category was the Dutch Royal Family, and she was eliminated in the first round
· Jocelyn Fanning – Runner Up in the National Speed Crocheting Championships (1990) She made a basinet rug in 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
· Danni Minogue – was done for speeding in Winbaroo in 2002. She was clocked doing 87km’s per hour in a 60km zone.
· Victorian Premier (1972-1981), Sir Rupert Hamer stopped at the Winbaroo Bakery and ate a pie in 1982, only months after losing office. He was quoted in the Winbaroo Wind as saying, ‘Are the sausage rolls any hotter?’
Sport
· Mt Winbaroo Down Hill Penny Farthing Race (1913) – the rapid descent race was cancelled after one year, due to no-one completing the course and a string of horrific injuries.
· Winbaroo Custard Apples Australian Rules Football Club [1899- 1987] 7 times Premiers in the Wittagong Plains Football League, the club merged with the Gum Chasm Yabbies in 1988. The merged entity, known as the Gum Chasm-Winbaroo Custard Yabbies, never made the finals and folded in 1997.
· Winbaroo Cricket Club - was founded in 1894. They had a period of sustained success, winning a record 13 consecutive A Grade Premierships from the 1956/57 season. The club continues to play in the Wittagong Plains Cricket Association.
The Story
The seemingly quaint English tradition of breaking up a game of cricket with an afternoon tea break is actually, according to Steven Lynch at Cricinfo, an Australian concept brought to the mother land by the Australian touring party in 1899. Captain Joe Darling, feeling a trifle parched, called for refreshments to be brought out onto the field. However, it wasn’t until the 1905 tour of England, with the Devonshire Tea craving Joe Darling still in charge, that they moved indoors to have their repast.
Since that time, the tea break tradition now recurs in cricket matches all around the world: from test matches to charity hit and giggles and village greens to red dirt paddocks. However, no country has bought into the tea break as enthusiastically as the country that brought it to the world: Australia.
Why here? Perhaps, it’s the climate that induces a languorous stupor and makes players crave shade and refreshment. Is this where the Australian tradition of drinking boiling hot tea on a ‘Stinker’ began?
What I do know is that whether you are playing 1st Grade district cricket in Melbourne or E Grade in Coober Pedy, one of the 11 players on the home team is on afternoon tea duty. In this instance, the teams democratically create a roster to share the responsibility across the season. In times past the responsibility in male teams would often unfairly fall upon the shoulders of the wife, girlfriend or mother of the player, but in these more enlightened times it now only befalls on only ‘some’ of the wives, girlfriends and mothers. Some teams adopt the ‘bring a plate’ model with each player’s contribution hopefully being enough to cover all 22 players and two umpires. From the author’s personal experience, the latter can lead to the trestle table being adorned with multiple packs of Arnott’s Tick Tock Biscuits, particularly if the team’s numbers have been shored up by players from the junior ranks.
In each competition in every corner of this cricket obsessed land, teams not only garner a reputation for the quality of their cricket, but for the eminence, or otherwise, of their afternoon tea. Nothing takes the edge off being all out for 80 in a session, like a homemade Swiss roll and a perfectly pot brewed, cup of Irish Breakfast. Conversely, the humiliation of your bowling attack being belted around the recreation reserve by the oppositions in-form top order is amplified by Aldi imitation Monte Carlos and a tepid cup of International Roast Coffee.
While no official ratings exist, and no official awards have been handed out for the countries best cricket club afternoon teas, one club stands head and shoulders above all others and wears the unofficial crown: the Winbaroo Cricket Club.
In April 1956, after missing the finals for the 10th season in a row, the club called an emergency committee meeting to discuss the club’s recent lack of on field success. This was the height of the wool boom and the pavilion at the Winbaroo Recreation Reserve was ringed with Daimlers as the committee thrashed out the club’s woes over multiple bottles of Grange Hermitage. According to the minutes for that meeting, this was the night that changed everything.
Alan McGovern (Treasurer): ‘At least our afternoon teas aren’t an embarrassment!’
Bill Hammond (Vice President): But they’re not as good as Dixon’s Well
Henry Amiss (Subscriptions): … or Battersly Ridge!
Garth Trainor (Club President and Liberal Party Whip): But what if they were the best. I mean the ‘very’ best.
Bill: A good cup of tea is not going to win us a premiership.
Garth: I’m not so sure.
The minutes become more incomprehensible from there as the committee moved from Grange to Cognac, but there’s no doubting that what came to pass in the season of 1956/57 stemmed from that very meeting.
In the first round of that season, Winbaroo were playing at home to the reigning Premiers, Gorman’s Pass CC. It was no surprise to anyone present when their dominant opening batsmen, Gill Turner and Frank Dillon, were unbeaten with a partnership of 134 runs by tea. They came off the field to a chorus of Mercedes car horns and the hearty applause of team-mates and family.
As the pair took off the caps and gloves outside, they became aware of the eerie silence emanating from the clubrooms. Gill Turner described what he saw upon entering the rooms in the ‘Gorman’s Pass Cricket Club Historical Almanac’.
‘The lads were standing in a ring like petrified mummies. Frank & I pushed our way through and were confronted by one of the most extraordinary sights I’d seen in a pavilion since Jack Newland performed his ‘Sights of The World Routine’ using nothing but his wedding tackle. I still wake up at night thinking about how he did the Eiffel Tower. There was a circular, three-tiered, lazy susan table in the middle of the room stacked with perfectly apportioned club sandwiches, fluffy scones, tea cakes, Kitchener buns, Neenish tarts, chocolate eclairs – you name it, it was on there. As we all gawked at the spread, a swarm of dinner suit clad silver service waiters, wearing white gloves, appeared out of the canteen pushing trolleys of Wedgewood pots. They gestured for us to take our seats and in the blink of an eye, I was sipping first flush Assam tea out of a Royal Albert china cup, as Nigel used his silver tongs to serve me a slice of Victoria Sponge. Winbaroo may have had the most ordinary bowling attack in the association, but boy did they know how to do a tea.’
In the grandeur of what followed, the Gorman’s Pass 1st XI didn’t notice that the Winbaroo team hadn’t joined them. They remained outside having a more modest snack. Gill Turner picks up the action after the tea break
‘Frank was out stumped first ball after tea, and I was run out in the next over. We were all out for 159. The lads were offered left-overs by the sliver service waiters as we went out to field in the last hour. Ron Toovey dived for a catch with half dozen raspberry drops in his pockets. He dropped the catch and the jam stains never came out of his creams. They were 89 without loss at stumps and easily defeated us the next week.’
As the year panned out, Winbaroo’s High Tea Breaks became the stuff of legend. Not resting on their laurels, they had a different theme each week: French, Irish, Dutch - with the silver service waiters suitably attired in national costume and hired musicians playing traditional music. They even flew in a Bavarian Oompa band from Munich for the Deutsch Hoch Tee in the last home and away game against Dunning Flat.
The cuisine may have varied, but the result was always the same. Winbaroo won every home game, with the performance of the opposition significantly falling way after the tea break. However, they did lose their first few away games, due to not being able to over feed their opponents. Club President Garth Trainor explains what happened next.
‘We were playing against Clifden Bluff, who were a good team, but made a notoriously rubbish tea. I rang their president Geoff Dunk and offered to bring the tea even though we weren’t the hosts. Such was the lofty reputation of our recent spreads, he didn’t hesitate in agreeing. We turned up with a catering truck and a highland pipe band and rolled out the best Scottish High Tea this side of the Isle of Skye. We did the same for every away game from then on. No-one quibbled when they heard what was on offer. We didn’t lose a game for the rest of the season.’
Winbaroo Cricket Club made the 1957 Grand Final against Gormans Pass, but the game was to be played at a neutral venue: The Battersly Ridge Showgrounds. In such situations, the responsibility for making the tea falls upon the team who finished higher on the ladder. Even though they had the same number of wins and losses, Gormans Pass had a higher run aggregate and were both relieved, and slightly disappointed, when they heard they were to be the tea custodians. By now the whole competition were wise to the tactic, but also absolutely adored the treats and entertainment on offer. Gill Turner reminisces about the Grand Final.
‘We won the toss and batted. Frank & I put on 156 before the break and headed into the CWA refreshment rooms for tea. It was a sad and sorry sight: soggy egg and water cress sandwiches and some ANZAC biscuits that were so hard that I reckon Ted Jackson might have brought them back as a souvenir from Tobruk. I was putting mock cream on something that might have been a pikelet, when I heard distant music. We all went out to see a flamenco band and dancers on the back tray of a truck. A second truck had a huge steaming pot with a stunning senorita in a tiered, Andalusian Dress stirring the contents with a giant ladle. She held up the ladle and called out ‘Paella senors?’ None of us knew what paella was, but we didn’t need a second invitation. After we tucked into the paella, we washed it down with some sangria and had some long biscuity things called churros with a chocolate dipping sauce. Bloody yummy! … We were all out for 180 and the game was effectively all over at stumps on day one … I dated Marcella for a few months, but she went back to Spain when she realised I only ever talked about cricket and sheep.’
The Winbaroo Cricket club went on to win 13 premierships in a row, almost entirely due to the lavish, high afternoon teas nobbling the performance of the opposition. While the other teams were awake to the ploy by the second season, such was the quality of the catering, they simply couldn’t resist tucking into the sumptuous fare on offer.
Over that time, the spreads became more and more extravagant. At their peak of their fame, Diana Ross and The Supremes served and sang at a Motown Themed High Tea at the Reevesby Showgrounds. Their medley which included ‘Where did our Scones Go?’ … ‘You Can’t Hurry (Pav) Lova’ and ‘Come See About Tea’ went down a treat at the 1965/66 Grand Final against Clifden Bluff.
The reign of Winbaroo CC came to end in the season of 1970/71. A poor wool clip and the plummeting price of wool globally, saw the club have to tighten their purse strings. They could no longer afford to splash out on opulent catering and international A-listers. Although Sonny & Cher did play at that year’s presentation night, even though they got flogged in the semi-final against Fingaroo.
The high teas may be a thing of the past, but the culture to some extent still lingers at the Winbaroo Cricket Club. Mock cream is banned outright, and home-made offerings are compulsory. Todd O’Farrell turned up with a pack of barbeque shapes to the recent semi-final and, even though he made 87 not out and took two catches, he was dropped from the grand final side the following week. They lost the grannie, but the chocolate ripple cake that his replacement Gus Simmons brought along was superb.
This is exciting! I love the 'biased bowls' idea - reminiscent of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon that involved a magnet and roller-skates 😄