Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 12—Culture and recreation 525
Military and naval officers stationed in colonial
Australia were instrumental in establishing other
sports. The “First Australian Regatta” was
organised in Sydney on 28 April 1827 by
Captains Rous and Sterling of HMS Rainbow and
HMS Success. The Australian of 25 July,
deploring some of the more brutal English
sports and pastimes, explained that it was
military men “who...kept the sport [of cock
fighting] alive…” (cited in Cashman 1995).
Anthony Trollope wrote in 1864 that cricket was
the game by which Englishmen might be
recognised in every corner of the earth. “Where a
score or so of our sons are found, there is found
cricket…”. Cricket assumed a real importance in
Australia during the nineteenth century. It was
perceived to be the representative game of
English mores. Success by colonial teams against
‘home’ counties and English representative
teams also was proof that Australians had not
degenerated in the antipodean sun or through
“the convict stain”, a fear often expressed in
contemporary newspapers.
While cricket ‘for all’ was encouraged, there
were other sports which were exclusive and
definitive of the upper classes. ‘Genteel’
Australians imitated ‘genteel’ Britons in their
leisure activities. Croquet was described as “a
most infectious” amusement among the colonial
gentry in the 1860s. Expensive sets of balls and
mallets were imported from England and few of
the ‘great houses’ of the upper classes did not
possess a carefully manicured lawn for the
sport—one of the few to encourage
participation of women.
When tennis became the fashion in Britain in the
late 1870s, colonial society adopted the English
game and converted the croquet lawn to a court.
The colonial ‘gentry’ played golf and lacrosse,
went yachting and imported polo ponies from
India. Women were included in the golf and
‘boating’, played hockey instead of lacrosse, and
rode to the hunt. The homes of the upper classes
boasted rooms for billiards and dancing. They
formed exclusive clubs, imported expensive
equipment and dressed for the occasion to
display their status. In such a manner they strove
to be English provincial gentry in the antipodes
by engaging in symbolic elite activities.
Sport, though, was not the province of the
upper class in early Australia. Richard Twopeny,
who settled in South Australia and wrote of
Town Life in Australia in 1883, observed that
“no class was too poor to play” and added
“…the more ample reward attaching to labour
out here leaves the colonist more leisure…and
this leisure he devotes to play”.
The tavern provided the initial venue for sport
for the ‘common man’ in colonial Australia as it
had done in Britain. The hotels offered
impromptu sporting entertainment for a male
drinking and gambling clientele. The warm
climate encouraged drinking, and the inns were
real community centres offering recreation and
fellowship, although only for a male clientele.
Inn keepers acted as entrepreneurs for sporting
events, played host to embryo sporting clubs
and gave cover to early bookmakers.
Middle class settlers were critical of the sports
and pastimes of the working class, associated as
they were with drinking and gambling, and
campaigned actively for “rational recreation”.
Organised team games, like cricket and football,
flourished under their sponsorship, being
justified for their communal values and ethical
rules. Cricket, however, was considered “the
game of games” and “must take pride of place”,
argued Twopeny “because all classes and ages
are interested in it…Cricket is the colonial
carriere ouverte aux talents” (Twopeny 1883).
It was even advocated as an ideal game for the
Indigenous peoples, a playful way of teaching
white values to Australian Aboriginals.
Developments in the twentieth century
By the time Gordon Inglis published his Sport
and Pastime in Australia (1912) many of these
sports had been organised into structured,
community competitions reflecting local
identification and support. The more casual
sports, like skittles, were “a thing of the past” as
were the more brutal activities like cock fighting
and bare knuckle boxing, but there was no
doubting Trollope’s comment about Australians’
devotion to their sports, or D.H.Lawrence’s
observation that they played “as if their lives
depended on it”. By the turn of the century, a
visitor to Australia could attest that “the
principal amusements of the colonists [were]
outdoor sports of one kind or another” (cited in
Greenwood 1955).
Inglis admitted that sport occupied “a
prominent place in Australian life” and that
representative athletes were beginning to
succeed in the international arenas. He
explained this in terms of British origins, “a
perfect climate”, a favourable standard of life
and increased leisure time, especially for the