I was surprised to receive an email from Richie Wilkinson last evening containing a PDF of a cutting from the Bundaberg News Mail from 1963 under the heading “Keen Interest in Rowing”. The story went on to describe the 1963 version of the annual Head of the River rowing competition held on the Burnett River. No date on the article so I am not sure at what time of the year it was held but I see that the competition is still held around August so we will say it was somewhere near the eighth month.
I do remember being involved in rowing and in the preparation for that particular competition. Training was held in the morning, before breakfast as I remember it. I had to ride my bike a couple of miles to the rowing shed, do the training, ride home for breakfast and (I think I had to do some piano practise as well but that is another story) and then ride even further to Bundaberg State High School for the day.
So I was in fairly good condition at that time. I was in Krone house, one of the four houses upon which most sporting competitions were held and we had several of the better athletes in the school in our house and in our rowing team. Richie Wilkinson was the stroke (the stroke is the person who controls boat activities like how fast to stroke, Ken Nixon was in the third seat, John Bigg was in the second seat and I was in the bow, that is at the pointy end of the boat. I can’t remember the cox except that he/she would have been of small stature to keep the total weight of the boat down to a minimum.
I don’t remember too much about the actual race except for one thing. I was totally exhausted at the end. Looking back on it, exhaustion was a result of my not having much long distance stamina. Our family was quite involved in athletics and I remember being one of the better runners in 100 yard races, not quite so well in 220 yard races and totally lost it when it came to 440 yards and longer.
But back to rowing. I do remember a little more about getting the boat into and out of the water, getting it up to the shed and placing it in its rack. Training was sometimes quite enjoyable, other times not so much. The Burnett River is tidal and we would often decide which way to row to go with the time. Unfortunately you had to come back against the tide if you went out with it. If I remember correctly, they also used to organised competition dates to correspond with the tide. The races used to start near the railway and traffic bridges and race towards the rowers shed towards Millaquin Mill. That meant they would hopefully have races when the tide was going out.
The featured image above bears little resemblance to what things on the Burnett River might have looked like. Because there was no image taken on the day available, I asked my friends at ChatGPT to make something colourful and featuring rowers to put at the top of the article. It certainly is colourful and features some rowers. About the only thing they got right though was the house colours, and I don’t even know if they are correct. I did tell ChatGPT the name of each of the houses and that the colour for Krone was red. Someone might be able to advise what the colours for the other houses were.